Now then, Magma is now part of Synopsys. With Extreme-DA too in the kitty, Synopsys is clearly staying ahead in the EDA leadership. The Analog is where Cadence still have the thrust above them.

Come to think of it, I remember his recent article on Australia’s 21/9 collapse in the first test against the South Africans. If that was a tragedy, his death is an even bigger one. After all, cricket was just  a game, but death, boy!

Qaddafi for sure has done several horrible stuffs and no way a man to be worshiped, but the way he was publicly assassinated portray a sorry figure to civilized society. It is appalling that NATO had the freedom to do such barbaric acts to curt the end of another man who was criticized for similar acts to his own people.

Come to think of it, the impact of Ritchie to modern science and technology is enormous. He may not have been a very public figure, but his contributions indeed is the touchstone on the modern world, especially the information network world. Much of the internet, the Google, the iPhone’s and what more, almost everything we can think of runs on his stuffs or its variants. Quite remarkable.

I think the most apt summary of Ritchie’s contribution is heard from Brian Kernighan himself.  He said  “The tools that Dennis built -and their direct descendants – run pretty much everything today”

P(Sachin fails| crisis) = [P(crisis|Sachin fails) x P(Sachin fails)]/[P(crisis|Sachin fails)xP(Sachin fails)+P(crisis|Sachin does not fail)xP(Sachin does not fail)]

Come to think of it, his life and work and the glory associated with the making of one of the largest valued company in the world all have a charm and special persona associated with. His 2005 Stanford commencement speech made him immortal and inspirational to wider circle of life all over the world. More than being a tech whizkid, he was a symbol of innovation. More than a manager or a programmer, where he stays above the rest is the clarity in product vision and leadership to drive it through. I have heard several stories from my friends and comrades on his passion to drive stuffs at all cost and at times at the risk of spoiling personal relationships. That single minded drive to realize something special everyday made him this special. More often than not, we could see the sense of honesty in every statements he made, whether it is in public forums or in personal remarks at interviews. No tantrums and no diplomacy hanging around, plain simple truth in blunt words.

The world has lost a leader, visionary and innovator. He did not invent a medicine for cancer or aids, but he had made many a mark in the lives of thousands of people around the world. For some, he was the man who championed behind the realization of many amazing products of everyday use (Myself a huge beneficiary of it directly and indirectly!) and for others, his life itself serves as a message to follow their own dreams and then enjoy a lovely and satisfying life.  Thank you Steve Jobs. You have made a stamp in many lives.

While driving back home this evening on  a dark and rainy day I had the Stanford speech in mind. My mind seem to have said. Thank you sir. The words “Stay hungry, Stay foolish” reverberated on. Immortal words! Along the same bay he is resting at peace!

Footnote: CNN money had this report published sometime ago. The level of scaling Apple achieved under his rein since the beginning of this century is stunning.

Courtesy: From CNN money report (See the link above)

Here is the official explanation behind the name San Diego, at least per San Diego Historical Society.  The Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcanio arrived San Diego from the Mexican coast of Acapulco . This was in the year 1602 and it took. He had departed Acapulco with four ships on May 5, 1602 and only three of them, his flagship ship being San Diego, made it to what is now known as San Diego bay.  Besides the flagship ship named San Diego, he had two other ships arrived at the bay. They are the San Tomás and the Tres Reyes. The exact date (as per history) of his arrival in San Diego bay is November 10, 1602. Acapulco found no qualms in naming the new coastal area by his flagship ship name and hence we now live in the beautiful San Diego and not San Thomas or Tres Reyes, huh! Apparently, there was another reason why Acapulco chose San Diego. It was to honor the Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcalá.

Well, if you are not really obsessed with Google chrome, then you can as well go direct to MeeGenius and read it there!

Here is another piece of writing/blog on this subject (by Chloe Albanesius).

I believe the theoretical BER under fading scenarios, provided by the ‘berfading’ function in Communication toolbox is not quite accurate, for frequency flat fading, when Doppler shift to be considered. Currently, for example, the berfading gives out the BER for Rayleigh (or Rice) fading channel, without considering the impact of Doppler spread. In the presence of  Doppler, there may be an irreducible error floor for certain modulation schemes, especially differential modulation schemes. There are theoretical results (not closed form) to reflect such impacts. Closer approximations of the average bit error probability are derived in closed form for some of the differential schemes (say DBPSK, DQPSK etc).

Just to illustrate the point, I am enclosing here, a snapshot of the comparative BER results. For DBPSK, the exact BER, considering maximum Doppler frequency, for a uniform scattering model (Jakes spectrum) can be better approximated to Pb=(0.5./(1+EbN0) ) .*(1+ (EbN0.*(1-besselj(0,2*pi*Ts*fd)) )); The simulation results closely match this result, as against the berfading  result “berfading(SNR,’dpsk’,M,1)”

The BER curves are shown in the figure, attached with. Blue curve is what Matlab ‘berfading’ gives. The pink (Pb_doppler_theory) is the approximate and more correct bound, for Jakes spectrum (See [1], [2], [3]). The latter result is in close unison with the simulation as well.It would be nice if Mathworks can modify (may be in the next release) berfading such that, the  theoretical BER expected take care of such fading characteristics (in this case Doppler). I am  using 2006b version of matlab. In this only Jakes spectrum can be compared. For other  spectrum (I read in the Mathworks website that other spectrums can be configured in later
versions of Matlab/toolboxes), appropriate modifications to be done.

[1] P. Y. Kam, Tight bounds on the bit-error probabilities of 2DPSK and 4DPSK in nonselective Rician fading,IEEE Trans. Commun., pp. 860-862, July 1998.
[2] P. Y. Kam, Bit error probabilities of MDPSK over the nonselective Rayleigh fading channel with diversity reception,IEEE Trans. Commun., pp. 220-224, Feb. 1991.
[3] M. K. Simon and M.-S. Alouini, Digital Communication over Fading Channels A Unified Approach to Performance Analysis, Wiley 2000.

