1 Japanese Yen = 0.0076 British Pound Sterling

1 Japanese Yen = 0.0211 Fiji Dollar

1 Japanese Yen = 0.0085 Euro

1 Japanese Yen = 0.1459 Egyptian Pound

1 Japanese Yen = 0.1337 Estonian Kroon

1 Japanese Yen = 0.516 Dominican Peso

1 Japanese Yen = 0.0645 Danish Krone

1 Japanese Yen = 0.2356 Czech Republic Koruna

1 Japanese Yen = 5.3333 Costa Rican Colon

1 Japanese Yen = 36.5265 Colombian Peso

1 Japanese Yen = 7.7412 Chilean Peso

1 Japanese Yen = 0.0131 Canadian Dollar

1 Japanese Yen = 0.1138 Botswana Pula

1 Japanese Yen = 0.0646 Bolivian Boliviano

1 Japanese Yen = 0.0132 Brunei Dollar

1 Japanese Yen = 0.0143 Australian Dollar

1 Japanese Yen = 0.6231 Argentine Peso

Herodotus once wrote:

“The counting was done by first packing ten thousand men as close together as they could stand and drawing a circle round them on the ground; they were then dismissed, and a fence, about navel high, was constructed around the circle; finally, other troops were marched into the area thus enclosed and dismissed in their turn, until the whole army had been counted.”

Whose army?

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Which is the only palindromic song by a palindromic group to have entered the US charts?

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“I am a small eye poet.” Who once wrote these words in a letter to his mother?

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In the book “The World of _____” by Bennett Alan Weinberg and Bonnie K Bealer, there is a photograph of a label from a jar of pharmaceutical-grade crystals. It reads:

“WARNING: MAY BE HARMFUL IF INHALED OR SWALLOWED. HAS CAUSED MUTAGENIC AND REPRODUCTIVE EFFECTS IN LABORATORY ANIMALS. INHALATION CAUSES RAPID HEART RATE, EXCITEMENT, DIZZINESS, PAIN, COLLAPSE, HYPOTENSION, FEVER, SHORTNESS OF BREATH. MAY CAUSE HEADACHE, INSOMNIA, VOMITING, STOMACH PAIN, COLLAPSE AND CONVULSIONS.”

Fill in the blank.

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X is a song written by Y and famously covered by Z. Time Magazine’s Josh Tyrangiel described it thus:

Y murmured the original like a dirge, but except for a single overwrought breath before the music kicks in, Z treated the 7-min. song like a tiny capsule of humanity, using his voice to careen between glory and sadness, beauty and pain, mostly just by repeating the word X. It’s not only Z’s best song — it’s one of the great songs, and because it covers so much emotional ground and is not (yet) a painfully obvious choice, it has become the go-to track whenever a TV show wants to create instant mood. ‘X can be joyous or bittersweet, depending on what part of it you use,’ says Sony ATV’s Kathy Coleman. ‘It’s one of those rare songs that the more it gets used, the more people want to use it.’

Name X, Y and Z.

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In Texas Hold’em Poker, which hand is known as ‘six tits’?

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This character’s creator described him as “insufferable”, and called him a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep”. On August 6 1975, the New York Times carried his obituary, the only time it has thus honoured a fictional character. Who?

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Orhan Pamuk on his “Turkish Library” and “buying books, as if to take revenge on the life I was fleeing.”

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Dick Cavett talks to Cheever & Updike - Oct 14, 1981. (Earlier post.)

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.. his collection of “vintage knick-knacks, fab furnishings, collectible art, one-of-a-kind porn, and plastic food” and LOTS of books!

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NYT Article: How I Learned to Love Goat Meat

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And other ways to use BACON to make your life incredible and amazing

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Adam St. Patrick goes to a routine beheading. (Via Arun.)

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Check out Norman Mailer’s ten favourite American novels.

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Elisabeth Rosenthal has some good Swine-Flu advice. (Via Griff.)

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Finally, sanity.  Concerned about the level of electronic waste created by discarded phone chargers, the European Commission has told mobile phone manufacturers that they must adopt a standard.  This will hopefully have the additional advantage of reducing blood pressures if we no longer need to rummage in our desk drawers frantically searching for the right charger. 

I wonder whether manufacturers would have voluntarily adopted a standard without external influence.  The choice of how to wire our "wireless" appliances seems to offer so little differentiation, and standards are so freely available that I am surprised that this hasn't happened sooner. 

