Kachcha Kachcha Pacca Pacca!!!

Quite after some time it has RAINED in Bangalore. After beating the sweltering heat for some time I felt like singing “Rain Rain Come Again”. I guess everyone in Blore must have welcomed the rain.
True to my wish yesterday it rained again. I wanted to rush home after my gym to catch on the last episode of KBC. After watching the tantalizing promos for this star studded show and some teasing emails with “Aaj tho ghar jaldi jaana padega” in the subject line (with the snapshots of the show), I really didn’t want to miss it. And lo rain almost played a spoil sport. There was a very big rain with lots of lightening and thunder which left many people(count myself also) stranded everywhere. For over an hour it showed no signs of relenting. I wanted to sing “Rain Rain come again but not at primetime again!!!”…..As the rain subsided to a drizzle I started pacing towards my home. U wouldn’t call it a drizzle as I got half drenched before I went a quarterway(less than halfway) distance. I had to bring all my hopping skills to the fore jumping from one visible land mass to another trying to avoid my shoes from getting soaked up.(Hop and Balance! Hop and Balance!). Well I felt like the hero of the movie I saw some time back who jumps from one landing stone to another while trying to reach for a treasure..Hehe….

I almost reached the corner from where I had to go another half a kilometer to reach my home. But there formed a mini sagar I mean a fairly big puddle thanks to the wonderful(read awful) state of the road. My good old jogging shoes were getting a long due wash! The puddle was for quite a stretch and water was about 5 inches above the ankle. That number was a guesswork as I watched few brave souls who cared less for their footwear and walked through the mini pool. Few foot ware conscious souls like me didn’t have enough courage to wade through the muddy waters and reach our destinations. But we had the courage to ask two wheeler riders passing by to give us a lift to the other side of that small pond. And frankly speaking these guys were so nice to give us a pillion ride across the pond. I luckily found one guy who took me till the “half a kilometer” distance. I thought its only because of these kind hearted ppl that Bangalore is still getting rains or conversely these rains must have given them a chance to display their kindness. Finally I reached home fully drenched and caught all the action on Star TV after missing half an hour of the show.

Talking about the show. I followed the first few episodes and the last two. I liked it very much. I regret missing rest of the episodes. Sharukh Khan was at his usual exuberant self. A really charming host who has a spontaneous sense of wit and humour and a incorrigible urge to hug his contestants ala “Jaadoo ki Jappi”. Jappi bhi detey hai aur pappi bhi letey hai:-)( he literally forced Priyanka and kareena to give him a pappi on his cheek). I wonder after missing the chance to act as Munnabhai which he was supposed to do,he was holding the baton for Sanjay Dutt in the real world!!

Well the contestant pairs were a study in contrast. Let’s take the first pair Priyanka and Kareena. Well kareena looks like an Indian version of the characteristic dumb American blonde. I mean she gets so hyper for every silly question and the too much of the girly waving of her hands in a frantic manner is very irritating. Priyanka looked like an intelligent executive next to her and she must have been wondering why the hell this nutty gal is sitting beside her. Imagine! there was a question about Kareena’s great grandfather (Prithviraj Kapoor - he figured as one of the four options for the question) which she was very doubtful about. She doesn’t even know whether her great grandpa was elected to Rajya sabha anytime. Let’s forgive her patriarchal irreverence(or ignorance) in this matter. But then there was another question regarding some X Gibbons(don’t remember the first name), an art director at MGM. This question was about what he was credited for. Among the options were the Superman’s costume, The oscar statuette,the Majestic Theatre(hey we do have one at blore too) and some other option I don’t remember!!. Kareena promptly and “intelligently” replied it must be the Superman’s costume. Her reasoning was that MGM had made the superman movie. And Priyanka corrected her that superman was a comic strip and there was no chance of his costume being designed by a famous MGM art director which was later borrowed by some Joseph Shuster(I just looked it up in google for superman’s creator) ...How dumb she is!!Right I hope you agree with me.

And next pair was the Super duper star(sharukh said that) Salman khan and Katrina Kaif. Well Salman seemed to be in high spirits on this show(Must have had a couple of pegs I suppose. (Thank heavens- he didn’t say “Hello everyone!Hic!!!” “Lets take a break. Hic!!!”). Katrina was all composed and poised and looked regal. Salman was all like a hyper active naughty prankster let loose and one who forgot that he was in front of a national television. He never sat properly(or steadily) in his chair and frequently used to get down from his hot seat(must have been really hot for him) either to hug sharukh or to show off a karate stunt or to put his hands on his head to perform a "pradakshina" around the hot seat and the host seat chanting “balaclava”(it’s a monkey cap it seems). Katrina was looking at Salman repramandingly all the time. She looked like a gal SPL embarrassed by two hyperactive cranky kindergarten kids. She tried her best to control Salman but gave up wishing she should have prevented him from having that second peg! Then there was this question related to Arabic and Islamic holy sites. The star contestants were contemplating phoning a friend to find out the answer. My friend wondered if Salman would make a call to Abu Salem or Dawood Bhai. (Hello Dawood Bhai!Hic!!!). Salman took every opportunity to pull Katrina’s leg(and was literally trying to grab her hand at the slightest chance while she admoshingly pushed him away). Meanwhile she was pulling her hair unable to make sense of the hindi the two Khans were speaking. In the end it was all fun and farce(I suppose it was all preplanned). Salman’s unsteady way of sitting and his casual jokes and all those loony things he did. We all watch TV for entertainment. I hope everyone was entertained on this day and let’s not complain that they have made a big joke of KBC. Looking forward for the next season with Sharukh!!! Till then Boys and Gals Umm Ummm Ummmaa!!!(Sharukh khan Istyle)