Come to think of it that Ireland has beaten a reasonably in form England by 3 wickets with 5 balls to spare. That too chasing a mammoth target of 328 for a win! If only they had beaten a relatively easy Bangladesh in the earlier match, this pool would have been very interesting. Honestly, the Ireland-Bangladesh match was played on a hopeless pitch, but that is no excuse.

Until yesterday, not many people would have given a chance to Ireland, in spite of the upset victory over Pakistan in the 2007 edition. No one had feared Kevin O’brien this much. But from now on, the teams will be aware of this massive threat, especially on flat tracks where one can hit through the line at will. Ireland is due to play India next in the very same ground. Not to forget that, the last match prior to this at the same venue produced a classic tie at 238, between England and India. So, game on?

According to this, Endosulfan export from India is worth 180 crores. The largest democracy in the world has no time and seriousness to protect its good majority of poor people. The Endosulfan tragedy is rated as the disaster whose magnitude is next only to the Bhopal gas tragedy. It is so sad that, the government is so sick in their drive on corporate responsibility.

Here is a video revelation of the nonsense pesticide that Sharat Pawar think is good. For him, the IPLs and the billions along with that is more precious than the millions of suffering elsewhere. Shameless.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Ok, why did this pop up now? Well, in UK, apparently there was an opinion poll on the best one liner; the love one liner that is. Mind you, it is not the full fledged poem, or for that matter a full sonnet or stanza itself, just a one linear. Here are the 10 most popular according to the survey. Just ahead of the Valentines day, a good time pass! Happy reading and Happy Valentines day folks!

1. ‘ Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same’ – Emily Bronte
2. ‘If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you’ – A A Milne
3. ‘But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun’ – Shakespeare ‘Romeo and Juliet’
4. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong’ – W.H. Auden
5. ‘You know you’re in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams’ – Dr. Seuss
6. ‘ When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part’ – ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’
7. ‘Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be’ – Robert Browning
8. For you see, each day I love you more. Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow’ – Rosemonde Gerard
9. ‘But to see her was to love her, love but her, and love her forever’ – Robert Burns
10. ‘I hope before long to press you in my arms and shall shower on you a million burning kisses as under the Equator’ – Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1796 dispatch to wife Josephine.

I didn’t know much about Zahra Bahrami. Couple of years ago, I happened to see an Iranian protest in Lausanne down town. The mass then were protesting against the large scale rigging which took place in their country, during the general elections. Apparently, during a home protest the ruling government had arrested Zahra Bahrami, who held a dual citizen citizenship  of of Dutch-Iranian. A series of reports and news piece popped up everywhere in Internet, calling for a fair trial in the case.

Now, much to the world’s surprise the Iranian government hanged Zahra Bahrami for what many perceive as a fake case involving drug possession. Whatever be the truth, nothing justifies a government execution of this kind. In civilized society, there is no place for such barbaric acts. Shame!

A Nalbandian Nadal clash somewhere down the lane is likely. How will the two best friends in circuit clash there. I cant wait.

Somali Pirates are without doubt, a threat to the world. But think about this. According to many reports, including that from a United Nations study, says that, this came as a result of the rest of the world (read, the rich trading nations)’s exploitation and illicit dumping of toxic wastes in the Somali waters. The toxication of their waters severely damaged the livelihood of majority of Somalians who largely relied on fishing to make a living. So, actually the locals were forced to take up piracy as a means to live. What a pity. Whom to blame?

It is quite amazing that, Socrates has never bothered to write books or manuscript. It is largeley due to the remarks and subsequent referencing through works of his illustrious students, we got to know something about the great thinker and philosopher. Without Plato, we probably wouldnt have got to know much about him.

And by the way, Steve Jobs had this to say about Socrates: “I would trade all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates” (Newsweek, 2001). See the Wikipedia link for details.

Well, IPNLMS stands for Improved Proportionate Normalized Least Mean Square scheme, which is a modified version of the well known NLMS technique used in adaptive filter theory. OK, the idea of IPNLMS as I understood is, as follows. Each of the coefficient (tap) is independently updated, where the adaptation step is proportional to the estimated filter coefficient. How is this helping?

Anyway, the sudden recollection of this French mathematician happened, as I was looking for a good curve fit for a problem I need as part of my work. I needed to minimize the maximum error than the average or squared error. I thought about Legendre polynomial fit, which gave me the minimum root mean squared error and Chebychev who minimized the worst case error. The order of the polynomial and the number of sample points seemed to have dependency. Pade approximant is a cool technique which reduces the polynomial order while using a rational polynomial. I am not too convinced about the statistical properties of this method. The data points I have at disposal may have some measurement error attributed. I need to investigate a bit more before taking a decision on the potential optimality for the given problem! Happy knowing this scheme though. In retrospect, I remember hearing it in my statistical signal processing books, but never paid any serious attention then! Silly.

One of the major criticism against Qatar was that, it is hot. So what?It is really glad to hear that Qatar is planning eco friendly stadiums for the super event to be held in 2022.

And the Worldcup 2018 bid by Russia in Zurich was a fabulous one.

Here is a beautiful explanation of this concept.

Anyway, let us get some facts right with scramblers. Scramblers are there in almost all the standardized data communication systems. It is some kind of randomize acting upon the information bit stream (Well, one can also think of it operating on non-binary symbol sequence or packets, but let us consider binary for the time being, for simplicity.). The input stream upon the act of a scrambler changes the patter of the original bit stream. Naturally, at the receiver should be doing a reverse operation (descrambler) to make sense of the source information. One can argue that, a receiver not having the right descrambler (descrambler is very well based on the scrambler algorithm) cannot retrieve the intended information, adding protection/security on the data stream is NOT the reason for the existence a scrambler/descrambler unit in a communication system. The why? Let us see why.

