Qualis Offers Web-based Configurable Reuse Guide

Electronic News, Jan 4, 1999

Lake Oswego, Ore.-Qualis Design Corp. recently announced its configurable Reuse Methodology Field Guide, a web-based methodology manual for developing and using reusable components for system-on-chip design. The Field Guide is the centerpiece in Qualis Design's Productive Knowledge series of reuse methodology products and services.

The configurable Reuse Methodology Field Guide lets corporate reuse managers quickly deploy a customized methodology manual with solid, proven design rules that facilitate reuse, Qualis said.. The Field Guide can be easily customized to include unique customer processes, then rapidly deployed throughout the organization via the customer's Intranet. Using the Field Guide as a baseline reuse document and adding just a few weeks of focused effort, companies can save over six months of reuse manual development effort, reduce organizational stress, and untold missed opportunity cost.

With system houses compelled to adopt a sound design for reuse strategy, the time savings realized by leveraging the work of others can reap tremendous financial rewards. Developing an internal reuse manual by drawing solely upon internal documents and personal knowledge is time consuming and does not guarantee a best-in-class reuse strategy. Even with a reuse methodology textbook in hand, engineers still waste valuable time extracting guidelines, mitigating weak areas, and developing the needed documentation and infrastructure to support design reuse.

Qualis also offers consulting services in the area of reuse infrastructure deployment and to aid in customizing and deploying the Field Guide. The company asserted that with its first-hand knowledge of what works and what doesn't, it is well suited to help deploy a tightly connected and smooth running support infrastructure for building, using and maintaining reusable designs.

The Field Guide includes a library of helper applications and documents, including specification templates, design process controls, and metric generators, that simplify standardization of corporate design methods. The Field Guide and library are available as Adobe FrameMaker source files that generate a fully-linked HTML database, and as a Synchronicity Reuse Knowledge Base in their IP Gear family of products.

Cirrus Logic, Ericsson, Nortel Networks, Texas Instruments Storage Products and VLSI Technology are currently evaluating the Field Guide.