> >As opposed to, say, thinking it through carefully and getting it right
> >the first time?
> >
> >John
> >
> >
> If you can think something through carefully and get it right first
> time, without experimentation, you are either:
>
> a) a genius who would make Newton look like a moron, or
>
> b) doing something pretty trivial.
>
> Regards,
> Steve

If you design a complex 10s Mgates system-on-chips where each of the
10s masks costs 100k$ and where each design iteration is many months
long, you'll be killed if you come w/ your experimentation approach. I
don't think it's trivial ; so I'll try to compete w/ Newton w/ my
small capabilities.

Why not carefully think about your implementation of the requested
features? Select the appropriate architecture from the very beginning
(and regarding the penalty if you didn't choose the right architecture
from the beginning, you should better carefully look at the features
you're looking for and in which direction they can develop), identify
the main technical risks and concentrate on a way to be sure that the
architectural choices + the main functions will be validated during
the first iteration and that all the debug functions are in place to
identify most of the bugs.

W/ Mgates FPGA and ASIC, HW stuff is no longer trivial. The HDL
productivity has only slightly improved while in the mean time the
FPGA/ASIC density has drastically increased. HW is not SW. Any
design/experiment/update approach only leads to loss of time (and
therefore $).