A typical receiver will have several algorithmic stages such as synchronization, equalization, decoding etc ( These are broad classifications. One can go into finer details. For the discussion on scrambling we can suffice with this much). All these stages are usually designed with the assumption that the source stream is  i.i.d (continuous stream of identically independent ’0′s and ’1′s). For example, a long stint of ’0′s or ’1′s can degrade the timing/clock synchronizer performance or may even result in loss of synchronization.

The other important argument on the scrambler is the spectral density (spectral mask as defined in standard documents) requirements, usually imposed by the standard specification and (country specific) regulation requirements.  Any periodicity (short or long), can result in spectral spikes, which in turn may result in co-channel and adjacent channel interference due to various nonlinear blocks present in the transceiver chain.

So, scrambler’s job is to make an uniform i.i.d stream so that, the spectrum stays as close to white. Similarly, the  receivers do not misbehave because of arbitrary source distribution.

So, what is the case against TomorrowNow (which is well part of SAP AG now)? Oracle filed a case against SAP for an illegal stealing/usage of Oracle licensed software. Oracle claims that TomorrowNow illegally copied software code needed to support customers without buying licenses (from Oracle) to access it. TomorrowNow made thousands of duplicates of copyrighted software obtained by illegally accessing electronic materials from Oracle’s customer-support websites, the lawyers said. That is quite a mess TomorrowNow brought into SAP. Well, now no go, but to pay the 1.3billion and work harder for future!

Amazing article by Sainath, “Narcissism of the neurotic” Must read.
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article834612.ece?homepage=true
An eye opener on the Indian media:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article907823.ece?homepage=true

http://www.dnaindia.com/blogs/post.php?postid=318

Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether, say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were claimed, I should not care to fly in that plane.

I recall hearing this interesting quote. If my memory is correct, I first heard it from Martin Vetterli, who either mentioned this during a talk/class or it was there in the footnote of his forthcoming book. It sounded funny that time, but I didn’t really know to whom this quote is originally attributed to. To my surprise, this has its origin dates to the story man Hamming. Well, why Hamming? Emre Telatar did tell me couple of funny stories about Hamming besides the one famous scream on the computers which eventually led to the discovery of error correcting codes! By the way, Emre is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to stories. He is a treasure in many ways!

Ok, coming back to where we started. Springer has published this nice conversation piece online for free. The title is “Mathematics and Design: Yes, But Will it Fly?”. It is not really a book, but a very interesting conversation discussing the above mentioned quote by Richard Hamming. The preface of the discussion itself couldn’t be more apt, which reads:

“Martin Davis and Matt Insall discuss a quote by Richard W. Hamming about the physical effect of Lebesgue and Riemann integrals and whether it made a difference whether one or the other was used, for example, in the design of an airplane. The gist of Hamming’s quote was that the fine points of mathematical analysis are not relevant to engineering considerations.”

A very fascinating read indeed. An even more fascinating, formal defense on Lebesgue’s right on why aeroplane fly is here. Well, the answer to aeroplane question: here is what Andrew Lewis has to say, “In the event that the reader is consulting this paper in a panic just prior to boarding an airplane, let us answer the question posed in the title of the paper. The answer is, “The question is meaningless as the distinctions between the Riemann and Lebesgue integrals do not, and should not be thought to, contribute to such worldly matters as aircraft design.” However, the salient point is that this is not a valid criticism of the Lebesgue integral.

“

A sequence   is called a martingale if  , for all . An intuitive way of thinking about martingales (and indeed the origins of martingales) is to imagine  as your total profit after the  th round of a gambling game. Then the martingale condition states that knowing your winnings in the first  games should not bias your winnings in the th round. See the Wikipedia page for examples of martingales. The course notes is fabulous. I am following it on and off!

I am yet to explore a lot on this. Lance listed one very interesting one. I find it extremely noteworthy! Robert Faid of Greenville, South Carolina, farsighted and faithful seer of statistics, got the Ig Nobel prize for calculating the exact odds (710,609,175,188,282,000 to 1) that Mikhail Gorbachev is the Antichrist.I wonder how he arrived at this magical number! Didn’t Faid know how to play a game in the stock market then?

Wikipedia has an interesting entry on this topic. Would you believe, the young Russian physicist Andre Konstantinovich Geim who just won this years Physics Nobel for his work on graphene had also won the Ig Nobel in 2000! Quite amazing.

Thanks to Youtube, I could gather glimpses from the event. Part of Vikram Seth‘s Storypooja is captured here. The one session, I would have liked to attend is Marcus du Sautoy on “The Number Mysteries: A Mathematical Odyssey Through Everyday Life“. I hope to see a video tape of this program online sometime soon! After all, Marcus claimed to have had a reason for everything, including why bend it like Beckam! Another of my favourite is ONV Kuruppu. His candid and lively talk is an anytime favorite of mine. He was supposed to have had a conversation with poet Sachidanandan. And, how much I missed Bob Geldof‘s conversation, let alone his concert!

Thankfully, Michel Schumaker escaped unhurt from that freaking crash. Seeing it live, it appeared to be like a crazy head on. The last race of the season, the crash of this kind would have been a  massive sobermaker, but thankfully no major damages. The Imola crash is still looming large in memory and with Ayrton Senna’s nephew still racing, it just came back instantly, upon seeing the crash scene.

It is beyond comprehension to see that, we can do nothing on this. Think of this. Aung San Suki is detailed for 15 years of the last 20 years.

ABC mini clip

Sion Rain’s fabulous and touching song dedicated to Aung San Suki.

Thought provoking start for a day!

Anyway, I am still wondering what made the Twitter founders to decided on restricting the length to 143 characters. Yesterday, during a dinner party I hear some of them commenting on this. I didnt get the rationale fully, but it was apparently chosen based on some SMS research, using curtailed English words.

