By Chris Giles • November 15, 2021
Reaching into the part of my brain where the memories are still on paper, stuck in file drawers in metal filing cabinets, covered with dust, indexed by cryptic number/letter combinations that pretty much ensure I have almost no recall, I find a memory of a former colleague who referred to himself as “non-stick surface man”. (Actually he referred to himself with a trademark but I don’t want to get him into trouble so – let’s just non-stick with Non-Stick Surface Man, or Mr. NSSM for short.) He called himself this because it was his design goal that his code be perfect when he brought it to be integrated into the broader design and tested. It was a badge of honor he held over the rest of us heathens who dared bring a bug to the party. Of course, you can imagine that the rest of us on the team were overjoyed (well, that might be a bit much – let’s just say “happy”) when a bug actually turned out to be in his code. There were lots of false alarms, moments of panic in his eyes that he missed something, followed by louder and louder self-proclamation of his Mr. NSSM status when proven innocent. Ultimately, bugs did happen in his code – but in fairness – there weren’t many.
Read the entire blog post >
By Jake Wiltgen • September 20, 2021
ISO 26262 remains the state of the art standard guiding the development of electronic and electronic systems destined for the automobile. By 2030, some estimate that the BOM of a vehicle will be 50% electronics and electronic components. Regardless, ISO 26262 has solidified itself as the backbone of the safety lifecycle for semiconductor companies. The standard is far reaching, delivering guidance from concept to decommission across OEMs, Systems Integrators and Suppliers. For suppliers, the guidance is focused into three areas:
- Lifecycle Management: The process and governance required within the lifecycle
- Systematic Failures: The activities and work products required to ensure the component operates per the requirements
- Random Failures: The activities and work products required to ensure the component fails safely when a random failure occurs
Read the entire blog post >
By Chris Giles • September 14, 2021
Several years ago, I posted a job opening for a Design Engineer. To my surprise, a few of the responses I received were from individuals in the fashion industry, looking for a fashion design position. Apparently, I didn’t write the job description well enough. Actually, on second thought, I think I did but those fashion types who applied probably assumed that I mistakenly listed the job as microprocessor design and that the job really was about designing pants. But I digress. Design is admittedly a very vague word. It means a lot of things to a lot of people. So, let me be perfectly clear – in the context of the rest of this entry, when I say design, I mean digital hardware design. Clear?
Read the entire blog post >
