FPGA-based hardware acceleration of C/C++ apps

link

Free IP licensing services

Creativecommons.com
Share your work with the rest of the world - free IP licensing service

Harward's Student Database Hacked

Harward's student database has been hacked and the backup of the whole database structure has been posted online via BitTorrent . The message in the torrent file said: "Maybe you don't like it but this is to demonstrate that persons like tgatton(admin of the server) in they don't know how to secure a website".

Virtex 57 FPGAs break the PetaByte Clocking Barrier

In other words, it's April Fool's Day: Reach NEW Heights with Xilinx Virtex 57

Miuro - a multimedia droid

Miuro - a multimedia system equipped with camera and sensors that follows one around the house. Equipped with Wifi, it can play internet radio and mp3s from an iPod. The robot can be easily trained by tapping it with a hand and “showing” the motion path.

http://miuro.com/

Google's Lost Spectrum Bid and Future Plans, White Spaces

AT&T and Verizon won parts of 700 MHz spectrum bid that ranged around $4.6 billion [Wi-fiplanet.com]. Even though Google was one of the bidders and lost the auction, it keeps pushing towards opening the air for other (than cell phones) mobile devices. The targeted spectrum is the "white space", previously used as a guard band between broadcasting channels. FCC is welcoming the initiative by the White Space Coalition, including Google, Microsoft, Dell, Intel, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, HP, Philips, and Earthlink. Once FCC approves the proposals, the consumers might see a multitude of wireless personal devices on the market that are not based on the conventional cellular networks. Access to internet from anywhere can become massively available to anyone for a fraction of the price that RFs (regular folks in this case) are paying right now for their cellular plans, if not free (Go Google)! As a result, the cell phone monopoly will face the serious competition and will be forced to offer more competitive prices.

We need the similar initiative in Canada! I am sure most of Canadians are sick and tired of expensive mobile plans that they have compared to our Southern neighbor.

[Google's Next Spectrum Battle, Wi-fiplanet.com]
[First White Space devices failed, FCC, reports InternetNews.com]
[White Space Coalition]

VoIP reviews, news, tutorials

I've been browsing Wi-Fi Plant website and came across the following interesting pages related to VoIP.

[List of VoIP articles]
[Skype vs. Other VoIP providers]

Robotics and DIY Projects

1. Robotics projects from EDN:
Robotics Project (sound sensing, hardware, soft)
Platforms and development tools
CoroBot - fast robot prototyping (runs Windows) - fast but expensive too!

2. Dogoid - a diesel powered four legged robot that is made to carry load over a heavy terrain. Current application is mostly for military use. The really cool part about it is its very natural movement! The videos on the website show robot recovering from a push, ice slip, walking on snow downhill and other. A must see!
Dogoid on PLDesignline: link
BostonDynamics: link

3. The guys at Gostai.com (France) are working on a Universal Software Platform to allow the reuse of code from one robotic system to another. They've created a language (URBI) that brings together parallelism, and event-based programming, works on Windows, Linux and MacOS and is interfaced with C++, Python, Java, C#, others. There is a number of commercial robots that are now supported and can be easily programmed using the existing URBI code created by the URBI community, including Sony's Aibo doc, Create, Mindstorm, Bioloid, KHR2, etc.
Key innovations: link
URBI's innovations video, small tutorial showing how easily a robot like Aibo can be programmed: link
List of currently supported robots: link

A few DIY project ideas

An idea, DIY rool-up keyboard: http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/diy-project-create-your-own-roll-up-keyboard/

Installing a small camera into sunglasses: http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/prepare-spying-sunglasses-for-secret-recordings/

Windows Memory Optimization

The following two articles explain how to optimize Page File in Windows and how to use Task Manager to detect Page File usage.

links:
Page file Optimization
Memory Usage Tracking using Task Manager
Windows Process Utilities
Windows Utilities (from Sysinternals, technet.microsoft.com)

Bug Labs: "Legos meets Web services & APIs"

"Startup Bug Labs, which aims to turn the task of constructing smart devices into a non-technical, lego-like affair, will begin accepting orders for its Linux-powered electronic building blocks later this month for shipment starting Mar. 17."

"Open source-based platform for programmers to build not only the applications they want but the hardware to run it on"

[DeviceGuru's article]
[wiki]
[forum]

99-cent FPGAs from Actel

Actel announced two new low-density FGPAs: IGLOO and ProASIC3 starting at only 99-cents! The target markets are communicatinos, consumer, medical and industrial applications (including smart phones, system controllers, portable medical devices, wireless sensors). With the example spec of 128 macrocells, 15k gates, 5 uW, and 1 Kb nonvolatile Flash ROM, it promises to beat the power consumption by 10x compared to the leading PLDs!