I did a few Google search, but nothing quite came with the explanation. The Wikipedia interestingly has a page for 143. Would you believe? As it turns out, 143 indeed has some very interesting properties.

143 is the sum of three consecutive primes (43 + 47 + 53), as well as the sum of seven consecutive primes (11 + 13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31). But this number is never the sum of an integer and its base 10 digits, making it a self number.

Every positive integer is the sum of at most 143 seventh powers (see Waring’s problem).

143 is the difference in the first exception to the pattern shown below:

3² + 4² = 5²

3³ + 4³ + 5³ = 6³

3⁴ + 4⁴ + 5⁴ + 6⁴ = 7⁴ − 143

Growing up in Kerala, ONV was very much a house hold name. Who can forget his poem “Bhoomikkoru Charamageetham” (A Requiem to Mother Earth), which we were exposed during high school Malayalam language class. The poem was written 30 years or earlier and it is in Malayalam. I am not sure whether there is an English translation out there somewhere, but the poet’s pain is in much similar pain as echoed by the girl who presented a thought provoking talk at UN summit in 2008.

One of my friend pointed me to some of the recent Malayalam documentaries, which included one on Bhoomikkoru Charamageetham. Unfortunately I never got to see them. Hopefully, one of these days, I will get access to them. If any of you have access please don’t forget to share.

Researchers from Research Institute for Nature and Forest, Brussels, Belgium have investigated into this subject and published an article (more reports here). According to the authors (Joris Everaert and Dirk Bauwens),the house sparrows do not prefer to stay near the GSM base stations because the radiation in the 900 MHz range is adversely affecting them. The paper investigated the male house sparrow population. The statistics quoted in this paper clearly shows that, there is some kind of an impact the cellular tower radiation is causing onto the city birds.Perhaps a more scientific study on this is needed to assess the details, but this itself is a reason to worry.

Another interesting blog comes from India, which also suggests that the Belgian research finding is correlated to what is observed elsewhere.  But then, I am wondering how come there were thousands of sparrows flooded across almost every street at Schaffhausen. We had been on a family holiday there, last year. It was the place where I have seen the highest amount of sparrows, all waiting to get fed and pampered! May be they have adapted to the technology, huh?

Just to give a prelude, if we turn back the clock to 1999, when India was touring Australia. Remember that infamous LBW decision against Tendulkar? The Umpire Harper and bowler Mcgrath? Here is the video snap for your take on the controversy.

Now, 11 years later, the same two counties are playing each other. The batsman is the very same Tendulkar, but everything else is different, including the playing country (Bangalore and not Adelaide), the  umpire is not Harper either. Anyway, here is cricnfo running commentary:

Anyway, the one I wanted to mention is the Spectrum article on “the Internet speed”. The fastest internet speed is enjoyed by South Korea and not the United States. The average speed itself is 11.7 Mbps. When you desperate for the best browsing, now you know where to head to! The list of countries which top the list is a bit of surprise. In Europe for instance, the fastest pal is Romania, the eastern beautiful land which is not really known as the internet bull dog. Switzerland is 10th, which is not really surprising, because I never found the speed less there. The Euro cup live HD streaming was so peaceful that I never had realized the need of TV.

Ah, back to the country statistics! Don’t worry too much if you feel doomed at the prospect of applying for a Korean visa. There are places in US  which are as good; in fact better! If you go by the fastest internet cities/towns, then Berkeley is the place. Average speed of internet at Berkeley is 18.7 Mbps, which is better than the Korea’s national average:-).

All these are published by Akamai technologies. An interesting thing, reported by them is on the trend in the average speed. It turns out that, the average speed has come down, in the recent years. Korea itself slowed down there.  The Korean downloads were 29 percent slower in 2009 than 2008 and they were further 24 percent slower in the fourth quarter than in the third quarter of 2009.

As always, Aart has that super skill to put things in an eye catching manner. Daniel phrased it more aptly in his blog, as follows: “Aart also introduced the word systemic (yes I had to look it up) and a mathematical equation correction: Semiconductor design enabled results are not a SUM but a PRODUCT. As in, if anywhere in the semiconductor design and manufacturing equation there is a zero, the results will be a bad wafer, die, chip, or electronic device, which supports GFI’s vision for a new type of collaboration between partners and customers.” Beautifully put and phrased.

If you have ever listened to Aart’s talks, it is a no brainier to guess the kind of super presentation slides he makes. Here is the one from this talk (Again, please read Daniel’s blog for elaborate discussion on this). The analogy is the task of finding a vegetarian restaurant without the service of a vegan mother in-law. The point is that, at the moment it is still long and expensive a route. We need smarter ways to speedup (and cheaper of course).  I leave you to Daniel’s blog for further read. It indeed is a fabulous read.

Couple of months ago, the WiGig alliance and WiFi announced a co operative agreement to share the technical specification and compliance testing for the 60GHz and WiFi. So, from a standard point of view things are moving pretty fast. Afterall we seem to have learned from the atrocious delay in the many earlier standard evolution, most notoriously the IEEE 802.11n. A product compliant to WiGig/IEEE 802.11ad is still far away, but there is serious motivation to get the standard spec evolve.

There are two parallel drives on the 60GHz spectrum. In terms of productization, the non standard, some flavour of proprietary solutions are  kind of available in the market.  The Sibeam’s WirelessHD™ and Amimon’s  propritery WHDI solutions on 5GHz spectrum are  available now. On 60GHz only one product (as far as I know) is available and that is compliant to WirelessHD™.

By the way, the WirelessHD™ also published the 1.1 version of their consortium spec. The IEEE spec and WirelessHD™ are now showing no sighs of consensus, which is  abad sign. Hopefully, at some stage these two merge and get one standard spec. My concern is that, in the event dual standard, there is potential interference between the  two standard compliant products. The one chipset WirelessHD™ compliant which is available (not sure whether it is selling) is damn too expensive. So, we need tremendous price scaling down to make these things viable from a business point of view.

