Memory of The Future
on Nov 9, 2009 in Memory Uncategorized If you have a choice between experiencing a perfect moment and having an everlasting memory of such moment but never actually experiencing it, which one would you choose? There was a time when I would choose the former, like Hans Christian Andersen&#...

The Integrals In Things Past
on Oct 25, 2009 in Uncategorized Icarus John Gillespie Magee summer taffy Volterra series The integral sign reminds me of the salt water taffy machines in the  sweet shops of the Oregon coastal towns we  visited during the summers of my girlhood. I remember pressing my nose against the glass partition to watch  the machine pulled the s...

An Attraction Unexplained
on Oct 4, 2009 in Uncategorized Certain words are easy on the eyes.  Take,  for instance, iridescent, dapple, lilting, peal, sparrow.  Of course one reader’s pearls  are another reader’s sands.  Subjectivity aside, within one single perception, what makes certain w...

Of Negative Capacitance And Nightingale
on Sep 20, 2009 in Uncategorized The trinity of passive circuit elements have descriptive names: resistor,  inductor, and capacitor — the resistor resists current flow, the inductor stores energy in a magnetic field and uses this energy to induce current, the capacitor is cap...

Deja Vu Deconstructed
on Sep 14, 2009 in Uncategorized brain clock Glitches memory Time Not everyman has gentians in his house. In soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas Memory is amorphous.  I still remember the first times I read that D. H. Lawrence’s poem.  The first time, you will want to correct me.  But I still can’...

The Synchronous Villanelle
on Aug 24, 2009 in Uncategorized death memory tests Time Patterns have many uses in digital design,  one of which is testing semiconductor memories.    Memory tests are different from  logic tests because memory test patterns can be completely  algorithmically generated, each pattern used to target a...

The Eyes Of The Transceivers
on Aug 16, 2009 in Uncategorized regrets Transceivers At my first job as an engineer,  next to the block diagram of the FPS564 array processor, I adorned the wall of my first cubicle which the following lines: Each morning a thousand roses brings,  you say. Yes, but where leave the rose of yesterday?

“The Psychoanalysis of Fire”
on Aug 12, 2009 in Uncategorized power psychoanalysis A  low power design technique known as clock gating is simple, almost  zen-like: if you don’t need a particular function in a circuit then keep it still by turning off its clock.   Static power used to be  insignificant compared to dynamic...

Of Contentment and Metastability
on Aug 5, 2009 in Uncategorized contention contentment metastability There is probably an interesting lesson in etymology explaining the origin of the words contentment and contention.   Contentment is a state of mind that follows the ebullient feeling one gets after figuring out that signal contention due to the as...

A Time To Measure
on Aug 4, 2009 in Uncategorized engineering poetry summer Somehow the idea that we can measure a very small amount of time, a femtosecond for instance, really appeals to me. It does not matter that it is not I who can do the measuring. Paradoxically I also take pleasure in knowing that the electrons will...