PLDesign Article

UWB News

- August 13, 2007: UK is the first EU state to deregulate indoor use of UWB technology [vnunet]
- US and Japan (deregulated at the end of 2006, beginning of 2007) [vnunet]
- Canada (March 2004, Rogers Wireless Inc. acquired the first UWB license for experimental testing) [Canadian Amateur Radio Society]

The Aging Brain: How to age successfully

Here are a few advices that I've heard at one of UBC's open lectures "The Aging Brain: How to age successfully." Here is the podcast of the full speech and here is the link to UBC podcasts blog.

Good indicators of long life, as suggested by the speaker. Some of them are rather funny.
- Be happy, avoid chronic stress that depresses immune system (stress hormone secreted by the adrenaline eventually comes back to the brain and kills neuron cells)
- Acute stress is not bad
- Choose your carrots (parents, genes are important)
- Good for men to be married (even though sometimes it decreases life) . Here, I'd like to add that my teacher of Aikido says that "even though married man live longer, at the end, they are more willing to die".
- For women by statistics usually unmarried women live longer
- Get higher salary (the more money you make and save, the more you'll have when you retire, hence, prolonging your life)
- Get higher position (the higher you are, the more stress you can pass to subordinates)
- Eating less prolongs life (think of it as if you start eating 30% of food now, you gain 30% more life)
- many more others...

Using FPGAs for HDTV design

Tam Do's article from Altera on EDN. Read here.

Adding a Mic jack to iTouch phone - use with VoIP!

I just got a 16Gig iTouch as a gift and almost immediately went to search for hardware hacks for it. To my pleasant surprise, iTouch has a microphone circuitry inside allowing one to activate it! The guys at www.touchmods.net created an iTouch USB to mic converter and a software that can be installed on the jailbroken gadget to allow the happy owners to make VoIP calls.

VoIP call demo from touchmods
Freeappleipodtouch.com's tutorial link

There's another cool hack that allows using Motorola bluetooth headset with iTouch: link

These are the great hacks! I needed the voice recording capability and it looks as it's possible without the need for the second device!

Good job, the Touchmods team!

Entrepreneurship Articles, News

Startup from PhD thesis (Farid Mobasser, Ottawa U., 2006 winner (one of two) of Atherton Entrepreneurship Award)

Places to get funding: Sponsoring innovations (Ottawa, Canada)

ArsDigita: From Start-Up to Bust-Up (Philip Greenspun tells ArsDigita's story), thanks to Nick for the link.

Reconfigurable ECAs - new platform for SDR?

Article by Chen Zhang, Virginia Tech. Chen implemented a simple ZigBee using an ECA (Element CXI's Elemental Computing Array). ECAs provide "higher computational density, lower power consumption and higher structural robustness" [1] compared to GPPs, FPGAs and DSPs. It looks like a great new platform for Software Defined Radio (SDR) projects!

[1] Dynamically-reconfigurable ECAs - Part 4 (Student Project #2), Programmable Logic, Jan 2, 2008

Related:
ECA Architecture
ECA Programming Model
ECA Project (FIR Filter)
ECA Project (Image Processing Algorithm, ECA vs FPGA)

Exo-flud or the Expanding Internet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4988qaCvvM

Ruby On Rails REST Resources

An interesting read, good for beginners as well:
http://www.rubyrailways.com/great-ruby-on-rails-rest-resources/

The Top 10 Ruby On Rails Blogs

http://www.rubyrailways.com/the-top-10-rubyrails-blogs/

Integrated Circuit Patents (copyright issues)

As lots of other inventions in the world, many are not eligible for patents. Patentable things must be useful, novel and unobvious. Same applies to IC industry. After reading the agreement on IP at my company, it was interesting to find out that numerous integrated circuits do not meet the requirement of novelty, hence, not patentable and not protected. Even though a lot of effort is taken to design an IC, it is not necessarily unobvious.

That puts IC companies in a place where they are not protected against their circuits being copied. With modern technologies, even the resin protected chips can be scanned and replicated. This becomes a real issue when selling to countries that do not have IP laws.

On the good side, there is Integrated Circuit Topography Act that can protect not patented IP. If Company B patents what was previously registered with IC Topography Ministry by Company A, the latter can file a patent infringement case against Company B and be successful.

Conclusions are: be careful when selling chips or other IP to countries that have weak patent laws, and also cautious when filing a patent to avoid IP infringement with another company.

Ralph Baer - the inventor of console games

.. is an American inventor who was designed, implemented, and most importantly, patented, the modularized circuit board that was sold to Magnavox and later became a part of the first interactive gaming console that used a TV as a screen. In 2006 he received a National Medal of Technology for his invention.

