Back to blogging!!!

It’s been a really long time since I last posted an article on my blog. Today I felt that I should get back to it. What motivated me? I read some past articles from my blog and was able to relive those experiences. Those that weren’t written about, have been forgotten and faded from my memory. Anyway, here’s a summary of my status. I don’t plan on writing a complete history here, coz there isn’t enough time to jot every thing down. So here’s the list.

1) Graduated from The University of Massachusetts Amherst with a Master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

2) Joined Vonage, a VOIP company based in Holmdel, NJ.

3) Obtained my H1-B approval after a long tense waiting period (this is definitely a story for another day). In short, my H1-B was approved, but the approval was sent to another lawyer by the USCIS. I never heard from them until this October (normally you get to know by June), just in time before my OPT expired in Nov. There were quite a few anxious moments which ended in my almost getting prepared to get back to India. Anyway, the H1-B approval notice came just in the nick of time and the story ended well. I plan on going to India sometime next year for the stamping.

4) Bought a used car (Hyundai XG 300L) and had quite a few interesting experiences with it as well. Will post them in a later blog. Anyway, it’s running quite smoothly now and hope that it will continue to serve me well in the future.

5) Been busy with my work/life here. Got to learn quite a few tools/tricks and am still working on enhancing my skills in various technologies.I primarily develop reports using Perl/SQL. Quite interestingly I get to do a lot of research work trying to fix up stuff with the Pentaho BI suite and work seems like a continuation of my grad school.  So far, so good 🙂

Needless to say, the journey so far as been extremely exciting and interesting.

-Atchuth.

A thought provoking forward

ONE PARAGRAPH THAT EXPLAINS LIFE !

Arthur Ashe, the legendary Wimbledon player was dying of CANCER. From
world over, he received letters from his fans, one of which conveyed:
“Why does GOD have to select you for such a bad disease”? To this
Arthur Ashe replied: The world over — 5 crore children start playing
tennis, 50 lakh learn to play tennis, 5 lakh learn professional tennis,
50,000 come to the circuit, 5000 reach the grand slam, 50 reach
Wimbeldon, 4 to semi final, 2 to the finals, When I was holding a cup I
never asked GOD “Why me?”. And today in pain I should not be asking GOD
“Why me?”

I am so optimistic that even my blood group says B positive.

“Best of health, Best of friendz, Best of luck, that never ends, Great
sucesses in all you do, those are my wishes just for you…”

People die younger.. because god loves them so much.. I am still on
earth.. because there’s a goddess here who loves me more..

Don’t tell GOD how big your storm is.
Tell the storm how big your GOD is!
____________­_________­_________­_________­________

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?

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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.