After a long wait, classes started this monday and started with a bang!
The first class on Monday was; Beginning Swimming (69-150). This is aimed at people who don’t know swimming and get them kicking in the water. Though this credits would not count towards my degree, but would like to learn swimming at the end of the semester.
Second class was, Real time Embedded Systems (18-648). This is one of the core subject for my major, Prof Raj surprised us by saying that Google has agreed to give us around 15 G1 Android phones and we would be working on it as part of projects and lab! Such a nice coincidence, was working on mobile platform at ST-Ericcson for two years and now again be working on Mobiles.
Third class on day1 was, Design of Integrated Embedded Systems (18-667). This is another core subject and the course was more advanced than I thought. But I think at the end of the course I would have a very deep understanding about System issues and design methodologies for SOC, and hands on experience of working with VHDL, FPGA, SystemC etc. This is what I was thinking of learning when I thought of applying for masters, and this new course perfectly fits with my requirement.
Third course on Tuesday morning was, Numerical Methods in Engineering design and optimization (18-660). This is maths course and would teach us various optimization methods, internal working of numerical tools etc. Here the only catch is that project (which is 60% of the course) has to be done individually, and have to think of some big problem which has to be solved using numerical solvers.
The final class, which is undergraduate course is; Introduction to Computer Systems (15-213 / 18-243) was held at newly build Gates Hillman Center (click here for pics). This is the class for which CMU is famous for, and according to instructor “This is the course which gives CMU its ZIP”, around 250 (right two hundred and fifty) students have enrolled for this class. So you can imagine fun being in this class. I am not sure about taking this class, I want to take mainly for doing assignments and lab exercises, may be I drop it later.
I think I am almost set for classes, there would be lot of “fun” this semester.