First Day "First Show"

Chiranjeevi the name spells magic to many of his ardent fans and his movies are the most awaited ones….You should just see to believe the kind of fanfare on the day of his new releases, And it continues for the first few weeks if the movie is really good. Its just short of a small town fair sans the merry go rounds and Columbuses(remember that big swinging ship at the exhibition). If you happen to adore him you can feel the same thrill and joy as you watch some of his movies. And Watching it on the first day- Boy that’s an “I scaled the Mount Everest” kinda Feeling…..

Being a very big fan of this awesome hero I fancied myself watching this movie called TAGORE on the first day when I bought the audio cassette ….(my childhood hero….i used to get inspired by his fights and wanted to kick the wrong doers or the ones who were trying to play fools with me!!!First signs of violence in a kid) …In fact I bunked the first half of the college to grab the first audio cassette that hits the stores. This kind of rebellious or “unstudently”(pun intended) behaviour was much respectable among my peers than getting a moronic 20/20 in the midterm test in an equally moronic subject.

I guess I was held up during the morning session doing some hopelessly abstruse practical work in our electronics lab….well there was never a motivation to get the circuit working or to obtain a believable result at least…I direly wanted to rush out of the lab as soon as possible to catch on my best hero’s flick.

You have to imagine the kind of frenzy that was there when we reached the theatre. My best friend Surya Prabhakar was also with me. It was an evening show or in earthy terms first show

Already three shows were gone by (apart from morning show and the matinee there is also a special fans show very early in the morning) and the movie generated good talk among the public. People were fighting for the tickets as if Chiranjeevi had himself come to give autographs on the tickets. (There goes a legend about two fans conversing about their respective hero’s newly released films. The first dude proudly states that there were fights in the movie right from the first scene onwards. The second one casually replies ”What fun for my hero there was fighting from the booking counter itself.” You may wonder why such craze for the fights in telugu movies. They is always an abundance of violence and brutality in the big heroes flicks than the war films that have won the OSCARS).
WE discovered much to our disappointment that all the tickets were sold(or so they were feigned to be sold) and tried for the Black tickets. Well we were a bit worried as to how much those tickets might be sold for. Usually people can make a good fortune(and also eke out a living just) by selling black tickets for chiru’s movies, some unconfirmed reports say that chiru’s movie tickets get sold for over 1000 bucks as well. Of course we were not prepared to spend that much to watch the movie.

Then suddenly my friend found someone(a very distant acquaintance) nearby. We approached him. Voila! he said he said he could get us two tickets but they were rs10 tickets. Coming from respectable families it doesn’t look good to be sitting in those front rows. But our love for the hero (read thrill of watching it on the first day) overcame our ego and pride. And that too no one wants forfeit a chance when a Rs 10 ticket comes for Rs 15..…Wow that was a great achievement. Getting a black ticket for chiru’s movie for such a meager hike was unbelievable. As I recall that day I think Gods willed that we watch the movie.( Let there be tickets! Let Prabhakar and Sravan watch this movie!! ). We rushed into the hall amidst the crowd and occupied our seats.

Well as the credits rolled on fans flew well cut small pieces of papers onto the screen (they come in varied shapes. A crude and different form of Origami just for exaggeration). A tinge of a disappointment as I expected garlands!!!…And then TADAAAA…Chiranjeevi comes walking onto the screen.( you shouldn’t miss his entrance, First his big soled shoes are shown from ankle onwards;then the camera jogs along his frame and comes 180 degrees to show his deep eyes and then zooms out to show him full fledgedly and the mood is amplified by the stunning background music. But don’t expect a dramatic entry in this movie. He is shown simply typing furiously at a computer and sipping coffee from a cup with the popular caption “Team work means more we less I”. I wonder how many such cups have been sold out after this movie).

Imagine watching your favorite hero from the fourth row…..I wondered why he was much adored by all those front benchers or so called masses. As I experienced it was just the sheer thrill of proximity to their hero’s image. He was much closer to them to their eyes than those comfortably sitting in the balcony…..The movie was ultimate. People went hysterical as chiru danced to the lilting tunes of the songs and uttered powerful dialogues on the screen. It was really an fantastic experience. The movie was a block buster…Ran for 100 days in sooooo many centers much to the craze of number-happy telugu audience.