The WiGig product is unlikely to hit the market in the next 2 years, but it will come sooner than later. The three main applications of WiGig are  (1) Short range streaming of uncompressed video for HDMI to HDMI devices (2) Desktop storage (which is much like the wireless USB once talked about highly during the UWB days).The much talked about USB3.0 will become an important requirement for this to happen. Intel will have to abide this transition on all processors, which I am sure will happen at some stage  (3) Docking stations: Wireless transfer between monitor and docking station.

Pricing is going to be the single most bottleneck for WiGig to get into the mass market. Under $10 chipset is a bare minimum requirement to have any kind of penetration into the consumer electronic market. Learning from the way, things moved in the past, pricing problem can be scaled in a few years.

In my opinion, the killer need for 60GHz to succeed will be to get serious power savings. The antenna size will be significantly small (because of the higher carrier frequency) and perhaps that may perhaps be a silicon based integrated antenna. To get into portable devices, we may have a solution which stress less on battery. Can we look that ahead now, say 5 years from now?

The new spec has some very interesting features. While it consume 1.6GHz of bandwidth, with multiple antennas it calls for some sophisticated signal processing techniques to scale the 1GHz mountain. The radio design is extremely challenging. Above all, we need backward compatibility with the WiFi. I hope by then we can get away with those annoying IEEE 802.11b out of the box!

So, the days ahead are exciting. It is natural to pose this question: how much more on wireless? As Marconi’ said. “It is dangerous to put limit on wireless”. So true!

Firstly, the hero term, “corner lot”. Corner lot is a term referring to the semiconductor fabrication process corners. Basically, the fabrication parameters are deliberately (and carefully) changed to create extreme corners of a circuit etched in semiconductor wafer. These corner chips are expected to run slower or faster than the nominal (average behaviour of) chip produced in large volume. These corner lot chips also function at lower or higher temperature and voltages than a nominal chip. In short they differ from the typical parts, in terms of performance.

Why do this? Well, the simple answer is: To study the robustness of semiconductor chips mass manufactured out of a complicated fabrication process. When millions of chips are produced at the assembly, statistics come into play (think of the law of large numbers and central limit theorems). In order to ensure that, the manufactured chips function within a certain confidence interval  (within certain variance from the typical parts), it is a practice to fabricate corner lots.

When the volume of samples is large, the manufactured VLSI chips are likely to have performance variation, which admit a Gaussian statistical distribution. The mean of the distribution is the nominal performance of the chips. The three sigma or six sigma performance from the nominal one is that entails upon the corner lot chips. The process parameters are carefully adjusted to the three sigma (or six sigma depending on the need) from the nominal doping concentration in transistors on a silicon wafer. This way, one can deliberately mimick the corner chips which comes out in the volume production. In the manufacturing routine, the variation in performance may occur for many reasons, due to minor changes in temperature or humidity present in the clean room. The variation can also happen with variation in the die position relative to the center of the wafer.

In essence, the corner lots are groups of wafers whose process parameters are carefully adjusted according to chosen extremes. How are these corners produced? In other words, what exactly is changed to carefully achieve these extreme wafers? The exact details are not presented here. From this forum, I infer that the main parameters are 1) the doping concentration. 2) The process variation. 3) The resistance of the actives 4) the properties and thickness of oxides 5) The effective width, length of the stray capacitances etc.

What do we do with these corner lot chips? These extreme corners are characterized at various conditions such as temperature, voltages etc. Once the characterization across these corners is proved to be within accepted limits, then the mass manufactured volume of semiconductor chips falls within the required confidence interval. If all the corner lot chips meet he performance, it is safe to assume that, the huge volume of chips mass manufactured also will fall within the performance limits. That way, humongous saving of time and effort from testing of each chips is achieved.

What are the different process corner types? There is no end to the terminologies here. The nomenclature of the corners are based on two letters (we limit attention to CMOS semiconductors alone). The first letter attributed to the NMOS corner and the second letter for the PMOS. Three types exist in each, namely typical (T), fast (F) and slow (S).Here, slow and fast refers to the speed (mobility) of electrons and holes. In all (i.e., ) corners and they are FF,FS,FT,SS,ST,TT. Among these, FF,SS and  TT are even corners since both PMOS and NMOS are affected equally. The corners FS and SF are skewed. The even corners are expected to function less adversely compared to the skewed corners, for valid reasons.

By the way, the obvious impact of the “corner” feature is the difference in device switching speed, which is related to the mobility of electrons and holes. The mobility of electron is related to the doping concentration (among others). A rough empirical (as shown) model shows the following relationship. The mobility depends also on the impurity and doping concentration . The parameters vary, depending on the type of impurity. The three common impurity elements are arsenic, phosphorus, boron (See this link for further details)

where, and are the minimum and maximum limits of the mobility. is a fitting parameter.

In the figure (below), the mobility of electrons due to different impurities and doping concentration are shown. The three commonly used dopants are arsenic, boron and phosphorus.

It is an irony that, the dopant which is deliberately added  to increase conductivity of semiconductor itself slows down the mobility of electrons and holes due to collision (of electrons or holes) with the dopants.

A touch of note on the term mobility too. Broadly speaking, the device switching speed is directly related to the mobility of charged particles (electrons and holes). So, higher mobility somewhat implies that better and faster switching logic etc. When an electric field is applied to a semiconductor, the electrostatic force will drive the carriers to a constant average velocity , when the carriers scatter though the impurities and lattice vibrations. The ratio of the velocity to the applied electric field is called the mobility . That is., . Initially, the velocity increases with increase in electric field and finally reach a saturation velocity at high electric field. When the carriers flow at the surface of semiconductor, additional scattering may occur and that will pull down the mobility.

