Falling in Love with Spanish Guitar Music

“If music be the food of love, play on.” –William Shakespeare Earlier this month I attended a concert of Los Romeros, the “Royal Family of the Guitar.” They played a lovely concert that included Angel Romero as a guest. I first heard them nineteen years ago on what turned out to be my first date…

36 Views of Conversations with my PhD Advisor: View 1–Grad School Story

My graduate school applications resulted in several PhD programs to choose from. Naturally, I visited each school. After an eight-hour drive from Poughkeepsie, NY to Pittsburgh, PA, I found myself across a desk from Wojciech Maly. The acceptance letter indicated he would be my advisor. He took time from teaching his VLSI design project class to…

A Crane, A Square and A Pussy

I learned to knit in third grade. A hat and scarf of psychedelic green and orange resulted from my efforts; the colors well indicate the 1970s. Many a gift has been knit for friends and family over the years. As noted in a previous post I have participated in charity-based knitting efforts. In the past…

Studying High-Speed I/O Failures: Tales from the Intel I/O Test Road Map

After successful deployment of AC I/O loopback for single-ended interfaces, we rapidly had to prepare for High Speed I/O (HSIO) circuitry. The HSIO derived from Serializer/Deserializer (aka SerDes) interfaces commonly used in telecommunications. Computer systems’ thirst for higher data rates drove the adoption of this interface architecture. These I/O circuits had significant differences from single-ended…