Unfortunately, there are few parallels in the EDA/manufacturability world.  EDA products derive a significant part of their differentiation from the range and types of data that they can connect to, particularly in the case of enabling information such as library and technology files. 

The good news is that technology file standards are becoming available that could replace what were once proprietary formats, and there is motivation to adopt the standards because our foundry partners (as well as our customers) evidently recognize the value of common formats.  Whether the foundries can agree among themselves on common formats remains to be seen. 

The buzz about showing and paying for value in EDA has been building over the past few years. People have complained about the high cost of tools and EDA vendors have complained about not getting enough value from the technology that can then be re-invested in the next generation tools. The same complaints can be heard from the foundries regarding their wafer pricing

Companies have tried royalty-based models before in the past (e.g., $/wafer or even profit sharing). But it hasn't been sticky. Is the industry ready for a new model?  I think sharing in the upside and potential downside of a particular design from inception to volume is fair. But it also would mean that EDA companies and foundries would have to participate even earlier (and later) in the product lifecycle - from design spec/marketing through product introduction.

That's a pretty big change that goes beyond just the business model. But maybe at 32nm and below, where designs cost upwards of $75M to bring to market, this type of collaboration and risk/reward model is required and desired

In a recent post, I hinted at a significant performance improvement in Assura. 

Our R&D team focused on performance improvements in the 3.2 release, which was shipped last August.  Based on our suite of performance benchmarks, we achieved an overall 10x performance boost.  This comes from two fundamental improvements: an overall 3.5x boost in single processor performance, and an overall 2.8x performance boost from using four CPUs in a multiprocessor configuration. 

Your mileage may vary, of course.  Our test suite includes a variety of designs and processes - LVS testcases as well as DRC.  We typically noticed the most significant performance improvement on large designs that previously ran for many hours. 

This is a maintenance upgrade from the previous release, so there's no risk if you want to download the latest version just to kick the tires.  It will probably save you some time. 

I've been blogging a lot about Assura recently, so I thought I would continue by talking about rule decks. 

Inside Cadence, we maintain a database that shows which foundries support which process for which products.  This means that we can quickly give you an answer if you are considering using a new process or foundry, and you want to know whether Assura is supported.  Your friendly local Cadence physical verification AE has access to this information and should be able to answer your questions about rule deck support. 

Our Assura R&D team is constantly working with the foundries to help update existing rule decks and create new ones.  But with all due respect to our foundry partners, their field support teams are not always aware of the latest efforts on rule deck creation and support. 

Of course, it's important to check the status of Assura support with your foundry.  This has the added benefit to Cadence that it lets them know that you're using Assura.  But please also double-check with your Cadence AE, who can ping me to make sure that you're getting the latest information. 

"The number of watchmen required to watch the watchmen watching the watchmen tends to double every 18 months".  This gem is Alan Moore's law, posted years ago by some wag in response to an Intel article on geek.com.  This has, of course, surfaced because of the recent release of the Watchmen movie.  OK so I admit that I haven't read the book or even seen the movie - and based on my recent experiences of superhero movies (with the exception of the Hellboy movies, starring the very wonderful Ron Perlman) I may not bother. 

But when it comes to the "real" Moore's law - Gordon Moore, that is - I think we have all read the book, seen the movie and got the tattoo.  So I hereby pledge that I will never again begin another datasheet, article or white paper with words such as, "With design features getting smaller and smaller...".  With all respect to Dr. Moore, there are plenty of other interesting and less-explored angles on the manifold complexities of electronic design. 

Although we can't take Moore's law for granted, I think we can take it as read. 

Chris Clee

Earning calls sure are interesting! Below is an excerpt from the TSMC Q209 call (transcript from seekingalpha). The discussion revolves around the 40nm yield issues and TSMC's ramp to improving the yield. Dr. Liu really hits on a key element of DFM...(read more)

It was a sunny, Sunday afternoon in Anaheim (across from Disneyland). That combination of weather and entertainment didn't sway a group of 35 engineers from participating in the DFMC (Design for Manufacturability Coalition) Workshop at DAC 2010. On...(read more)

What is the meaning of this error?

I used already two ports (PORT1 and PORT2 for input and output, respectively.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Also when I apply the PSP analysis for S-parameter the value of maximum S21 value (4.75 dB) is much lower than the maximum power gain (17.6 dB).

while the same circuit is designed using  ADS program the two values are approximately the same around (17.1 dB).