The kind of interactions which happens at atomic and sub atomic levels within and outside a transistor are way too complex to comprehend (in a blog for sure!). Besides, the millions (and these days billions) of these transistors all must work in tandem to make the system function as desired; And that too, with not a single one failing! To make business, certain economic sense should prevail as well. It goes without saying that, time is extremely critical to get the product into action. The split lot is one heck of a way not to stretch that time window.

(Photo courtesy)

Initially, I just managed to read a near full chapter content at books.google.com, but later I was convinced myself to get the book at Amazon. After losing the 7.5 USD used book offer, I finally had to content myself from ordering the next cheapest option of 40USD. I am expecting this to arrive in a few days. A brand new book would cost 130 bucks anyway!

My talk, (on the joint work with Emmanuel) is on Tuesday afternoon. Need to work a bit on the slides too! Feeling a touch tired, after the sleep being deprived for the last two days! I will also try to pen down a bit on some of the interesting talks I am going to attend.

The award winners are:

Fields medal: Elon Lindenstrauss, Ngo Bao Chau, Stanislav Smirnov and Cedric Villani. One Israeli, a Vietnamese, a Russian who lives in Switzerland and a Frenchman. Here is a nice interview transcript where Robert Siegel talks to Julie Rehmeyer, discussing the award winners. A pretty nice brief bio introduction to the fabulous medalists.

Congratulations to all winners. The Fields Medal announcement is here. Nevalinna, Gauss and Chern medals announcement is here.

In one version of the Erdős-Rényi process, one start with a set of isolated vertices and then keep adding random edges one at a time;  More specifically, at each stage one choose two vertices at random from among all pairs that are not already connected, then draw an edge between them. It turns out there’s a dramatic change in the nature of the graph when the number of edges reaches . Below this threshold, the graph consists of many small, isolated components; above , the fragments coalesce into one giant component that includes almost all the vertices. “The Birth of the Giant Component” was later described in greater detail in an even bigger paper–it filled an entire issue of Random Structures and Algorithms (1993, 4:233–358)–by Svante Janson, Donald E. Knuth, Tomasz Luczak and Boris Pittel.

Ofcourse Joel Spencer has written a beautiful article on AMS commemurating the golden anniversity of the giant component.

When pointed this to Rudi, he  was as usual every modest about these. I am sure I will get to have a coffee treat from him, in Lausanne! Place Palud or Ouchy?

A century ago, Simon Newcomb observed an unexpected pattern in the first digits of logarithm tables: The digit 1 is significantly more likely to occur than 2, 2 than 3, and so on. More than a half-century later, Frank Benford rediscovered the first-digit phenomenon and found that it applied to many tables of numerical data, including the stock market, census statistics and accounting figures. New mathematical insights establish the empirical law developed by Newcomb and Benford as part of modern probability theory, and recent applications include testing of mathematical models, design of computers and detection of fraud in accounting.

Here is another interesting finding on temperature data and the final digits.  A proof and formal review of the original work is available, presented by Hall.

Here is an intuitive description of the Benford’s law.

Considering the form Lionel Messi has been, we can hope for more from Barca. Can Argentina too pin hope on Messi at the forthcoming world cup title ? Let us hope so!

Alex, firstly listed 10 great minds whose contribution to mathematics is simply awesome.  However, the list to me is far from complete and it is grossly incorrect to call the selected 10 are the best.  Perhaps we should have named it “10 amazing mathematicians”.  I am sure Alex didn’t do an exhaustive research on the mathematicians who lived on this planet. If we are to limit the number 10, then there are many other mathematicians whose contribution will any day stand taller than some of these. Newton, Shannon, Kologomorov, Fourier, Galois, Shannon, Abel, Euclid and even Ramanujan are some of the names which comes to my mind at once.  Many French mathematicians are given a miss as well. Some may argue that, these are not pure mathematicians, but they all had produced more than one mathematical theory which for sure changed the world; sometimes beyond mathematical world. Newton for his Calculus can never be omitted from the top ten.  Shannon’s mathematical theory is kind of the underpinning of literary everything in communication including the internet .  Fourier’s once ignored (and painfully debated) work on heat, which eventually  spurred harmonic analysis and the young Galois’s spike all takes merit.

Among the list, Euler, Copernicus, and Gauss will pick themselves any day.  I reckon Cantor will also find a wider consensus to be within top ten. Perelman and Tao are clearly two of the modern greats, but to say that they are among the top ten of the over 3000 year old formal mathematical history comes with a touch of boredom.  Erdos is one of the popular mathematician in the 20th century, who has been an immense contributor to many different areas of mathematics. Moreover, he has been a maverick among the modern mathematicians because of the travel crazy, migrating style life. He is one of my favourite mathematician as well. Whether he ranks himself in the all time top ten is not clear to me.

Nevertheless, Alex has spawn an article which will spur some curiosity to the general reader on the history of mathematics. Mathematicians from 500BC, Copernicus to this date (Perelman and Terrence Tao) are there in the list.

The Italian fame Cardano is apparently one of the original mathematician who paved the probability theory. To my ignorance I have not heard much about him.  I am curious about that part of the history now.  I had heard of the Hypatia legacy in mathematics, and had since forgotten about that Greek tragedy. Reading the new list, it reminded me of the atrocities of a state indulged in certain dogma or religious view do to any new scientific claim. This is clearly not the only instance of such a thing happened.  Galelio also had difficulty convincing the orthodox society of his time. And there are many. Why then, even now, the religious fanaticism in many states mock the Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The religious monks and the administration there to, all over the world still latch to the belief that it is some hand of god who created the universe and then every single creatures and plants. Ludicrous to say the least! But then, religious beliefs are often personal and one can be blind sometime.

