Intel details future Larrabee graphics chip
in [Design]
|
Prev: LM3478 design gets insanely hot
Next: 89C51ED2
From: John Larkin on 11 Aug 2008 13:05 On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:00:39 GMT, Jan Panteltje <pNaonStpealmtje(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >On a sunny day (Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:45:08 -0700) it happened John Larkin ><jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in ><iij0a4ho0867ufr82loiq6epj3b23u8svr(a)4ax.com>: > > >>I've got a small software project going now to write a new material >>control/BOM/parts database system. The way I've found to keep the bugs >>under reasonable control is to use one programmer, one programmer >>supervisor, and four testers. >> >>John > >postgreSQL with phpPgAdmin as frontend here, web based. >What bugs? Yes the bugs in my SQL :-) A single database file, of fixed-length records, programmed in PowerBasic, direct linear search to look things up. Fast as hell and bulletproof. We've been using my old DOS version for about 10 years, and never corrupted or lost anything. The new windows-y version is a lot spiffier, but has the same architecture. I may decide to sell it. It's designed specifically to manage materials and BOMs for a small electronics manufacturer. We looked at some commercial packages, Parts&Vendors and such, and decided to upgrade our old DOS thing instead. Again, simplicity has its virtues. John
From: Jan Panteltje on 11 Aug 2008 13:24 On a sunny day (Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:05:01 -0700) it happened John Larkin <jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in <vur0a4ps9mlfnq1g5ko0o0vmpltea85ovj(a)4ax.com>: >On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:00:39 GMT, Jan Panteltje ><pNaonStpealmtje(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > >>On a sunny day (Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:45:08 -0700) it happened John Larkin >><jjlarkin(a)highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in >><iij0a4ho0867ufr82loiq6epj3b23u8svr(a)4ax.com>: >> >> >>>I've got a small software project going now to write a new material >>>control/BOM/parts database system. The way I've found to keep the bugs >>>under reasonable control is to use one programmer, one programmer >>>supervisor, and four testers. >>> >>>John >> >>postgreSQL with phpPgAdmin as frontend here, web based. >>What bugs? Yes the bugs in my SQL :-) > >A single database file, of fixed-length records, programmed in >PowerBasic, direct linear search to look things up. Fast as hell and >bulletproof. I agree that for one specific case it is faster and simpler. But using PostgreSQL as database, not only is it free, it has a huge user base, so any questions I asked in the relevant newsgroups were immediately answered. phpPgAdmin is cool, it practically constructs the database for you, all you have to do is specify what fields, and type of fields, you want. I use it for everything, can access it over the web from everywhere, even for my DVD collection. You generate some 'views', ones you often need, and one mouse click shows what you looked for. Also in backup, it takes only a few minutes to backup the whole postgress database, so company administration, projects, other stuff.. just from the command line. I mean you only backup the data, very compact. The only programming involved is the SQL to generate the views, or to generate a search. Yes, yet an other language to learn, but universal. And total cost: zero, open source. http://phppgadmin.sourceforge.net/ http://www.postgresql.org/ One advice, if you use phppgadmin, put it in a non standard directory on the web server, there have been many illegal attempts to access it in its standard directories on my machine. If you put it in: /usr/local/httpd/htdocs/if_you_guess_this_then_play_the_lottery_more_often/index.php then they likely won't find it. Now I am really curious if the suckers will try that directory :-) >We've been using my old DOS version for about 10 years, and never >corrupted or lost anything. The new windows-y version is a lot >spiffier, but has the same architecture. DOS = Denial Of Service ??? LOL. Even abbreviations change meaning over time.
From: Guy Macon on 11 Aug 2008 14:03 John Larkin wrote: > >Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> wrote: > >>Kim Enkovaara wrote: >>> >>>At least in the high-end of the embedded systems processor updates and >>>model changes are quite frequent. The lifetimes of processors >>>and their peripherials (especially DRAM memories) is becoming shorter >>>all the time. The code has to be portable and easily adaptable to >>>different platforms. >> >>And at the very low end, changes to completey different processors >>are also very common. If someone comes up with a micro that costs >>8.4 cents and replaces a part that costs 8.5 cents, that's a saving >>of $16,800 per week at a production rate of 100,000 units per hour. >>After a while you get the attitude of "ho hum, another assembly >>language instruction set." > >Assembly? You don't program musical greeting cards and blinking >sneakers in Python? Actually, I use the BEST programming language. BEST is a programming language that I developed to answer the frequently asked question "Which programming language is best?" once and for all. BEST is a Befunge-93[2] pseudocompiler written in Malborge[3][6] with library calls to routines written in Microsoft[4] Visual BogusFORTH+++[7] (!Kung edition)[9] that invoke various trinary functions written in[5] Reverse Polish Whitespace (for clarity).[1] References: [1] http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/ [2] http://catseye.tc/projects/befunge93/doc/befunge93.html [3] http://www.lscheffer.com/malbolge.shtml [4] http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html [5] If I gave you the URL for [5] I would have to kill you. [7] http://zapatopi.net/blackhelicopters/ [6] ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/malbolge.tar.gz [^] http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/ [7] http://zapatopi.net/afdb/ [Q] HTTP://WWW.GUYMACON.COM/FUN/QUESTION/INDEX.HTM [9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/!Kung_language [7] http://zapatopi.net/blog/monorail_danger/ -- Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/>
From: Guy Macon on 11 Aug 2008 14:05 John Larkin wrote: >A microkernel, written by one programmer, that runs on one CPU, that's >fully documented and never breaks Also known as QNX... -- Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/>
From: Kim Enkovaara on 12 Aug 2008 02:30
John Larkin wrote: > On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:11:23 +0300, Kim Enkovaara >> There is no such thing as bug free HDL. > > Never? Every FPGA on the planet has bugs? If the chip is nontrivial I would say that there is something hiding inside the chip. Coders are not perfect and neither are the tests. Also the tool flows have bugs, for example I have debugged many synthesizer bugs in the past. Asynchronous interfaces are also good place for finding bugs that might show up only when the manufacturer updates FPGA process etc. I have seen bugs found in chips that have been in real use for 10+ years, just some weird condition causes a bug to appear from thin air. > For some reason, our shipped products rarely have bugs in FPGAs or in > embedded code. But development-time bugs are far fewer in FPGAs as > compared to uP code. One explanation is that in HDL coding it is normal to do module and top level testing of the code in simulator. For software module testing is not normal practice and also the tools for that are quite recent. > One recent product has about 7K lines of VHDL and > 7K lines of assembly, and I'd estimate the initial-coding bug level to > be 10 or maybe 20:1 in favor of the VHDL. 7k lines of VHDL is quite small design. I usually work with 10-100x bigger VHDL/Verilog codebases. > Most of the test instruments I've bought lately seem to have superb > hardware and flakey firmware. In more complex platforms HW is ~10% of the effort so it is obvious that the bigger part of the development might have more bugs also. Software is the critical path, HW side usually has time to do more testing and has more labtime to sort out bugs. --Kim |