Archive for March, 2008

2008 Week 13

Monday, March 31st, 2008

It’s been a long time since I posted a general update. We’ve been busy. Most recently we built cars for the Pinewood Derby race. Trent is almost official in scouts, and Alec decided to make one, too, so we got to build three. It was rather involved trying to get them all done at once. At least they were all black…

 

Pinewood derby carsPinewood derby carsPinewood derby cars Pinewood derby carsPainting pinewood derby carsPainting pinewood derby carsPainting pinewood derby cars AlecCalebTrent

For Easter we had a lot of fun decorating and hiding/finding eggs, as usual…

 

Decorating easter eggsDecorating easter eggsDecorating easter eggsDecorating easter eggsEaster egg huntEaster egg huntEaster egg huntEaster egg hunt

I made the mistake at one point of tossing one of Mark’s eggs into his basket. He immediately decided that throwing the eggs looked like much more fun than picking them up.

This past week we started the spring soccer season, with Caleb, Trent and Alec all playing again. Kim and I are team-coaching Alec’s team, which should be fun. We didn’t really account for Mark in planning how to run practices, however, so that will be an interesting challenge as always.

More photos from the last few months here:

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My day job

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Tukwila WSJ ad

I work in Intel’s Itanium microprocessor design group. Our most recently completed project was the Tukwila processor. Intel’s Itanium line has not had a lot of positive press in it’s 10+ year history, due to delays, underwhelming performance and slow market adoption. Tukwila looks much better so far.

These are enterprise-grade microprocessors, not like your standard Pentium or Core Duo chip. This baby packs 2.05 billion transistors, the little switches that control all the logic, store memory and such. For comparison:

Tukwila package

Intel 4004 (1971): 2300
Intel 8088 (1979): 29,000
Pentium (1993): 3,100,00
Pentium 4 (2000): 42,000,000
Core 2 Quad (2006): 582,000,000
Tukwila (2008): 2,050,000,000

I’m a geek, I think that’s cool.

My job, specifically, involves writing software used to design and test the billions of tiny wires that connect all those switches together. At least, that’s one part of my contribution to Tukwila.

Each one of these projects lasts 4-5 years all together, though I’m only involved in the first half of that (design before it gets manufactured). After the first manufacturing samples — actual silicon parts we can plug in and test — my focus shifts to the next project, Poulson in this case. Poulson is my 5th major project in the 11 years I’ve been with the group.

I actually rather enjoy the work I do. I work with great people on challenging projects, doing a combination of long-term strategic development and daily problem solving. The challenges change frequently as we try to push the envelope.

Only problem is, I don’t see myself doing the same thing for another 20-30 years. So now I’m trying to figure out what’s next… Stay tuned for that!

Tk-Graphviz 1.00

Saturday, March 29th, 2008

clust4.gifTk::GraphViz v1.00 is now available on CPAN. Alternately, download it here.

This perl module uses the GraphViz graph visualization engine to display directed and undirected graphs within a Tk::Canvas. It makes it easy to bind actions to nodes and edges of the graph for interactive applications.

All My Devotion was Emotion

Friday, March 7th, 2008

I thought this was extremely well done: