Typical ASIC Workflow
Recently I was tasked to recode a very small piece of hardware with some changes that will potentially optimize its present state. What seemed like a pretty easy and straightforward task turned out to be a nightmare for two days. Since it wasn’t critical I was hellbent on doing it all myself without asking anyone for help. Although it was a very small hardware unit, it involved the complete ASIC flow, almost. I started by looking at the current operations performed by the module and made a simplistic block diagram of what is going on...
read moreSix Month Review
Exactly six months ago was my first ever day at a full time job. I was understandably nervous, hardly knew anything about working in a big company and had no idea about how to tackle seemingly huge design issues which I was introduced to in the first week. I wasn’t worried about the latter because that is exactly what I came here to learn. I am probably slotted to have a 6-month review meeting with my manager soon, but I am not sure if that will happen or not because I did have one 3-month review which wasn’t really planned. And...
read moreJoys of being an ASIC Designer
After spending hours and hours of deciphering a set of specs written by someone else you start writing code for hardware that will perform a certain set of operations. Usually the specs contain inputs and outputs and a lot of details of how things should be processed in between. Translating the pseudo-code in hardware is not an easy task. Usually something is missing in that doc. Anyway, you code and code, and keep looking at the number of lines of code you’ve reached while adding those shitty comments which not even you can understand...
read moremonthly financial cycle
My financial month begins on the 26th of each month, or the weekday before it if 26 happens to be an off day. A good day when everyone at work seems to be delighted as the bank accounts are topped up The first few days are good with plenty of spending with multiple trips to malls and dinners out. All those plans that I made of buying little things a week ago while staring blankly at the monitor at work daydreaming come in to the forefront. Ten days in to the month and that slightly unsettling feeling starts to draw in, especially if I happen...
read morejoining the dots
It bewilders me to look back at some of the things that have happened in life and how they’re connected to my present. There is a definite pattern in life. Its like events in the past happened because they were required in the future and not because I decided them to happen. They just happened. There are many aspects in which pattern may be found but I will talk about just one here which is quite strange, in a good way. When I joined NUST for undergrad, we had this C language course in the first sem and we were required to do a project...
read morecute lil princess
My sister takes atleast 20 pics of her daughter every day I believe. If there is an occasion, she dresses her up and takes many more. Poor kid. And that’s not all, if she finds a photographic studio on the way, she’ll get her pics taken there too. Weirdo. Anyway, here are the two recent pics she sent me. Musfirah is now almost 16 months old, and talks a lot. Whenever I talk to my parents on Skype she always comes in chanting ‘maaa-moooooo’ … Not really sure if she thinks...
read morethe “eureka” moment … almost
I started very fresh in the morning thanks to an uninterrupted 10-hour sleep last night. No caffeine was required and I was up and ready for work within no time. I eased into my chair, logged in to both my computers and glanced at the mailbox. No new mails. Good. Time to work. I was kinda stuck on creating some logical expression to be used in for loops earlier and that’s where I was supposed to start from. They say, its best to avoid for loops in hardware coding, unlike software where it makes life easy. But since this piece of hardware...
read moreTrust in God
To completely trust in God is to be like a child who knows deeply that even if he does not call for the mother, the mother is totally aware of his condition and is looking after him. Imam al-Ghazali
read moreBlog, oh blog.
I think I’ve figured out why I’ve not been blogging actively these days. Phew! I had to sit down and think about the reason why I started blogging in the first place. Expression was one of the reasons…but I continued because of the fun involved in setting up your blog, tinkering with the code and those things at the back-end which makes the front better. In the past 3 months or so the WordPress codebase installed on my blog has accumulated shitloads of unwanted stuff, bugs, etc…in short, its in a great mess and I dont...
read moreand the fun's over
After 2 weeks of frenzied activity, driving around London and a couple of other cities in the UK with parents, having someone at home waiting for me at lunch and after work the good times have come to an end. It was fun living with parents and obviously enjoying amazing food added to the pleasure. I almost felt like those childhood days when you just had to go to school and the rest was taken care of. Sigh. The morning began with silence today as they were slotted to depart. Mom, as usual was a bit emotional and dad was in his usual...
read more