This week was most hectic so far, though due to G20 I did not have classes on thursday or friday; assignments kept me working till morning 3 daily. Monday there was quiz for Real time course, my first quiz at CMU. I prepared well for it, and was all excited to give a shot at it. But paper was surprisingly intuitive and didn’t perform that great just well above average. One thing striking in that quiz was that there was not even a single non sense question, even the formula we require were given in the paper! Just have to apply your brain, why don’t we have this kind of tests in India?

Also pretty good surprises in this week, first got access for Teragrid (in simpler word the 100 teraflop supercomputer). I would be writing parallel programs in the second assignment. Have interview call for intern on Tuesday in my dream company and also have got a campus job as Research assistant. Many good things are coming at once, just have to handle it well and karma would take care of itself.
Thats it for now, have to go back debugging strchr.asm file.

Last week extended weekend was consumed by Datalab assignment of 213 course, many tricky questions in C and at one point thought that brain would explode. But now I am going to drop 213 to go for Computer Architecture course, which seems wise thing to.

One good news, Android phones have arrived so do the first assignments. We would be working on Android Dev 1 phone in a group of three. As two of my teammates have iPhone and BlackBerry it seems that I am going to keep Android with my self. Have some ideas about new apps to be developed for it, lets see how it can be materialized. But one thing for sure, Android holds a lot of promise in future;  was amazed by how many companies have stopped working on their legacy mobile platform and have embraced Android.

Android Phone

One thing I have noticed in the curriculum is that CMU teaches skills for the future, quite really. One of example is in the course Computer Architecture, the professor has decided to focus about 70 percent on teaching parallelism and how to write code to extract performance out of multicores. Another example is Android, I really didn’t imagine that I would be working on Mobile phones at CMU and that too Android! That much adaptability and flexibility gives US education an edge over other countries.

Its been my first week of classes and I am trying to answer what exactly is graduate study? Prof. Indira Nair, vice provost for education at CMU succinctly answered this question during orientation. According to her

“It is the single minded pursuit of excellence and also seating in sacred place means that you sit alone“

Its quite true, grad study unlike undergrads is very different. You have to compete, make a point and learn quickly as much you can (as there would no second chance). No one is going to spoon feed, its up to you how much you make out of it.

There are million of oppertunities out there, I just have to make it happen.

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.

I reached Pittsburgh, US on 31st July 2009, exactly six years after I reached Trichy for undergraduate. Its been a quite a roller coaster ride after reaching here, many things were as expected but quite many unknown things too. But finally I am done with all the orientation, formalities, buying phone, etc. etc and all set for classes on monday.

There is lot to say about life at US, but I would left it to pictures to tell the whole story. Above picture is of Electrical and Computer Engineering department, one of the most imposing building I would say.

Ice cream social event on 11th for all incoming International students. I could see people from all the parts of world, as many as people from 70 countries.

top view of university center

Independence day at CMU, painting the fence (according to trivia the fence is most painted object in the world !)

Receptionist to greet at Simmons hall, the robotics center.

Fountains to drink water, don’t get to see them at India.

More to write down, would put down if I get time..Its all for now.

Thanks a lot Bangalore Income tax department for setting up special counters at Palace grounds, the filing was easier than I thought. Only documents required were ITR-1 form, and acknowledgement form which  was stamped and given to me instantly. No Form 16 or PAN card copy required.

Link: http://www.incometaxbangalore.org/

After completing my engineering from NIT Trichy I joined as Software Engineer at Conexant Systems , Hyderabad Aug 2007. I was very happy about getting through Conexant as I knew the job would be challenging and provide me with plenty of new learnings.

About fifty odd freshers joined in Software domain at Conexant and there was proper training planned for us (they must have put a lot thought in design of the training content). It gave us very good idea on Embedded Systems, virtually covering all the topics in the area. I would say I was lucky to go through this excellent training, which provided me great platform to start off with my professional career.

It covered following aspects,

1. Effective Programming using C:
Topics covered: Basic programming; data structures such as arrays, linked list, graphs and trees; algorithms for sorting, searching and some graph algortithms; and a lab on all topics covered in theory.

Essentially it was similar to Data structures and Algorithm course done during engineering, but it was nice to revise again.

