Best Practices

March 31, 2010

Let’s All Be Geniuses

“Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.” Albert Einstein This profound quote says very succinctly where and how we should focus our efforts. How many of us are guilty of writing firmware and then getting it to work without thorough testing? Are we likely to make a change to the code […]
December 31, 2010

Don’t Change Bit Assignments

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 […]
January 31, 2011

The Language Barrier

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 […]
February 28, 2011

Is Your Safety Net an Afterthought?

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 […]
March 31, 2011

Football vs. Football

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 […]