Well as soon as I came out of the hall I called up home and proclaimed “I watched chiru’s movie on the first day” as if I had just secured a State RANK in a CET and some topicless TV channel crew is going to come and interview my folks and my neighbours as well ….
Well I don’t know how proud or happy I made my folks and the people reading this by disclosing my adventure or so called achievement but I am very much thrilled till this day and will tell this to my children,grand children and great grand children and it will become a part of my legend..Hehe…..

Chip Designing For Dummies

VLSI flow was evolved similar to the flow involved in Building Construction.Now let us dwelve in to the constuction flow to better understand the VLSI Chip design flow development.
When ever we start to construct a building, we will have an architecture, how the building should look like , the exterior looks and all, similar to that we will be designing an architecture in the chip-design, based on the requirement of the product, what the product is addressed for and whom to serve what needs, the so called specification, will having the modules.
Now lets go in to the implementation part of both the Building & Chip.
We at first come with the floorplan of the building, similarly we come with the floorplan of the Chip, Based on the connectivity/accessibility/vaasthu we place our rooms, similarly we have the constraints to place the blocks. Like we build the building with bricks, for Chip Design we have libraries, which are like pre-designed bricks, for a specific functionality.
Now let us try to understand the power-structure or electrical connectivity in our Building. Initially we have an Electrical plan for our building, where we have a requirement that all our electrical gadgets needs to get power. Similar to that we have a Chip power requirement, The required power is supplied through the power-pads, over a ring like topology to have a uniform distribution across all corners of the chip, and the supply has to reach all the standard-cells(bricks for Chip-Designing).,this is called as power-grid topology in the Chip-Design, now the requirement is how well we design our Power-grid, to reduce the IR-drop so that our standard-cells get proper power requirement.
I would not make justice, if I dont discuss about clock and clock-tree in the Chip-Design flow. We have synchronous way of designing and asynchronous way of designing(difficult to verify). Majority of chips follow Synchronous way of coding, for which Static Timing Analysis is possible. For the relevancy of the flops the clock to those flops should reach at the same time from the crystal, with in some skew targets with in the chip.In order to make this happen, a step called as clock-tree is performed after power-grid is created.
Let us try to visualize the concept behind Place & Route in Chip Design. We need to undergo lot of modelling concepts, to understand the process of Chip-Designing. To have a better understanding of this concept of place and route, let us assume a society where people who are speaking different languages are living , and let us visualize that people talking of the same languages are living in a community, then the communication is much easier , similar way in the chip-designing, the standard-cells who are having design relation-ships, are placed closer in the Placement flow this concept is called as regioning. Now with in the regioning, of the groups of the standard-cells, the cells which are really sharing data, has to placed close-by so that there timing is achieved and well optimized.This step is called placement, Connectivity across the standard-cells is called as routing, the challenge is having optimized or reduced wire-lengths.
Now let us try to try to understand the concept behind signal integrity in the Chip-Design , often called us SI Effect. As our process is shrinking day by day, and our silicon-realestate is costly, we try to accommodate more and more standard-cells in the limited area, so the cells are placed in very close proximity, so the switching of one can have an impact over the others behaviour, which can make the path to be faster or slower, this issue is called as signal-integrity. So similar way in our construction in order to maintain the integrity with in the house(neighbour free-zone), within the limited zone of modurality, we try to create fences, across buildings, similarly we can think of a concept called as Shielding, the high frequency signal net with the power-nets running across. We perform spacing across the buildings, similar way we can perform spacing across the nets, which are in close proximities.
In order to validate the silicon from the manufacturability issues, the concept in the Chip Desigining is Design for Test(DFT). One of the DFT techniques is scan-chain. To understand the concept of the scan-chain, we can visualize that we have a front-door entry and a back-door exit, and a person passes from the front-door and exits from the back-door exit of the building, that we are sure that there is no blocking within the rooms in the building, to make that person stuck , similar to this analogy the flip-flops are connected to-gether creating a scan-chain and test-input values are passed from the scan-chain input of the chip and expected data is visualized in the scan-chain output of the chip, then the assumption is the chip is free from manufacturability issues like stuck-at faults(stuck-at one or stuck at zeros).
This is just a tip-of an ice-berg...
(courtesyhttp://balamurugan.selvaraj.googlepages.com/home)

PS: This article was stolen from a VLSI forum neverthless it just gives a flavor of the tasks a Chip designer is entrusted with. Whenever ppl ask me what I do in Chip Designing , I end up giving an impression of either a braggart(talking too much about his work or ppl may think this dude is exaggerating what is doing or supposed to do) or a guy who does some arcane stuff (and make ppl believe this guy should be held in awe for what he is doing or stay away from him because he talks something gibberish) …… Phew now I can make them visualize what I really do. But now I fear I might end up being looked upon as a glorified MASON.