HW-SW co-design brings people together..!

Prof Michael Hübner of The Ruhr-Universität Bochum gave a lecture on evolution of embedded systems today in TU Delft. Apart from many experiences he recounted of working in the industry, he mentioned about a certain tech-company where the hardware designers and software designers did not talk to each other and were often at loggerheads. After the company forayed into hardware-software co-design, the warring designers had no option but to work together as a team and thus had to talk to each other. These days, says the Professor, they sit at one table and chat during lunch. An achievement he attributes to HW-SW co design working to bring different people closer to each other!

Amdahl’s Law

Everyone knows Amdahl’s law, but quickly forgets it.

—Thomas Puzak, IBM, 2007

Fault Modelling

The extreme difficulty of obtaining solutions by conventional mathematical analysis has led in the past to the use of highly unrealistic models simply because they led to equations that could be solved. In fact, the applied mathematician has been engaged in a continual tussle with his conscience to decide how far he could go in the direction of distorting his model in order to make the equations tractable. The point is well made in the ancient jest about the examination question that began 'An elephant whose mass can be neglected.....'

 - M.V. Wilkes