“With Design Integration, Model-based Designs are Becoming Popular”

EDN Asia recently met Dr. Arun Mulpur, Industry Marketing Manager, MathWorks, in New Delhi. Dr. Mulpur joined MathWorks in 2002 and currently manages the Communications, Electronics, and Semiconductors (CES) technical marketing team. He and his team work directly with many of the world’s leading CES companies to help them diagnose work flow gaps and bottlenecks, and improve tool integration and system design efficiencies. Excerpts:

EDN Asia: What are the biggest challenges you see today while managing MathWorks CES technical marketing team?
Mulpur: CES customers are distributed across various sizes from small players to large MNCs. Our revenues are distributed evenly between small and large customers. How to cater to the interests of all categories of our customers irrespective of their size and satisfy them all is the biggest challenge.

EDN Asia: How do you face this situation?
Mulpur: By creating the environment best suitable for all. For instance, web communications are very effective for all customer size. But for MNCs, much more is required, such as building great relationships through personal interactions and getting global perspectives through these exchanges.

EDN Asia: Would you say that customers react differently depending upon their size?
Mulpur: At engineering level they react in a similar way whether they are small, medium, or large. But at other levels there are differences. For instance, small companies are willing to take more risks, but large companies are pragmatic.

EDN Asia: How far do you think model-based designs have been accepted by the industry, especially embedded?
Mulpur: The level of acceptance depends upon the design segment and cycle. For instance, in control, model-based designs have been commonly used right from modelling and design stage to the production stage. But in signal processing, it is generally used from modelling to prototype.

EDN Asia: Which are the main application areas seeing good growth in model-based designs?
Mulpur: Automotive and aerospace defence have been extensively using model-based designs. Control design applications largely use model-based designs. Other emerging areas are signal processing, communications, and semiconductors. With design integration, requiring digital and analog embedded in the same design, model-based designs are becoming popular.

EDN Asia: What is the single most important advantage of model-based design?
Mulpur: Model-based design tools help designers get over some of the skills needed. For instance, in the traditional design flow you may be required to know a number of languages as the designer proceeds from the write stage to the prototype and design. But in model-based design the designer models a system and simulates its behaviour before going into prototype.

EDN Asia: Please say something about new technologies on the anvil at MathWorks?
Mulpur: We can already provide features and capabilities for complete design flow all the way to verification. We are expanding our capabilities in the area of analog and mixed signals.

EDN Asia: What new capabilities release 2010a has provided for designers?
Mulpur: Release 2010a includes new features in MATLAB and Simulink. New capabilities for the MATLAB product family include additional multithreaded math functions and enhancements to file sharing, path management, and the desktop in MATLAB; new system objects for stream processing in MATLAB, with over 140 supported algorithms in Video and Image Processing Blockset and Signal Processing Blockset; multicore support and performance enhancements for over 50 functions and expanded support for large images in Image Processing Toolbox; new nonlinear solvers in Global Optimization Toolbox and Optimization Toolbox; ability to generate Simscape language equations from Symbolic Math Toolbox; and Stochastic approximation expectation-maximization (SAEM) and pharmacokinetic dosing schedules support in SimBiology. New capabilities for the Simulink product family include tunable parameter structures, triggered model blocks, and function-call branching for large-scale modeling in Simulink; code generation support for Eclipse, Embedded Linux, and ARM processors in Embedded IDE Link and Target Support Package; ISO 26262 certification for Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder and PolySpace products in IEC Certification Kit; DO-178B qualification support extended to model coverage in DO Qualification Kit; and Simulink PLC Coder, a new product for generating IEC 61131structured text for PLCs and PACs. 2010a contains one new product: Simulink PLC Coder, which allows designers to generate target-independent IEC 61131 structured text for programming PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) and PACs (Programmable Automation Controllers).

EDN Asia: How does MathWorks look at the Asia-Pacific region both as market and design center?
Mulpur: Our developmental work is in Massachusetts. The nature of our business is such that we cannot take advantage of the low cost regions in the conventional way. Our products are based on MATLAB. It helps to do product engineering from a single place rather than distribute the work. However, we do value-added customer-oriented work in Asia. India, China, Japan, and Korea are especially important to us in the region.