[wikipedia]

SarbOx Agreement

Recently, at my workplace I had to sign the SarbOx conduct agreement. After numerous scandals with large corporations in the last decade, companies are trying to protect themselves by making employees sign it.

From Wikipedia.org:
"The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 and commonly called SOX or Sarbox; is a United States federal law signed into law on July 30, 2002 in response to a number of major corporate and accounting scandals including those affecting Enron, Tyco International, Peregrine Systems and WorldCom. These scandals resulted in a decline of public trust in accounting and reporting practices. Named after sponsors Senator Paul SarbanesD-MD) and Representative Michael G. Oxley (R-OH), the Act was approved by the House by a vote of 423-3 and by the Senate 99-0. President George W. Bush signed it into law, stating it included "the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt."

Live Coverage of gPhone Mobile OS

As posted on www.Engadget.com

Working at Google before and after IPO

Blogoscoped's post talks about experience of working at Google before IPO and after. Read here.

New iPhone models by Fall 2008?

With Apple's goals to ship 50 million iPhones by the end of 2009, the author of this blog suggests that several new models should come out by Fall 2008 the latest. There are rumors that there'll be a lower end model without the touch screen capability and a higher end one. Read the post here.

I've been thinking about getting iPhone or even iTouch for myself for a while now. Without flash memory, the 16 gig limit for the top of the line $450+ iTouch does not attract me that much. The phone part can justify itself. However, the iTouch has to have something more to justify my investment.

What I need in a PDA device:

• Internet access (free wifi is great)
  
• Storage (I like photography and it would have been nice to be able to show pictures to friends without the need to erase the old ones to free up space for new; with 1-3 Mb Mp3s, it might be harder to manage. Hence, the bigger the better)
  
• Organizational software
  

Hence, a few points against iTouch (for me):

• Vancouver, BC is not a wireless city (yet), especially if you go outside of downtown area
• There is no expandable memory. SD slot would have been nice.
  
• There is no todo or calendar software. It's ok when you are online as many online tools can take care of that. However, if you are not connected half of the time, what's the point? Reminders can be easily missed. This will be fixed with time with the new software add-ons coming out.
  

and a few Pros:

• Controlling computer and other devices at home will be really easy with the new iTouch - much better than with a cell phone. Hacking iTouch or iPhone must be a pleasure
  
• Touch screen is awesome. It beats the lack of memory. I am really tempted.
  

Just these two points above are enough to convince me to buy the "i". I do not care about YouTube or iTunes. The first one most of the time is for time wasting. And the second one can be done from your home computer just as easy. But the hacking and remote control parts can open up the new horizons. More on this later.

Saving Tab Space in Firefox

Another useful Firefox plugin that lets one minimize space common tabs take in the browser. Displaying just an icon for GMail, or any other website is enough! Saving tab space with FaviconizeTab.

Direct Link

FPGA Optimized Soft Core Processors

Based on Programmable Logic Design Line article titled "Actel and ARM announce the Cortex-M1 soft processor core" (March 19, 2007)

ARM processors are widely used in the industry with applications ranging from automotive systems to wireless networking. The recent addition to their family, the 3-state pipeline Von Neumann Cortex-M1 processor, is developed with FPGA implementation in mind. It can execute Thumb code from previous generations of ARM processors (ARM7, ARM9 and ARM11), as well as compatible with the newer members of ARM's processor family - Cortex-M3, Cortex-A8, etc that support 32-bit Thumb-2 system instructions. Fast, and optimized for various FPGA devices (including Xilinx, Altera, Actel and QuickLogic), it is designed to take less FPGA fabric and produce less power.

Short history:
ARM7 - 1993, 3-stage pipeline (supports both, 32 and 16-bit ARM and Thumb instruction sets)
ARM9 - 1997, 5-stage Harvard memory architecture (32-bit RISC)
ARM11 - 2002, 8-stage Hardware memory architecture (32-bit RISC)
Cortex-M3 - 2004, 3-stage, high-performance, low cost (32-bit RISC)
Cortex-A8, 2005
Cortex-R4, 2006, 8-stage

SmartLinks Test

Testing SmartLinks...

Jack Johnson

Aerosmith

Rene Gruss

GOOG

RIMM

Fix your iPod, Mac, iPhone yourself!

If your iPod is broken and run out of warranty, do not worry yet. Some problems can be fixed yourself fairly easy. The following website provides parts and tutorials how to change screens, batteries, hard drives, cases and sensors.

