Blog

December 31, 2007

Since DMA controllers are instantiated in many blocks, the DMA controller is a good place to put additional debugging tools.

November 30, 2007

The current values of the address and byte count registers in the DMA controllers can provide clues to troubleshoot the problem.

October 31, 2007

Porting firmware code to a new hardware platform often requires making changes that break support for old platforms.

September 29, 2007

I mentioned I had a debug logging utility in my code, and everybody started laughing. At first, I did not know why they laughed.

August 31, 2007

The constant drive to announce improved products with new features can force frequent changes in both hardware and firmware.

July 31, 2007

The importance of proper management support for buffers – support in terms of status, interrupts, and errors.

June 30, 2007

To minimize the time hardware and firmware have to wait for each other, the proper use and sizing of buffers can help balance the load.

May 31, 2007

Because the ASIC had not been implemented per the standard, other components had to deviate from the standard to interface with it.

April 30, 2007

In a survey I conducted of several firmware engineers, lack of good documentation of hardware was the number one complaint.

March 31, 2007

The software programming guideline, Never Add Functionality Early, should be applied judiciously to hardware development.