The game is being played by Alice and Bob. Alice selects one of possible objects, and Bob can ask   binary questions (where the answer can be either  yes or no only), in a quest to identify the object selected. If Alice is always truthful, then questions are obviously both necessary and sufficient. Now, suppose Alice is allowed to lie up to times. How many questions does Bob need to get the correct object? Alternatively, given questions, what is the maximal number of objects that Bob can separate? This version of the “twenty questions game” with lies is known as Ulam’s game.

This is the scoring pattern (Much like a UK telephone number including the ISD code!): 0444664614106666600401. Even more striking thing is that, some dot balls figured out in between. Those were the times when batsmen got bored by hitting anything not too cosy for them!

The game itself was set with an awesome theatrical presence. Arguably the best two of the men ever played tennis positioned one side. Sampras and Federer need no introduction of any kind, do they. They announced their aura straighaway by a series of volleys and top serves. Afterall, they just have 30 grandslams between them, Just? Who patrolled the other side of the net? Agassi-Nadal combo. Boy, can you ask for more, if you are a tennis fan?

I really enjoyed watching these games. Agassi was at his imperial best, cracking jokes. Equally good were the Sampras-Fedex pair who at best are stoic when it comes to mood display in public. But even these  usually laconic persona gave away to some fun talking throughout the match through the microphone. In all, it was different, but filled with fun. And what is more, it was all done for a good cause.

A cool presentation I liked there is about the evolution of the universe tagged against the timeline since the big bang. It goes to show how fast things moved in the beginning; yet how slowly it took to get into this fabulous shape (whatever is known as of today) that we live in. No doubt this is a continual process of marvel.

Well, tapeout refers to that fancy thing the designers deliver to the (semiconductor fabrication) fab companies in Taiwan (well, I can say so because most of the fab companies are in Taiwan). The fancy algorithm we conceptualized in plain equations, went through the LaTex pages and then C programs finally took shape into RTL and gates and transistors. That then further went through the backend processes to eventually a set of masks. These mask description is what is given to the semiconductor manufacturing companies. These days, it is just a  matter of file transfer using ftp or so. Then you can rightfully ask:why there is a term called tape out? Well there is history to it, fair enough I will say!

Also check as well as this for some more details.

The probability that a random matrix binary matrix with each element chosen uniformly ( and picked equally likely), is of full rank for is

The probability that a random matrix binary matrix with each element chosen uniformly ( and picked equally likely), is of full rank  for is

On packet erasure channels (internet being one close realization of a model of this kind, where, the TCP/IP suit, one can either gets packets correctly delivered or lost in the wild), Luby Transform (LT) codes forms an easy way to transfer information.  It is well known that, asymptotically (When the number of information symbols  (or packets)  and the number of packets received $r$ are large) near full recovery is made possible by simple peeling decoder which grows in complextity at . The claim is that, for   or so, with , on average  we can, with high probability, recover all of  information packets  by simple unwrapping of xor-ed packets. A more precise statement will read as: If from information packets, each coded packet constructed independently by xor operation (the number of packets taken for xor operation follows a distribution; Plain vanila version of LT codes uses Soliton distribution), then the content of the original information source can be recovered from any packets with probability by an average of symbol operations. However, when the number of input symbols is not large (say less, ) the overhead term is not small. It is not too surprising, since we need sufficiently large and to converge the performance in expectation.  One can think of solving the system of linear equations using Gaussian elimination and get the best figures, but the question mark stays on the complexity of this method over the cheaper peeling decoder complexity .

Conventional LT decoding based on Peeling decoding rule terminate, once the number of degree -1 packets (ripple as it is called in graph theory parlance) are void. One can hope to continue from there, by using Gaussian elimination and decode a a few more (if the graph matrix rank permits it). If the original graph is full rank, one can technically decode all of them.  Gauissian eliminatio being heavy, one hope to find an easy, preferably recursive method. Indeed there comes Wiedemann and that is what the authors use.  The authors propose what they call as full rank  decoding, which essentially is LT decoding, until there are no more degree one packets. From there, they borrow a packet and then uses Wiedemann algorithm which is somewhat light on computational complexity.

The larger aspect on whether this scheme do any better than conventional LT peeling decoder is the other question they answer. To achieve full recovery we need to have a full rank matrix. Now, the matrix being a sparse matrix defined over where is the number of received packets. The probability of the matrix having a full rank will directly help us to infer the decoding merits. This is an interesting piece since I had looked into the computation of the rank of a binary matrix and also the probability of a random matrix rank being equal to an arbitrary value. All this was done during the Modern Coding Theory doctoral course by Ruediger Urbanke at EPFL.  For binary random matrix, we can also setup a recursive formula and thereby a good inference on the probability of decoding can be arrived at.

Times has published a truly nice article commemorating this new record. Cricket is not wideley popular in all parts of the globe. The United States is not among the cricket frenzy nation either. England and her former colonies are the main countries where the game took the center stage over many years. As for records, cricket is the second most popular game in the planet, after soccer. The article hence put the new feat in perspective for the non-cricketing community. Come to think of this record, we must realize that 200 runs need to be scrored from a maximum of 300 deliveries (excepting illegal deliveries such as no balls). On the average one batsman can hope to get about 150 deliveries. In baseball analogy, this is equivalent to getting 150 pitches. It seldom happens that one get more than this. That means, one will have to consistently hit the balls at a rate exceeding 100% strike rate. Tendulkar achieved the score in 147 balls, at a strike rate of 136.5%. It calls for multiple virtues including patience, stamina, focus and talent. All have to be combined and score runs at a faster rate.  It is not easy, by any means. It was something fabulous if not more. There have been scores close to 200 in the past by great cricketers including that from Tendulkar’s previous outings, but this one will go down as the best, literally because this came against a top quality bowling attack and a formidable fielding unit of the protease.

Here is the list of the top ODI scores.

