The merits of traditional office-based versus virtual, remote teams continues. It would appear that the opposing views are not solely based on objective facts. These positions appear, instead, to be influenced by a general worldview and at times resemble a “culture war.”  

The rapid adoption of remote working and virtual teams during the Covid19-pandemic was unprecedented. However, there has been a notable resurgence of organisations pushing for traditional office-based models. In recent years, the rhetoric against remote work has intensified. This development is attributed to a presumed decline in remote-worker employee productivity. From the very beginning MINRES has made remote work an integral part of its way of working. We hire the right people and empower them to do the job no matter where they’re based. It’s then our responsibility to make sure we find opportunities and do everything we can to make the teams work closely together: and have regular opportunities to meet and to bond, in person.

But the fact these questions continue to be asked prompts us to check whether the virtual team approach remains a valid strategy for MINRES.

MINRES is a customer-centric and highly collaborative organization. I think we would all agree that we have had very positive experiences with virtual teamwork over the years, both within our core team and in our partnerships and importantly, in our interactions with customers. Remote teamwork plays an essential role in the culture and operations of our company. Perhaps the most significant benefit that a virtual team settings has provided us, and continues to provide, is access to a geographically dispersed talent pool. This has enabled the company to attract highly specialized talent – wherever they may be based. Additional important and proven benefits include fewer unnecessary meetings, reduced costs, enhanced flexibility, improved scalability, increased employee satisfaction, better retention rates and faster reactions to shifting business landscapes.

However, it is important to acknowledge the challenges with building and managing a remote team. A key success factor with this model is selecting the right people. The ideal candidate who can thrive in a digital workspace will possess the necessary seniority, technical, soft, and leadership skills to work independently and collaborate seamlessly despite physical distance. Based on our experience, hiring employees who are not a good fit for remote teamwork almost invariably results in its failure. In addition, time has taught us that flat hierarchies and a shared leadership approach is highly effective for virtual teams. This is because many individuals are working independently or in very small groups and may need to make decisions quickly. This “democratic approach” requires a high level of trust in your team and may not always achieve optimal results in traditional team settings, where the team leader typically maintains a significant degree of control over day-to-day operations. You hire people who have the skills and experience to deserve autonomy, and who thrive in such an environment.

There are concrete benefits but also challenges associated with remote teams  – and by appreciating both you can successfully build, manage, and the business can eventually thrive with a remote team.

PS. That’s not to say we don’t meet up…as I write this, I’m en route to our 3 monthly offsite team meeting.

Virtual Protyping (VP) is the proven methodology for early software development and architectural exploration. To verify the correctness of modeled IP, different levels of verifications are adopted. One favored, less resource-intensive verification methodology, is the direct comparison of the RTL design with its VP-level model.

With the existing verilog codes of the RTL design, MINRES has the experience to translate it into a desired corresponding model. In such situations, correlation between the RTL and the model is essential for evaluating the correctness and quality of the model. During correlation, the VP is compared against the RTL simulation, which acts as the golden reference.

The challenge of correlation here is to “see” the difference (as in literally looking at and spotting differences in waveforms), which could either stem from issues in the RTL or in the model, and to understand it properly. To analyze the behavior of the RTL simulation, looking into the waveform is necessary, which is very difficult and time-consuming for complicated scenarios.

We at MINRES continue to explore innovative approaches to address these issues.

The team has been researching automated waveform analysis to eliminate the need for manual verification of waveforms. To that end, we adopted the Waveform AnalysisLanguage (WAL), a recent development from the Institute for Complex Systems at Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU) (ICS JKU).

After evaluating WAL, we discovered that it can significantly help us with our correlation challenges. By “surfing” over the RTL waveforms using a WAL program, we reconstruct VP- level transactions from the low-level signals in the waveform. Correlation between the RTL and the model is now much easier to do since both are at the same abstraction level.

Apart from correlation, we also used WAL to analyze the performance of our RISC-V cores. Given the growing adoption and interest in RISC-V, this capability promises significant benefits.

Through our collaboration with the WAL team at JKU, we’ve been able to accelerate and automate waveform analysis to uncover hidden bugs in the RTL design and to identify issues during architecture exploration.

Look out for my next post, in which I will look at how WAL can “surf” through the waveform for functional debugging. I will also talk about how the pipeline design of RISC-V processors can be improved with WAL.