Hi,

I'm doing the "The Targeted Fault Campaign" with ncsim and got stuck at the following message: "ncsim: *E,FLTIGF: [FLT] Failed to inject fault at circuit_tb.U0.n2174." I already tried with other NETs, with SET, SA0, SA1, always the same error occurs.

$nchelp ncsim FLTIGF
$ncsim/FLTIGF =
    Injection time is not within the expected finish
    time for the specified fault node. Failed to inject fault.

As can be seen below, the injection time is at 2ns and the -fault_good_run -fault_tw 1ns:100ns, so in theory 2ns is inside the window 1ns:100ns.

My scripts so far, considering I already compiled the Verilog testbench and also the gates from the technology library (gate-level simulation):

#this runs ok

ncelab -work worklib -cdslib circuit/trunk/backend/synthesis/work/cds.lib -logfile ncelab.log -errormax 15 -access +wc -status -timescale 1ps/1ps worklib.circuit_tb -fault_file circuit/trunk/backend/synthesis/scripts/fi.list

#this runs ok
ncsim -fault_good_run -fault_tw 1ns:100ns -fault_work fault_db -fault_overwrite worklib.circuit_tb:module -input ../scripts/fs_strobe.tcl -exit

#this runs NOT OK
ncsim -fault_sim_run -fault_work fault_db worklib.circuit_tb:module -input ../scripts/injection.tcl -exit

After the above command, I get: "ncsim: *E,FLTIGF: [FLT] Failed to inject fault at circuit_tb.U0.n2174."

Here are the files called from the commands above.

fi.list:

fault_target circuit_tb.U0.n2174 -type SET+SA1+SA0

fs_strobe.tcl:

fs_strobe circuit_tb.WRITE_OUT circuit_tb.PC_OUT[0]

injection.tcl:

fault -stop_severity 3 -inject -time 2ns -type sa1 circuit_tb.U0.n2174

I already checked the NETs with simvision, so their paths are correct.

I'm using as reference the following document: "Functional Safety Simulation - Product Version 15.2 - April 2016"

Any ideas are welcome.

Thank you in advance.

Hi,

I'm doing the "The Targeted Fault Campaign" with ncsim and got stuck at the following message: "ncsim: *E,FLTIGF: [FLT] Failed to inject fault at circuit_tb.U0.n2174." I already tried with other NETs, with SET, SA0, SA1, always the same error occurs.

$nchelp ncsim FLTIGF
$ncsim/FLTIGF =
    Injection time is not within the expected finish
    time for the specified fault node. Failed to inject fault.

As can be seen below, the injection time is at 2ns and the -fault_good_run -fault_tw 1ns:100ns, so in theory 2ns is inside the window 1ns:100ns.

My scripts so far, considering I already compiled the Verilog testbench and also the gates from the technology library (gate-level simulation):

#this runs ok

ncelab -work worklib -cdslib circuit/trunk/backend/synthesis/work/cds.lib -logfile ncelab.log -errormax 15 -access +wc -status -timescale 1ps/1ps worklib.circuit_tb -fault_file circuit/trunk/backend/synthesis/scripts/fi.list

#this runs ok
ncsim -fault_good_run -fault_tw 1ns:100ns -fault_work fault_db -fault_overwrite worklib.circuit_tb:module -input ../scripts/fs_strobe.tcl -exit

#this runs NOT OK
ncsim -fault_sim_run -fault_work fault_db worklib.circuit_tb:module -input ../scripts/injection.tcl -exit

After the above command, I get: "ncsim: *E,FLTIGF: [FLT] Failed to inject fault at circuit_tb.U0.n2174."

Here are the files called from the commands above.

fi.list:

fault_target circuit_tb.U0.n2174 -type SET+SA1+SA0

fs_strobe.tcl:

fs_strobe circuit_tb.WRITE_OUT circuit_tb.PC_OUT[0]

injection.tcl:

fault -stop_severity 3 -inject -time 2ns -type sa1 circuit_tb.U0.n2174

I already checked the NETs with simvision, so their paths are correct.

I'm using as reference the following document: "Functional Safety Simulation - Product Version 15.2 - April 2016"

Any ideas are welcome.

Thank you in advance.

Hi,

I am designing a resistive feedback TIA which needs a capacitor in its feedback loop for stability.

