Video/tutorial creation software

Check this out:

http://www.jingproject.com

Could solve some problems for Graduate teaching assistants.

The written word: Why is Blogging so popular ?

If there is one tool that will make your office much more productive at minimal cost, it will be this: the white-board. Simply because any idea that is sitting in your head doesn’t become useful or actionable unless you put it down and then start thinking about it. The white-board facilitates this, and adds color to otherwise drab presentations. It is a great learning tool as well.
Sadly, I never used a white-board much until a recent vacation in Florida. Yes, our research meeting rooms had a white board, but we used projectors and didn’t do much explaining on the board. It was more of a verbal discussion, predominantly because our group adviser was mostly well informed of our work via e-mail/ direct reports.

So, I was visiting my sister and saw a white board that my niece Divyaa and my nephew Raaghuv (both under 3 yrs old) used. Both sides of the board were subject to their creativity and imagination and were full of crayon markings. Later, I guess they got bored and moved on to other interesting things, such as watching Kishore Kumar on Youtube.

I had a few books and at night, when everyone fell asleep, I started reading them, this time with the whiteboard and dry-erase markers. It was slower than my normal pace, but my absorption of the material was much more. I really wished that I had discovered the use of the white board much earlier. Nowadays, most of my learning comes through the white-board. Abstract concepts become much more interesting and easier to understand when portrayed on a white-board, with colors. State machines, registers, pipelines, VLSI current voltage diagrams etc. can be easily illustrated. The advantage again is that if you make a mistake, you don’t need to draw the entire diagram again. Erase, fix the parts that are wrong and move on. If you haven’t tried the white-board yet, try it. It works wonders to your learning, and is much more environmentally friendly. I guess I might end up saving some paper (read trees) and ink

So, what has all this got to do with blogging? Blogging is the white-board of the interconnected world that we live in. Post what you want and archive them, add color, links and hypertext, videos etc. Also, you can read other’s posts, learn about their interests all in a short span of time. Whatever you can do on a white-board, you can do on a blog. Also, you might consider making tutorials for interested readers, and humor them with your wit. If you don’t like something, no problem, fix it or erase it completely. If there is some content that does not require public reading, protect it.

Blogging adds the flexibility of email and the powerfulness of the white-board thereby, truly adding a new dimension to your life. Give it a shot, what have you got to lose?

=======

Addition (03/03/08): One reason why I love blogging is that it is my stamp in cyberspace, a place of my own, where I can contribute, make my voice heard .

Upbeat songs

Some songs to make your day:) .

English:

1. Lionel Richie – Hello
2. Stevie Wonder – I just called to say I love you
3. I’m alive
4. That’s the way it is
5. A New Day has come
6. If that’s what it takes
7. Michael Jackson – Beat It
8. The Police – Every Breath You Take
9. Sting feat. Cheb Mami – Desert Rose (Original)
10. Sting – Fields Of Gold

Hindi

1. Hum Tum – Chakde
   
2. Iqbal – Aashayein
3. Lakshya Title Song
4. Paatshala – Rang de basanti
5. Roobaroo – Rang De Basanti
6. Kholo Kholo – Taare Zameen Par
7. Mera Jahan – Taare Zameen Par
8. Taare Zameen Par – Song – Title Song
9. Ye Ishq Hai – Jab We Met
10. Neal and Nikki – Yeh Ladka Hai Allah
11. Halla Re-Neal & Niki
12. My Name Is Ali – Dhoom 2
13. Aao milo chale – jab we met

    Tamil:

1. Ghajini – Oru Malai
2. Kakka Kakka – Uyirin Uyire
3. lesa lesa – edho ondru

—Do add your suggestions

A nice system cleaner

Ccleaner is a nice system cleaner that removes a lot of junk from your system such as cookies, browsing history, invalid registry entries etc. The best part is that it is free and highly recommended and awarded by various PC magazines. The site claims about a 120 million downloads…Try it out.

