Building Brains

Computer Technology has advanced spectacularly since the first program was executed by the Manchester 'Baby' machine on June 21 1948, but if this progress is to be sustained there are major challenges ahead in the area of transistor predictability and reliability and in the exploitation of massively-parallel computing resources. Biology has solved both of these problems, but we don't understand how those solutions function at the level of information processing. Two questions arise from this line of thinking: - can massively-parallel computers be used to accelerate our understanding of brain function? - can our growing understanding of brain function point the way to more efficient, fault-tolerant computation? While these questions remain so far unanswered, they suggest a line of investigation that has been recognised under the Grand Challenge of 'Building Brains'. The SpiNNaker project aims to address this challenge through the construction of a massively-parallel computer incorporating over a million ARM processors for the real-time modelling of large-scale systems of spiking neurons.

An interesting session on the above theme is planned at Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (to be held during 3^rd to 5^th /11/2010).

Key Note Speaker for this will be Mr. Steve Furber, University of Manchester, UK. For additional information visit http://www.biocas2010.org/keynote.html

Asset or Liability

There was a king who was a follower of a Saint. Once his Guruji asked him to show his treasure.
The king felt very happy and personally went and showed Guruji each and every corner of his rich treasure.
It was a huge collection of Diamonds, Rubies and other precious stones.
Guruji asked,” Do you treat these as an asset?”
King replied in affirmative.
Guruji asked, “How much profit you make from these stones?"
King: "Nothing. In fact I have to spend a lot on keeping a tight security around them"
Guruji: "Let me show you a stone even more precious than these."
King found a good way of spending some more time with his Guruji and started walking with him.
After a long walk, they reached near the house of an old widow. She was making flour using a grind-stone.
Guruji smiled and said to the king "This very stone makes flour for hungry people and also helps this old lady make a living. Isn't this more precious than all of your stones?"
"There is a great difference between being expensive and being useful. What you call precious is only what you believe is expensive; those stones have no value otherwise.
This old rugged grind stone is helping people make a living while your stones are wasting lot of unnecessary money just on security."
Difference between wealthier and non wealthier is that the former always invest in assets while later always meet their liability.
This is applicable to all sphere of life.

Sharpen Your Skills

Once upon a time a very strong woodcutter asked for a job with a timber merchant, and he got it. His salary was really good and so were the working conditions.

For that reason, the woodcutter was determined to do his best.

His boss gave him an axe and showed him the area where he was supposed to fell the trees. The first day, the woodcutter brought down 15 trees.

" Congratulations," the boss said. " Carry on with your work!"

Highly motivated by the words of his boss, the woodcutter tried harder the next day, but he only could bring 10 trees down. The third day he tried even harder, but he was only able to bring down 7 trees.

Day after day he was bringing lesser number of trees down.

" I must be losing my strength", the woodcutter thought. He went to the boss and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on.

" When was the last time you sharpened your axe?" the boss asked.

" Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen my axe. I have been very busy trying to cut trees..."

That's right. Most of us NEVER update our skills. We think that whatever we have learned is very much enough.

But good is not good when better is expected. Sharpening our skills from time to time is the key to success.

Detail Orientation is worthwhile.

A big city lawyer went duck hunting in rural North Cowra, New South Wales. He shot and dropped a bird, but it fell into a farmer's field on the other side of fence.
As the lawyer climbed over the fence, an elderly farmer drove up on his tractor and asked him what he was doing. The litigator responded, "I shot a duck and it fell in this field, and now I'm going to retrieve it."
The old farmer Peter replied, "This is my property,and you are not coming over here." The indignant lawyer said, "I am one of the best trial lawyers in Australia and, if you don't let me get that duck, I'll sue you and take everything you own."
The old farmer smiled and said, "Apparently, you don't know how we settle disputes in North Cowra . We settle small disagreements like this with the 'Three Kick Rule.'
The lawyer asked, "What is the 'Three Kick Rule'?"
The Farmer replied, "Well, because the dispute occurs on my land, I get to go first. I kick you three times and then you kick me three times and so on back and forth until someone gives up."
The lawyer quickly thought about the proposed contest and decided that he could easily take the old codger. He agreed to abide by the local custom.
The old farmer slowly climbed down from the tractor and walked up to the attorney. His first kick planted the toe of his heavy steel-toed work boot into the lawyer's groin and dropped him to his knees!
His second kick to the midriff sent the lawyer's last meal gushing from his mouth. The lawyer was on all fours when the farmer's third kick to his rear end, sent him face-first into a fresh cow pie.
Summoning every bit of his will and remaining strength the lawyer very slowly managed to get to his feet. Wiping his face with the arm of his jacket, he said, "Okay, you old fart. Now it's my turn."
(I love this part)
The old farmer smiled and said, "Nah, I give up. You can have the duck."