2. Embedded Systems Programming:
Topics covered: Intro to Embedded systems; Basics of RTOS; Software tools such as debugger, linker, compiler; Object file formats and how to make sense of it; OS Internals and drivers; Designing a Real time system, design modules and a Case study.

This was the best training session, as you would see it covers all the important topic in Embedded System programming. Many things learned from this training which are still useful.

3. ARM Architecture:
Topics covered: Intro to RISC, overview of ARM architecture, Thumb instruction set, Interrupts in ARM, Caches and memory mapping etc.

This was another very good training, Embedded engineer must know about ARM architecture as it is most widely used in industry. I liked the concepts of Thumb instruction set and instruction decoding in ARM.

4. Linux Kernel Internals:
Topics covered: All the chapters from book Linux Kernel Development by Robert Love

I had good idea of Linux kernel before joining Conexant, but this session cleared all the doubts and gave a good overview of writing a device driver for Linux. Must buy / read book by Robert love.

5. Socket Programming:
Topics covered: This session gave overall idea about networking and how one can write socket in C.

6. Introduction to Testing:
Topics covered: This session gave idea about how testing fits into large picture, why testing is very important, and made sure that engineer does not neglects testing and considers them as important as development.

There were some sessions by HR on topics Assertive communication and team building exercise. Some good videos were shown for Assertive communication techniques such as fogging, broken record, Negative inquiry etc. Communication is as important as technical skills in industry (which many times people tend to neglect), and one has to improve upon it constantly.

Cross posting from embsystems blog; http://embsystems.blogspot.com/

As I would be moving out of Bangalore in few days, I wanted to sell my cycle which I bought in March last year. For selling it, I first went to few cycle shops nearby and got the idea of how much they would pay for this cycle. Every one told me that I would get around 1.5k not more than that.

I thought of using different medium to sell my cycle. I first thought of Twitter to sell it, so that people who are interested in it can reply back to me. But that wasn’t good enough no one replied to me, may be my network at twitter is very limited.

Then I posted free ads on Locanto and Sulekha, and to my surprise within a day I got contact of 3 people interested in buying my cycle. In particular Sulekha provides very good service, every time some one clicked on your ad as interested you would get a sms with his name and mobile no. So you can directly contact and negotiate price. Through Sulekha only I found contact of a student who recently lost his cycle and sold him happily for 1.8k.

Next, I want to sell my engineering books !

System:

A system is defined as a set of different elements so connected or related as to perform unique function not performable by the elements alone

Architecture:

The term ‘architecture’ is widely understood and used for what it is – a top down description of the structure of the system

- System Architecture definition by Eb Rechtin

System Architect is one of the crucial jobs in embedded industry and to reach there one should have various skills required apart from solid domain level skills. The essay (link below) by Dr. Koopman covers in detail the core competency required to become System Architect, they are as follows

1. Must have an appreciation for the full breadth of complexity in the lifecycle of a system.

This would require years of experience working in various domains within a system and only then one can appreciate inherent complexities.

1. Must have experience/knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of various architectural approaches as well as ways to combine them.

This could be learned by knowing various approaches and should know when one can be used in particular system.

1. Must have the ability to cope with significant amounts of complexity while creating or modifying architecture.

This is also very difficult skill to learn, would require working knowledge of various tools and to help deal with complexity.

1. Must be able to articulate the essence of particular system architecture to others.

System Architect role is a of a leader, and excellent communication skills are expected from him. He should sell his vision and idea to the team, customers and all the stakeholders.

1. Must be able to deal with systems that are evolved/composed rather than designed from scratch.

This is important as many of the systems or products are getting evolved, no one is designing everything from scratch.

1. Must have good “taste” to create a “clean” architecture that scales well and ages gracefully in the face of unforeseeable changes.

Sometime the need comes to design entire thing from scratch, and here he has to play a crucial role.

Link:

1. Essay by Dr. Philip Koopman http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/system_architecture/00_04_system_architecture.pdf

Cross posting from embsystems blog; http://embsystems.blogspot.com/

The area of Embedded Systems is quite close to my heart, thats why I have decided to write a blog on this topic. I would like to cover higher education, Indian industries, market updates and application areas in detail.

Do visit it at http://embsystems.blogspot.com/

Your valuable feedback is always welcome.