Lec3

Main points to take away:

Fault models, Concepts of fault equivalence, fault collapsing and fault dominance.

Number of fault sites in a boolean gate circuit =#PI + #gates + #(fanout branches)

Primary inputs and fanout branches are checkpoints

Check point theorem: A test that detects all single(multiple)  stuck-at faults on all checkpoints of a combinational circuit, also detects all single(multiple) stuck at faults in the circuit.

Lec 2, Slide 6 through 20.

Characterization test: Used to rank test vectors using score-boarding.

Scoreboarding is a centralized method, used in the CDC 6600, for dynamically scheduling a pipeline so that the instructions can execute out of order when there are no conflicts and the hardware is available.

NAC Diode (Net Area check diode): it is a diode, a PN-junction connected to the metal to solve the antenna effect.

Ring Oscillator…used for clock generation

+

Kerfs are simple structures made between real chips used for process check. These are tested and if they are very bad(open/shorted) chips are also likely to be dead. It is used for pass/fail. (Ref) Kerfs are also called as scribe lines.

Manufacturing testing has 2 aspects: 1) Go/no-go decision and 2) Frequency bin split
Predominant faults in Al interconnects: Bridging faults
Predominant faults in Cu interconnects: Open faults

 Burn-in/stress test (Aging): Subject chips to high voltage(gate-oxide breakdown) or high temperatures(accelerated electromigration)

Lec 2, Slides 4 and 5

Verification testing includes circuit verification and power verification.
Circuit verification: Current, setup time, hold time, clock skew etc , memory check.
Power verification: Avg, max, drop(see inductance),

VRM: Voltage Regulator Module

A voltage regulator module (VRM) is an installable module that senses a computer’s microprocessor voltage requirements and ensures that the correct voltage is maintained. If you are changing your computer’s microprocessor (for example, changing from a Pentium to a Pentium Pro or a Pentium with MMX), you need to add a voltage regulator module to the existing voltage regulator in the motherboard so that the new voltage requirements can be detected and accommodated (Ref)

Lec 2, Sl 3

The main point here to note is that verification is being done at 2 stages 1) during/end of design and after fab (where it is called design validation)

Logic Verification: Using software simulation/emulation

Design Validation: Verification using testers.

Lecture 2, Slide 2

Slide1: 

Intro. This lecture covers test processes and equipment.

Slide2:

Automatic Test Pattern Generation(ATPG):  EDA method used to determine an input test sequence that, when applied to a digital ckt., enables testers to distinguish between correct circuit behavior and faulty circuit behavior caused by defects.

Diagnostic Testing: Trying to determine as to why the wafer yield is low etc…testing aimed particularly at determining cause of chip failure, so that  corrective action can be taken

Design for Testability: Adding extra logic blogs in the design, so that later testing becomes easier.

Scan design: Registers (FF or latches) are connected in one or more scan chains which are used to gain access to internal nodes in the chip. Test patterns are shifted in via the scan-chains, clock signals are pulsed to test the circuit and then results are shifted out to chip output chains and compared against expected “good-machine” results.

Debug using DFT features:

• Use scan chains
• Chip is used in normal functional mode
• At any point, stop chip clock and reconfigure it into test mode
• Either dump full internal state into scan chain, or set state using scan chain

Uses of Debug DFT:

• Initialize memory elements.
• Bring system to known state without going through many clock cycles.

Reference Wiki

Online Tutorials

Here are some excellent tutorials that I refer to:

UNIX Tutorials:
http://www.geekcomix.com/classnotes/

Unix power tools:
http://hell.org.ua/Docs/oreilly/unix/upt/index.htm

Perl Tutorial:
http://www.sthomas.net/roberts-perl-tutorial.htm
http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/Perl/

SQL Tutorial:
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp

Game Programming:
http://www.toymaker.info/Games/html/beginners.html

Operating Systems:
http://www.iu.hio.no/~mark/os/os.html