Replacement parts for Macs, iPods and iPhone: http://www.ifixit.com/

Wi-Fi Location Tracking using RF Fingerprinting

In addition to Closest Access Point and Triangulation methods used find Wi-Fi device's location that I've mentioned earlier here, there is another method - RF Fingerprinting. Cisco's Wi-Fi Based Real-Time Location Tracking: Solutions and Technology white paper describes the method in detail.

The difference of RF Fingerprinting from Triangulation method lies in the database with which the possible locations are compared to. The signal levels detected from a Wi-Fi device are still found using multiple access points as in Triangulation. Then the combined signals are compared with the database that contains power levels of each point on the map. The database is usually calibrated by measuring power at different locations.

RF Fingerprinting takes into account such factors as reflection, attenuation, and multi-path, which can create uncertainty in other techniques.

Related:
GPS and Wi-Fi combination: link

Hacking DWL D-Link Router

Low Quality video shows how D-Link router's configuration file can be downloaded without authorization. The config file contains user name and password. Watch on YouTube.

Hacking WEP tutorial (with video)

I have not tested it myself as I did not need it, but here it is, the tutorial - and it's supposed to be not bad. Anthony D. from cyber-knowledge.net even posted a video tutorial.

Other links:
Hacking WEP (FBI demo: hacking WEP in a few minutes)
Essential Wireless HackingTools

VoIP over GPRS or EDGE/EGPRS

Wouldn't it be possible to use VoIP over GPRS or EGPRS that is already supported by cell phones, thus, minimizing the number of minutes used from a regular plan?

I think technically it should work, since in both networks, data and voice 'calls' are made simultaneously using different time slots. So, if using one time slot per voice call is OK (that's what everyone is doing when calling), using the remaining time slots for data (one or more if paid for more) should allow encoding VoIP packets and transferring them via data channel.

The problems that need to be solved here are: (1) mobile hardware/software to allow fast packet creation and extraction and (2) cost effectiveness of this method. Cell phones are quite fast these days with majority of new cell phones and hand held devices supporting video decoding and even streaming over fast data connection (i.e. iPhone over WiFi). That means that hardware is fast enough to be able to packetize the voice. The second problem can depend on the data plan that a user pays for. Does it make sense to pay more for data and squeeze more minutes from a mobile plan over data channel? I think unlimited data plans can solve these problems.

Data plans are usually quite pricey. However, just last week Virgin Mobile in Canada announced Unlimited data plan option for just $10 on top of a regular cell phone plan. That should push other providers in Canada to decrease their rates soon as well!

References:
$10 Unlimited Data Virgin Mobile plan: link
Easy explanation of GPRS and EDGE: link

Spectrum Analyzer to Hunt Wireless VoIP Interference

WLAN is using the unlicensed frequency bands, which are shared among numerous applications including some cordless phones. In this article, Cognio's Spectrum Expert frequency analyzer is tested in action by Mike Outmesguine, the president and founder of TransStellar Inc. (and the author of the book I had the chance to look at, "Wi-Fi Toys - 15 Cool Wireless Projects For Home, Office, and Entertainment").

Outmesguine examined his Wi-Fi network and observed a slowdown when multiple cordless phones were turned on. As they were fighting for the same spectrum with Wi-Fi, the speed of the connection decreased. Spectrum analyzer showed the increased power coming from the phones. The speed was restored once the phones were turned off.

Read the article here

iPhone in Canada

Again, supposedly insider information. Read here and here.

If the price for iPhone will indeed be $799, there's no way I am buying it! iTouch simply as a gadget would be a better option for me then. I have a feeling though that it's an old political trick of overshooting (originally used by ancient Romans). Intentionally raise the expected price high, and then offer it at a better one, making buyers happy to have the lesser of two! Romans used it for interrogation to make the victim accept the lesser of two evils.

I think the strategy worked quite well before when Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, offered a $100 discount towards future shopping at Apple Store to those who bought iPhone early. That's only after dropping iPhone's price by $200 after 68 days following its release. Consumers were happy even though they lost $100!

Rumors of upcoming gGoogle mobile platform

There are rumors that Google might be working on a mobile platform and a phone. Check it out here.
Google Mobile Service in UK: here
Picture of how the phone could look like: picture

Mobile AJAX

Opera Platform: Mobile AJAX Widgets. Read post here.

How to mitigate 802.11n interference with PC peripherals

An article describing 802.11n standard and ways to avoid interference with other devices working in the same frequency range, like Bluetooth, WiFi and Zigbee.

by Wireless Net Design Line [ Article link]

RFID Overview and Signal Analysis webinar

Webinar (available online until July 25, 2009)

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

This a great video course on computer programming provided for free by MIT. Previously, it was exclusively available to HP employees.

