March 31, 2011
When I say “football,” what comes to your mind? If you live in the US, you are likely thinking of American football. If you live in Australia, you are likely thinking of Australian football. But for most of the world, the term football refers to association football which is also […]
February 28, 2011
At a recent DesignCon, I attended the panel, “The Same Chip Killers Keep Delaying Your Schedules – What Are You Doing About It?” consisting of Ed Sperling (Moderator/System-Level Design), John Busco (NVIDIA), Ravi Damaraju (Juniper Networks), Ramon Macias (NetLogic Microsystems), Sunil Malkani (Broadcom), and Bernard Murphy (Atrenta Inc.) Two of […]
January 31, 2011
While living in Germany, I heard the following joke: Question: What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Answer: Trilingual. Q: What do you call someone who speaks two languages? A: Bilingual. Q: What do you call someone who speaks one languages? A: An American. If you were born […]
December 31, 2010
While working for HP’s LaserJet lab, a hardware engineer told me about a customizable IP that we had purchased to put in one of our LaserJet ASICs. Depending on the customization settings used when the IP was instantiated, some register bits became unneeded and therefore were not visible in the […]
November 5, 2010
Much of what I read about Green Design involves building the product with recycled or renewable materials and consumables, and making the product recyclable at the end of its life. Hardware engineers can contribute to the green effort by influencing how the product is made and what it is made […]
October 30, 2010
This is the last in the series of newsletters that present seven principles to help guide your own processes and best practices in hardware/firmware interface design. This month’s principle focuses on the future. People who look to the future toward retirement prepare now by putting away money. Those who are […]