Among them, Richards 189 against the then England may be the one comes closest in terms of quality of opposition bowling. Syed Anwar’s 194 against India is also a glorious innings played by the elegant left hander against India at Chennai. But neither Engalnd nor India will claim to have a strong fielding mastery when compared to the South African unit. So Tendulkar’s new innings clearly own special merit.

It is difficult to comprehend the stardom associated with a five foot tall man. To know this all, one need to be in India. Tendulkar earns the respect of close to a billion souls in India alone. Expectations are at levels beyond one can associate to any moving object. No parallels, really. Every time he goes to bat,  millions glue to the television sets (and now internet).  Social hierarchy still exist at large in Indian lsociety. Religion and politics still separates people. People fight for reasons less than logical, but in the name of religion and castes. It sometimes goes beyond what civilized society can comprehend. The difference between rich and poor is startling. But nothing of that

The final stage had two actors at their imperial best. Harbhajan singh and Hashim Amla. Amla was the epitome of concentration, all personified in human form. Things surrounding him was chaotic and noisy. None of the furies around him however bothered one cool mind of his. Googly, leg breaks, off spin all were dealt with the impeccable calmness. Yet, Harbhajan was the hero emerged in the grand finale. His reaction when Morkel was adjusted LBW has literally pumped the Eden gardens.  That heralded the match, curtains were down on the cricket field, but the celebrations had only began.  Test  match cricket came alive yet again. What treat!

If Harbhajan was the pivotal figure in the finishing stages, one cannot forget Zaheer Khan‘s contribution in the first innings. That one session post tea in day one triggered a possible result in India’s favour.   The stage was well set for the Indian batsmen to drive home the advantage. Boy, did the famous Indian batsmen cash in? The master and student combo were at their best show on day two. The way Tendulkar handled the day and his attacking student Sewhag was amazing. Their innings paved the way for the man who own part of the Eden pitch to come and do a stroll. VVS Lakshman in the company of Dhoni did the routine. When India declared their innings on day three, it was ample clear that India is well within a big win.

The nature had her own ideas to add to the drama. Bad light and rain shared the stage time on day four. But action on the curtailed day favoured India with three top order wickets, including that of the important number of Jacques Kallis. Day five was yet again bright and sunny. Amla stood the ground like a rock, even when things around him followed a different formula. Indian bowlers tried their best, but nothing seriously worked against Amla. The leg before shout by Harbhajan when Amla was in the 70s had serious merit, but that was the lone chance the cool mind offered to the 11 folks. Otherwise he was knocking everything came in his way to still.

In the final stages Tendulkar came to bowl a couple of overs or so. Considering that, it was he who took three pivotal wickets in the 2001 stage, it was a great ploy by the captain. The dangerous opener Hayden, the ever so dangerous Gilchrist and the flashy Shane Warne all were tapped by the magic of Tendulkar in the 2001 classic. But things changed a lot since. Lot of water has flown away under the bridge over nine years. Tendulkar hardly bowl these days,even at nets. Yet, the very second ball almost curtailed the match. One pitched a few inches outside the offstump took a near 90 degree turn and missed the Morkel stumps by a whisker. It was a fabulous delivery.  Not as great as the famous one to Moin Khan, but it still had some magic.  He had done this many a times in the past. So, I hastened to believe that, he was going to have a different script for the final moment. But how can Harbhajan leave his favourite ground without a five wicket haul? It was only fair to have him take that final wicket and seal the match.  As they say, so be it.

For South Africa, there will be disappointment,but no one needs to remind them where they lost the plot. The first day evening proved too costly for them. They were outstanding at Nagpur, but Calcutta favoured India. In all, it was a fabulous test series. It was hastily arranged.If only the cricketing authorities gave it a thought to have a longer test series (by ignoring the flashy one day series)! Not to be! Anyway why complain, when we had two great matches. Long live test cricket!

Anyway, defying Claudius, Valentine continued to secretly perform marriages for young lovers. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, the king ordered that he be executed. The martyr Valentine became one of the most popular saints in centuries to come in Europe, especially in France and England.

Valentine day of the modern world has surely made St. Valentine proud for his worthy sacrifice. After all, it was all for a good cause. Love is beautiful. It is up-to the people to decide, what way they want to celebrate. There is nothing as beautiful than seeing people in love.  The very sign of love is pleasing to the eyes. Let love relish.

Happy Valentine’s day.

The infrastructure and development in general was poor even before the calamity. The nation is one of the poorest nation in the world, let alone in the American continent. The governance is often criticised for sheer negligence. What is agonizing is that, the country has rich resources, both natural and people. Yet, the reality paints a sorry picture. It is agonizing. Is this all human?

Many many happy returns of the day Martin. NY times has a nice page published on his birthday!

To be fair, England under the low profile Andy Flower simply capitalized the Aussie weakness in bowling and to some extend on their batting. The over hyped Peterson didn’t make any significant contribution and considering that, it is an incredible achievement to the team coached by Flower. The English press must be over the moon with encomium showered on the cricketers and system around it.

The other big event came down with the Ashes 2009 curtain was the retirement of Andrew Flintoff from test cricket. A fascinating cricketer, an enthralling breed at times will be missed in tests. His gesture as a gentleman when his team is in the loosing side has been something worth recalling. I would like to think that he under achieved, but his commitment as a cricketer (in the playing arena) is largely unquestionable. He is not the best all rounder, as many calls, especially in the English press, but in my book he was a fine cricketing all rounder that England had over the last 10 years or so.

While, standing in the lake  with chest level water and overlooking the Alps mountains,  it reminded me of the photos of saints in olden days taking a morning yama’s in the Ganges overlooking the Himalayas. I’ve never been to Ganges, but for once I could perhaps feel a sense of their state of mind. I felt like singing one of those Yesudas classical songs, standing with half immersed body. I don’t quite remember whether I did one. I was in a state of fulfilment sort to say!