If you know anything about me, you’ll know that one of the most important things to me about the future of technology is making sure that this new technology is accessible to everyone. It is critical in this new age to take new technology and apply it to all corners of the world, whether it be the underprivileged in rural Alabama or the entrepreneur in Silicon Valley or the Sherpa in Tibet or the engineer in India. Part of this world looking to innovate is the American military. Remember that out of the military has come things like the internet and the space program and countless other innovations that has become part of our day-to-day. For this reason, it is important to look at what the military has deemed to be important as they move forward. The 2018 National Defense Strategy The military must communicate what is critical to the “business” of the American government moving forward. To that end, on January 19, 2018, Defense Secretary James Mattis presented The Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. (Obviously, the strategy in its entirety cannot be revealed in a press conference; I suspect this is a pretty secret bit of intelligence!) In this summary, Mattis laid out at a high level the steps that are critical to the military, moving forward in the global landscape of military defense. (Mattis also talks about the new landscape of war and the geopolitical threats to the American way of life; about this, I have little to say in this technology blog.) What I do want to point out is the focus on delivering “performance at the speed of relevance”. He says: The fact that many technological developments will come from the commercial sector means that state competitors and non-state actors will also have access to them… Maintaining the Department’s technological advantage will require changes to industry culture, investment sources, and protection across the National Security Innovation Base. Here, he points out that new technology in the non-governmental sphere are accessible to everyone, and leveraging those technologies will be critical to overcoming the challenges facing the Department. Innovation comes from more than just within. Later, he says that “we must invest in modernization of key capabilities through sustained, predictable budgets,” while modernizing nuclear forces, space and cyberspace, C4ISR [i] , and advanced autonomous systems. All this to say that the Department of Defense will need to act more like a business and less like a behemoth of red tape. A pathway out What This Means to Cadence The government employs almost 22 million people, and in the armed forces, almost 1.5 million active in the military and 1.5 million in the military reserve. By any reasonable count, the American government is the largest employer in the United States, with almost three million of them employed by the military—more than Walmart, the biggest private employer, at 2.3 million employees [ii] . To risk understatement, that is a big potential customer. We, at Cadence, must learn about what is important to this market, and in this document is listed its strategy! What luck! So what does this actually mean to Cadence? What IS important to the military? When I read the strategy with my highlighter in hand, it was the final two pages that took the most highlighter ink: the section with the header Reform the Department for Greater Performance and Affordability . In a nutshell, the military is designing for PVT—power, voltage, and temperature—and they want to do it fast. PVT and the Speed of Relevance In addition to the engineering that must be done at the die, chip, and package level that takes PVT into consideration, the military must take more metaphoric considerations of PVT and speed of delivery in its processes and procedures. Power . Let’s say that “power” means “monetary resources”. Jim Mattis says in this section, “We have a responsibility to gain full value from every taxpayer dollar spent on defense…” This means engineering for power efficiency. As the military continues to leverage the scale of their operations to drive efficiency in procuring materiel and services, he recognizes that traditional design cycles contain wasted resources. The change laid out in this strategy is to focus on reducing this, thus engineering for power—that is, monetary efficiency—becomes a primary focus. Voltage . In this context, “voltage” means “the energy required to get things done”. Mattis says, “The Department’s management structure and processes are not written in stone, they are a means to an end…” To economize on the “voltage” of creating a new and innovative system, there must be tools in place to cut down on the effort of the system’s creation and to be flexible when presented with alternatives. The change laid out in this strategy is to focus on modeling, iteration, and continuous adaptation of whatever is being developed, instead of making powerful mistakes when creating prototypes. Voltage must be conserved, moving forward. Temperature . In this context, “temperature” means “process flow”. With the traditional red tape involved in any governmental activity, there are bottlenecks that prevent a streamlined decision-making process. Temperatures rise when there are inefficient uses of human resources. Mattis wants to address this by increasing the efficiency of the process flow. Speed . As Mattis said in the strategy, “Success no longer goes to the country that develops a new technology first, but rather to the one that better integrates it and adapts it…” To address the military infrastructure that is in danger of crumbling, the vendors the military will use will update each section modularly, not in its entirety. Our response will be to prioritize speed of delivery, continuous adaptation, and frequent modular upgrades… delivering performance means we will shed outdated management practices and structures will integrating insights from business innovation. How we measure it is another thing entirely These four criteria fit into what Cadence does well: using emulation, simulation, characterization, synthesis, verification, system prototyping, IP, and all kinds of signoff tools, an organization like the military can use Cadence tools to skip the part of the design cycle that inevitably involves making a failed prototype. Testing using models of chips, boards, and systems—all part of the Cadence System Design Enablement strategy—reduces the design cycle to enable the speed required by the Department. Cadence has recently released a White Paper addressing how Cadence can help the Department of Defense meet the challenges put forth in the 2018 National Defense Strategy; for more information about how we at Cadence are positioned well to help the Department of Defense achieve its goals, check it out! —Meera [i] Command, control, communications, computers and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance [ii] Figures per that paragon of information, Wikipedia![]()
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