When I was a kid, I had several hobbies. My brother and I collected empty cigarette packs. But then we threw them out. Then we collected tin cans: from beer, vodka, and soft drinks. We gathered more than 160 of them (different ones). They gathered dust, ruined the interior, and …

Today I learned about the existence of a new useful blog, “Tips for Increasing Personal Productivity with Software and Online Services,” or, for short, ProductivityBlog.com.ua. I don’t know whether there’s any point in describing this blog after such an informative title?

For example, among the posts …

Today there was a webinar (web + seminar) by Mentor Graphics on “Hardware Designs Reuse Using C++ and High Level Synthesis.” The lecture in bullet points:

• ANSI C++ synthesis into RTL is supported;

• a 10–20x increase in engineers’ productivity, as well as reduced verification time;

• synthesis quality equivalent to manual …

Have you ever thought that the bottleneck in developing anything is the programmer? No matter how fast you type on the keyboard, modern compilers still compile much faster. Few people know that program optimization is not about making programs run quickly on the processor, but about making it comfortable for …

On Tuesday (06/23/09), I’ll be giving my talk on system-level design. It will present an overview of the current state of the field, some results from my dissertation, and various ideas.

On the program:

1. A retrospective of design automation tools (since the 1950s).

2. Modern approaches to design …

In the introductory classes for the optimization course, the students and I discuss a question like “When should you start optimizing?” You can often hear the answer attributed to Donald Knuth: “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.”

Usually, this phrase (actually taken out of context) is interpreted this …

One of the regular sections in Spectrum is about new technical terms in English. Every month the author gives 20-30 neologisms that have entered everyday use in the English-speaking world, and in the Russian-speaking one too. I’ll list some of the ones published in the June issue of this …