Course link

Book Link

Online version of the book

User Interface Design for Programmers

Interesting article about designing UIs: link

Increasing Popularity of FPGAs

FPGAs are becoming more and more popular with every year of their existence. Previously slow and ignored by system designers working on speed-hungry applications, the newest FPGAs are reaching 600 MHz internal clock speeds. Altera announced it's Stratix III 65nm device at the end of 2006 (link). Xilinx Virtex 5, also 65nm, runs at around the same clock rates (link). Their ease of use, inexpensiveness and availability of read-on-your-own reference material on the internet makes them attractive not only to system designers, but also to students and DIY enthusiasts with a wide variety of applications.

From my experience in semiconductor industry I see that these devices create a serious competition for ASIC manufacturers. They caused at least one project to be canceled during the last year at my company. Companies choose to pay more for flexibility of re-programmable FPGA, rather than investing into a faster ASIC. With the increase of capacity and speed of FGPAs, ASICs will play a less important role then they did years ago.

As an interesting example of FPGA use, Pete Finnigan's security blog mentions that they could be used for faster password cracking. Read it here.

The low price, availability of development boards and easy to use integration software packages make FPGAs attractive to a wider range of users, interested in projects, for example, requiring custom hardware acceleration of simulations. One of my friends used FPGAs for neural net simulation during his Master's. FPGAs really speed up functional computations. A function that lasts hundreds of cycles in software can be computed in few clock cycles given that enough logic gates are used.

More and more FPGA fast prototyping software packages become available on the market. For example, LabView's FPGA kit allows a quick assembly of a system out of precoded optimized blocks ready to be wired together with a few mouse clicks. Even without prior HDL knowledge, one can add hardware accelerated functionality to their designs with ease, using these tools and FPGA development kits.

Numerous learning resources are easily accessible online for free. Xilinx has eLearning section and a quick Google search would reveal dozens of other sources of learning information. Check out www.fpgafromscrtach.com for a step-by-step guide of designing an embedded system on Virtex 4 FPGA.

Related links:
FPGA Design Tutorial from Scratch
Xilinx eLearning

FPGA vs. Microprocessor, Programming Comparison

Here is an interesting entry I found on Zeemz Blog about FPGA vs. Microprocessor programming comparison.

He's referencing Design and Reuse's article from March 2004.

FPGA Design Tutorial from Scratch

Check out this cool step-by-step tutorial that guides you through the process of designing embedded system on Virtex 4 FPGA. Steven Andersson from ZooCad consulting, with 15 years of ASIC design experience, is working on this project for a year on his own time and blogs his experience.

I'd love to put my hands on something like this in the near future.

Tutorial Link

Xilinx Free E-learning courses

Related articles:
Embedded.com
Programming Logic Design

Last.fm

Check out the newly found wigit from Last.fm on the right of the page. I've added a few of my favorites by Rene Gruss, including The Red Room and Bellatrix.

Last.fm is a free online service that seamlessly creates a personalized internet radio that streams the songs that you want or similar to the ones you selected. The radio learns your preferences. One can "love" the track or "hate" it, so it never appears again.

It's one of the sites of Music Genome Project.

Unfortunately, Pandora is not accessible from Canada without a proxy.

Near-invisible UI improvements

The newest issue of EDN magazine had and article explored near-invisible user interface improvements. While a user is spending time with the system, he/she might not mention little modifications done in the background by a team of developers.

"...expert foley (sound effects) is invisible to a movie viewer, until the foley is either missing or implemented poorly." [read it]

That reminds me the words of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, during StartupSchool conference held in March 2007 at Stanford, who have mentioned that they are doing little improvements to the site every day. Small patches of code are constantly added seamlessly improving the user experience.

Online Organizer

This is an update to my previous online organizer post about www.stikkit.com. After using it for a few months, I found out that some of the features were still buggy. Send sms reminder feature did not work with my Vancouver Rogers number.

One of the things that I really wanted to see with this software is the ability to clean up your emailbox just by forwarding emails to StikkIt (allowing you to safely delete the email) and letting the tool parse the keywords to add reminders, phone numbers, links, etc. However, it is not there yet. Email forwards just get appended to a particular note, but without the ability to merge it with the main one or, more frustratingly, to modify the forward.

I believe it will reach the perfection in future. In the meanwhile, I am moving to Google Notes, which also has the feature of sharing it with others, but no text parsing (making sense of text that makes StikkIt so attractive).

Conan in Intel's Headquarters

Conan O’Brien visits the Intel headquarters in Santa Clara.
(Conan): It's the SMT package!
(Kids): Yay!