I would like to know the effect of a feedback capacitor on the phase margin to determine the optimal capacitance value.

My plan is to add it to the results after the stb analysis by using the direct plot>main form > phase margin (add to outputs).However it not getting added to my results list.

What could be a problem? Is there a way to add phase margin to the results using the calculator? 

I also find that the gain from the stability analysis(the closed loop gain) is different from that of the gain obtained for the closed loop simulation in AC analysis. Why is the difference, how is it computed in stability analysis?

Thanks,

-Rakesh.

Once while eating dinner in Montreal, our friendly, intoxicated waitress plopped herself in my lap and proceeded to tell us about how obsessed she was with the CD that was playing - singing out the lyrics at an ungodly volume and flinging her arms about. Wow, I thought to myself, people who listen to Morcheeba sure seem to have a lot of fun, and promised to check them out.

Several CDs later, they are firmly one of my favorites. And their trip hop meditation, 2003’s Charango remains one of my most played CDs.

Morcheeba (Mor = more, Cheeba = pot) are brothers Ross and Paul Godfrey with singer Skye Edwards (who has since been replaced). Part trance, part ambience, Charango is full of smooth, snogworthy jams. And just as you surrender to its seductive groove, Slick Rick shows up with a rap called “Women Lose Weight”.

Lamenting his wife putting on weight after having kids and stalled by his mistress who wants a clean break before she shacks up with him, he decides the easiest way out of it all is to kill the spouse. Considering different ways to do the deed, he finally rams his car into her Chevy over a long lunch break one fine day. It is an unexpected, stunning, tongue-in-cheek social commentary that makes it a CD you won’t forget easily.

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I’m coming to the party late—last weekend, for the first but not the last time, I watched Manish Acharya’s comedy, Loins of Punjab Presents. Behan____, what a film! 

I will not rehearse the synopsis or plot, partly because of the lateness of the hour, but also because it is available here. Instead, let me note quickly that the comedy keeps ticking, and the attention to detail in all matters, from the plot to the casting, makes this film a pleasure to watch.

Let me use one scene to make a point about where the film is coming from. Ishitta Sharma, playing a demure, Gujju girl called Preeti Patel, is one of the competitors in the Desi Idol competition in New Jersey. We have watched her sing beautifully, and we have watched her stay silent, eyes downcast, as her family-members make fools of themselves. But there’s a moment later in the film, when an older, wily competitor, played with classy ease by Shabana Azmi, tries to manipulate her. And suddenly, in the blink of an eye, Preeti Patel turns upon the Shabana character. It’s as if she always had a dagger hiding in her hand.

When I saw that, I thought that there was a similar strength in the movie I was watching. It’s all laughs but it has a quicksilver intelligence within. It is a declaration of independence by the desi diaspora—and what is great is that it celebrates this freedom by mocking, and loving, almost everything in sight.

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Pablo Bartholomew’s beautiful photo-show “Outside In” opened in Manhattan a few evenings ago. The exhibition is being held at Bodhi Art in Chelsea. Black-and-white photographs from the seventies and the eighties—reflecting Bartholomew’s engagement with people and places in Delhi, Bombay, and Calcutta.

These are not the pictures that made Bartholomew famous. The undying image of the father brushing the dust from the face of the child he is burying—that was the iconic photograph from the Bhopal tragedy in 1984. It also won for Bartholomew, still in his twenties, the World Press Photo’s Picture of the Year Award.

The images in “Outside In” do not commemorate grim tragedies or celebrate well-publicised public events. Instead, they are documents that offer intimate recall of a period and a milieu. Please click here to look at these photographs.

People who share a context with the photographer will have their own private reading of the scenes. For me, they evoke days when happiness seemed only one chai and a Wills Navy Cut away. There is charm and candor in these scenes. And because the young believe they will live forever, there is nothing defensive or stuck-up or overly self-conscious about their faces and postures.

Even the language of the captions is true to this spirit: “Self-portrait after a trippy night…”; “Nona writing and Alok zonked out…”; “Hanging out with the Maharani Bagh gang….” The exhibition catalogue has a fine essay by Aveek Sen that has also been published in the latest issue of Biblio.

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I could barely recognize Ben Foster in 3:10 to Yuma, but I was blown away just the same by him as in his star making turn from Hostage. What makes Foster so special in Yuma?