When you are educated, you'll believe only half of what you hear.
When you're intelligent, you know which half.

Time to get POSITIVE about NEGATIVE

I read an interesting piece of information from Mr. Paul Henderson, VP Product Marketing for Device Test. The summary is :

There is marginal test automation is in place even in an advanced industry like Semiconductors and Embedded Electronics. And still, quiet little companies are doing in the way of “negative” testing. Negative testing means the testing tries to break the system, validate fault and exception handlers or otherwise force the device in to an unusual state or “edge condition”.

Usually companies base their quality assurance strategy on ‘positive’ testing of functional requirements. The test group takes the user specification and exercises the device from a black box perspective to see if all the features do what they were specified to do. Leading teams actually map tests to requirements to show traceability of requirements to tested features and results.

This is good and important, but still the defects customers are seeing in the field relate to unusual conditions that the device was not tested to handle.

For example, unusual combinations of data inputs, overflows from long running operation, performance bottlenecks triggered by an unusual combination of events, or unrecoverable system conditions caused by hardware failures or other untested fault conditions.

Subsiquent satisficing “The failure occurred because customers were using the product in a way it was not designed for.” For whatever reason, the fact is that these kinds of negative tests are not flowing from traditional design requirements and therefore are not part of the resulting test suites.

Testing a product against its design requirements is of course the starting point for any QA process. But development and QA teams need to start thinking a lot more about how to anticipate and test for failure modes and other conditions that devices may encounter in the real world. Increasingly devices are no longer single function and are part of an ecosystem of interoperable devices. Therefore the potential modes of operation and therefore modes of failure are much greater.

This is somewhat of a mindset change, and it also will require increasing levels of automation to implement. There is also an opportunity for more of a ‘design-for-testability’ approach that starts up front in the development process. Product requirements should specify anticipated failure modes and should contain requirements something to the effect that ‘the device will have a fault handler to cover the following conditions and these shall be tested as specified…’.

Software developers then need to work closer with test developers to assure that testers understand potential failure modes and that they provide appropriate ‘hooks’ to allow automated tests to drive the software or device into failure conditions during testing.

Separately, quality assurance professionals need to take their own harder look at real world conditions and potential failure modes (including ones that were not necessarily anticipated up front by designers). QA teams can provide an independent view to device operation and deployment that can project where additional failures could occur from operator error, component failure, or complex deployment configurations.

Many of these failure modes have been time-consuming and expensive to test using traditional manual methods, but with new software-based test automation tools, this comprehensive negative testing can now become practical. New test automation platforms can dramatically expand the range and depth of negative testing. This can be accomplished on device software while still meeting product delivery schedules. Higher delivered quality will result.


Bottom line, more negative testing will have a higher probability to lead to more positive outcomes for any maker of complex embedded devices. It’s time to get started.

Life is not a rehearsal; each day is a new show.
No Repeat, No Rewind so give your best on all your acts.

Necessary precondition of a successful technology

To all people working on new technologies, an interesting point is :

"Bottom line is the essential test of any technology."

It is an accepted fact that for a sustainable development, in addition to profitability,businesses have to meet social responsibility.

Hence it is not a single but a triple bottom line poses an ultimate test to a technology to be successful.