2010

March 31, 2010

Published by Gary Stringham at March 31, 2010

Let’s All Be Geniuses

“Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.” Albert Einstein This profound quote says very succinctly where and how we should focus our efforts. How many of us are guilty of writing firmware and then getting it to work without thorough testing? Are we likely to make a change to the code […]

February 27, 2010

Published by Gary Stringham at February 27, 2010

Testing Device Drivers

I recently asked the owner of a device driver what type of information about the hardware settings does the device driver return to the application after each job. I was asking about one particular piece of information, a setting that the application tells the device driver to configure in the […]

January 30, 2010

Published by Gary Stringham at January 30, 2010

Register Design Eliminates Read-Modify-Write Issues

In the last two articles (here and here,) I discussed the dangers of read-modify-write operations on registers that create exposure to collision and corruptions by firmware. I discussed certain firmware and CPU techniques that can reduce these dangers, but not completely eliminate them. As promised, this month I will discuss […]