Yuma contains two of Hollywood’s finest: Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Bale is excellent, Crowe a little too relaxed to be cock-sure-dangerous. Both are unable to provide the powder-keg relationship that the movie demands.

Into this void steps Ben Foster. He plays Charlie Prince, sidekick to Crowe’s dangerous and celebrated outlaw Ben Wade. When Wade is captured, Prince is infuriated. He initiates an effort suffused with desperate passion to rescue his boss.

Playing Prince with a mildly effeminate gait, Foster quickly becomes the movie’s beating heart. What struck me in particular was that Foster was able to balance method acting with just plain good acting. He plays his character organically but isn’t above drawing attention with controlled staginess.

Gradually, Foster’s willingness to control a scene blend in with that of Prince’s. Is the character manipulating his circumstances in the movie or is it the actor playing a fine hand? Foster is so entertaining, the answer is immaterial.

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Literate Indians should be familiar with Ashis Nandy’s remark: “Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English.“ A Trinidadian Indian by the name of Chuck Ramkissoon, in Joseph O’Neill’s superbly inflected novel “Netherland”, is also fond of making bold pronouncements on the behalf of the game he wants to introduce to the U.S. “I’m saying that people, all people, Americans, whoever, are at their most civilized when they’re playing cricket. What’s the first thing that happens when Pakistan and India make peace? They play a cricket match…”

It’s now my turn to be bold: “Netherland” is more of an Indian novel than the recent, much feted, Indian fiction. This is not only because O’Neill’s novel feeds our national obsession with the game. Nor even its exquisite description of what transpires on the playing field: “…. where the white-clad ring of infielders, swanning figures on the vast oval, again and again converge in unison toward the batsman and again and again scatter back to their starting points, a repetition of pulmonary rhythm, as if the field breathed through its luminous visitors.” No. My pronouncement is based on the fact that the Indian characters in the book are highly individualized and yet fully global in their identity. “Netherland” is not a sociological-historical epic thesis, nor is it a shallow, cynical report on injustice in the hinterland. Rich in observation, reporting as much on the interior life as on the life outside, it is a captivating literary achievement. A masterpiece.

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This new film is the latest remake of Devdas, but what is equally interesting is the fact that it is in conversation with films made in the West. Unlike Bhansali’s more spectacular version of the older story, Anurag Kashyap’s Dev.D is a genuine rewriting of Sarat Chandra’s novel. Kashyap doesn’t flinch from depicting the individual’s downward spiral, but he also gives women their own strength. He has set out to right a wrong—or, at least, tell a more realistic, even redemptive, story. If these characters have lost some of the affective depth of the original creations, they have also gained the hard edges of modern lives.

We don’t always feel the pain of Kashyap’s characters, but we are able to more readily recognize them. Take Chandramukhi, or Chanda, who is a school-girl humiliated by the MMS sex-scandal. Her father, protective and patriarchal, says that he has seen the tape and thinks she knew what she was doing. “How could you watch it?” the girl asks angrily. And then, “Did you get off on it?” When was the last time a father was asked such a question on the Hindi screen? With its frankness toward sex and masturbation, Dev.D takes a huge step toward honesty. In fact, more than the obvious tributes to Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, or the over-extended psychedelic adventure on screen, in fact, as much as the moody style of film-making, the candour of such questions make Dev.D a film that is truly a part of world cinema.

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I loved Nina Paley’s brilliant animated film Sita Sings the Blues. If you’re reading this, stop right now—and watch the film here.

Paley has set the story of the Ramayana to the 1920s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw. The epic tale is interwoven with Paley’s account of her husband’s move to India from where he dumps her by e-mail. The Ramayana is presented with the tagline: “The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.”

All of this should make us curious. But there are other reasons for admiring this film:

The film returns us to the message that is made clear by every village-performance of the Ramlila: the epics are for everyone. Also, there is no authoritative narration of an epic. This film is aided by three shadow puppets who, drawing upon memory and unabashedly incomplete knowledge, boldly go where only pundits and philosophers have gone before. The result is a rendition of the epic that is gloriously a part of the everyday.

This idea is taken even further. Paley says that the work came from a shared culture, and it is to a shared culture that it must return: she has put the film on Creative Commons—viewers are invited to distribute, copy, remix the film.

Of course, such art drives the purists and fundamentalists crazy. On the Channel 13 website, “Durgadevi” and “Shridhar” rant about the evil done to Hinduism. It is as if Paley had lit her tail (tale!) and set our houses on fire!

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