Electrical engineer Dave Vandenbout guides us through a survey of programmable logic devices, and offers advice for young engineers wanting to succeed in the world of digital design.
Brian finds his work offers a good mix of analog and digital electronic design challenges.
Our guest for this episode is Dr. Dave Vandenbout, an electrical engineer specializing in FPGAs and digital design. Having worked previously for Bell Labs and North Carolina State University, Dave currently runs his own firm, XESS, in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The first microprocessor that Dave programmed was the Motorola MC6800, an early eight-bit processor.
Working at Bell Labs, our guest used a 1 MHz Motorola MC 6801 with just 128 bytes of RAM (and 2 KB of ROM) to modulate and demodulate signals for a portable data terminal.
From the mid-sixties through the eighties, many digital circuits were constructed from the 7400 series of logic chips.
Transitor-transistor logic (TTL) was used to construct the original 7400 series integrated circuits (ICs).
While it was difficult to find sample microcontroller code in the early days of embedded programming, one source was Dr. Dobbs Journal, which was first published in 1976.
Dave was on the tenure-track as an assistant professor at NC State, before deciding he didn’t want to continue pursuing an academic career.
Books by Eric Bogatin and Howard Johnson can provide insight into signal integrity issues, says our guest.
Early programmable devices, such as Programmable Array Logic (PAL) or Programmable Logic Arrays (PLA), allowed logic gates to be connected together without needing to rebuild an entire circuit board.
Although Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) provide a very high level of logic flexibility, they tend to consume far more power than microcontrollers.
Dave suggests that engineers wanting to get into digital design focus on:
A digital signal processor (DSP) is a microprocessor that has been specially tuned to fetch both data and instructions at the same time, allowing it to quickly perform arithmetic operations on sampled data.
Dave can be contacted via his company website (www.xess.com) or on Twitter, where he is @devbisme.
Thanks to the Creativity103 for use of the photo titled “computer motherboard tracks.” Opening music by John Trimble, and concluding theme by Paul Stevenson.
Metallurgical engineer Paul Cantonwine shares insights into the life and career of Admiral H. G. Rickover in this biographical episode of The Engineering Commons podcast.
Adam has no interest in being associated with solar FREAKIN’ roadways. (While a cool concept, not everyone believes solar roadways are feasible.)
As an undergraduate student, Paul figured that since everything was made of materials, he could ensure job security by choosing Materials Engineering as his field of study.
Neutron cross section refers to the likelihood that, within a given target material, an incident neutron and a target nucleus interact with one another.
Admiral Rickover was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in January 1954.
Spending 63 years in the U.S. Navy, the first half of Admiral Rickover’s career was fairly ordinary, notes our guest.
Although Rickover was an electrical engineer by training, there seems no particular reason he was chosen to attend a nuclear power training course being held at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Eastern Tennessee.
Rickover foresaw the benefits of a nuclear-powered submarine, even when others doubted its technical feasibility.
Although not a stellar student, Rickover was driven by ambition, an incredible work ethic, and a lifelong love of learning.
Paul has written that if Admiral Rickover had a mantra to shape a professional culture, it would have been, “I am personally responsible.”
One reason for Rickover’s obsession with personnel selection was concern for possible nuclear accidents, a fate which befell the U.S. Army’s Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One in 1961.
To test components for shock resistance, Admiral Rickover would throw equipment against a radiator in his office.
There was no readily available source for pure zirconium when Rickover started developing nuclear components, so he had to develop his own refining plant.
Admiral Rickover was a man of action, and Paul suggests that today’s engineers can likewise have a significant impact on society if they strive to develop beneficial technologies.
Our guest can be reached via email: pecantonwine -=+ at +=- gmail dot com
Electrical engineer Bob Schmidt joins Adam, Carmen, Brian and Jeff to talk about the importance of making a good impression, and delivering the intended message, with effective email.
Jeff readily admits that he doesn’t use newer communication channels such as WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
Rather than use Instagram, Jeff has a Kodak carousel projector in his basement for showing slides. (An episode from the TV show Mad Men gave rise to a demonstration of the carousel projector.)
Brian is continuing to make use of Microsoft OneNote, having recently delved into it’s collaborative features.
Bob has a list of five keys for delivering effective email:
Spend some time on the subject line
Know to whom you are speaking
Check it twice, read it thrice
Oh, those miserable attachments
STOP, CAUTION, and YIELD signs along the road ahead
Brian admits sending emails with a blank subject line, but Bob says that’s inconsiderate to coworkers who must interpret the email’s subject and importance on their own.
Carmen and Bob “tag” their emails by topic or project to ease subsequent sorting and identification of important information.
Go ahead and change the subject line to fit the current conversation, suggests Bob.
Our guest points out that blind carbon copy (Bcc:) recipients do not receive replies to the original email on which they were copied.
Send carbon copy (Cc:) emails to individuals needing to know of an action or decision, but who are not directly involved in carrying out the action or decision.
Send Bcc: emails to individuals needing a high-level alert that progress is underway, but without burdening them with subsequent discussion details. As a courtesy to other recipients, make a note in the email about who is receiving the blind carbon copy.
Commenting on the dangers of using the “reply all” button, Brian mentions an email storm circulating at Time, Inc.
Bob suggest that engineers never send an “angry” email, noting that Abraham Lincoln would write “hot letters” that were never sent.
Jeff and Brian wander into a discussion of whether electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) could wipe the hard drives on which emails are often stored.
A great deal of corporate data from Sony Entertainment was made public in 2014.
Thanks to Ian Lamont for use of the photo titled “BlackBerry email on the BB 8330.” Opening music by John Trimble, and concluding theme by Paul Stevenson.
Electrical engineer Dave Vandenbout guides us through a survey of programmable logic devices, and offers advice for young engineers wanting to succeed in the world of digital design.
