This is not some story that I have woven with my imagination.
Rather it’s an accurate account of my profession, a glimpse into my world, the
world of electronics, the world of IC.
I
am trying to transform my world into a form which can be visible to everyone’s
eyes. The inspiration of this piece of literary work is my parents, their
enthusiasm in understanding my passion, my work.
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We are different, we are unique, we belong to a
different clan of intellectual human beings. We are engineers. We design
things. We discover and improvise technology. With the help of this tool we
improve the living conditions of fellow human beings. We serve the society. We
are better than these other innumerable average people. We are superior……….
What
a crappy thing to say. When I took admission in a renowned engineering college
and studied various subjects full of technical mumbo jumbo, slowly somehow we
grew this notion in the huge brain of ours. We considered ourselves better than
the non technical folks. After graduation I received a job as a design engineer
in an EDA based company and was relocated to Bangalore. I started working in
various projects as a part of the IO Characterization team.
Oh
boy, can you hear me talk? I am speaking gibberish again. Sorry guys, I
promised to make you understand my domain. I am talking alien, I understand.
Well pardon me please, I am so used to writing technical reports that it is
like a second nature to me. Well let me try to make it as simple as I can.
Pardon me if you can’t understand any part. Well, I guess I can always write a
sequel…….
So
as I was saying that I got this job in this technical company and started
working in various projects. I came to stay in Bangalore. My parents would
always ask me about my job. I tried to describe them about my field but in
vain. I failed to make them understand. My dad, who is a Doctor by profession
(although he likes to call himself a medical practitioner) would say “It has
been a while when I stopped understanding your language.”
Needless
to say, his words haunted me. They made me feel so selfish. There was a time
when I could not understand any aspects of science. My dad had been my tutor
and my mentor for the major part of my schooling. He is the man who is
responsible behind my growing interest in science. But since college I have
bifurcated my path of travel. Not only that I have also not tried to break down
the wall between his path and my path. I am trying to do just that. Probably I
will fail to break the entire wall. I am not talented enough, but I will try to
curve a hole through which my parents and anybody interested can take a look at
my other world.
The
Binary World :-
Before
delving right into the various aspects of my work let me try to make you
understand the nature and language of my world. It is essentially a digital
world or to be more precise a binary world.
You
may all have heard about the term “digital”. What does it stand for? Let me
take an example of a switch. If the switch is turned on bulb glows or fan
starts moving. If the switch is turned off, then there is no such activity. The
binary language is similar. When there is some activity, it becomes ‘1’ or
“true” and in absence of any activity it becomes ‘0’ or “false”. Quite simple
huh…. I bet children would love it if they only had to learn these two numbers
1 & 0.
Machines
also have the same tendency. They do not want to get overworked with all the
complexities of a normal communication medium like English for instance. They
want to keep it simple. Hence the only way to communicate with them is using
this binary language, i.e a series of 0’s and 1’s.
These
numbers ,i.e 1 and 0, in the binary language are called bits. Manipulation of
these bits are done using concepts called “gates”. It is similar to what a gate
means in an English language. These gates may have one or two or even more key
slots. However the number of slots should be power of 2 , i.e, 2^0 = 1, 2^1 =
2, 2^2 = 4, 2^3 = 8 …… and so on.
The
gates open into two different rooms, room of “1” and room of “0”. Depending on
the various combinations of keys the gates will open into the different
rooms.The only difference between gates in our world and this world is that it
is always not essential that key must fit the slot perfectly to open the gate
and letting the person enter. There are some gates having only one key slot
where if the key doesn’t fit the slot then only the gate will open and the
person can enter the corresponding room. These are called inverter gates as
they perform job which is just inverse to normal behaviour. Preposterous huh ?
Well……..
The Clock Authority :-
Every
world has an authoritative figure, a bureau which exercises control over the
common men, thereby restoring law and order. In my world this authoritative
body is “Enable”. They provide a medium of commutation between various points
of the world. The name of such medium is “clock”. You can envision a ropeway.
We have enjoyed riding it at one or another point of our life. In this ropeway
people are carried from the starting point to the ending point in a small cabin
for the passenger to sit and held uptight by a pulley hung on the rope. These
passengers can be compared to data or signal in our case and this medium of
carriage is analogous to the “Clock”. Thus clock has a tremendous infuence on
the mode of communication for all people. If the rate of rotation of the pulley
is increased then the speed with which the passengers reach the end point can
also be accelerated. This concept is utilised by the designers to generate high
speed devices.
If
authority gives permission then only signal will travel from its source to
destination and will be carried via the clock. It is similar to the innumerable
situations in the past when the government would announce a curfew and common
men would be advised not to leave their household. The reason may be either a
police raid or any situation of terror. The authority also determines whether
signal will travel from one point to another. If it becomes “1” i.e gives the
green signal then only the signal is allowed to travel. Quite the situation of
a caged animal right ?
But
there are few elements in every society who love to lead a life which is not
governed by any rules. They love to maintain their freedom. Similarly in this
world also the subjects are divided into two classes : one which follows the
authority of the bureau. They call themselves “Sequential”. The other half do
not follow the authority and do not depend on the clock. Their signals do not
wait for the clock to give them green signal to start their job. They call
themselves “Combinational”.
The Boolean Logic :-
If
you study the combinational people then you can understand they are not totally
devoid of rules. They love to live a very simple life. They live in the
present. They are not much bothered by incidents of the past.They only follow
some rules put forward by some true/false logic. Let me now try to explain this
logic to you.
Boolean
logic, originally developed by George Boole in the mid 1800s, allows quite a
few unexpected things to be mapped into bits and bytes.Numbers
and formulas help us put randomness into order. Electronics is no exception,
and Boolean algebra takes confusing circuit diagrams and explains their
functions mathematically. Boolean algebra serves as a way to quickly design
circuits without drawing them out by using simple algebraic formulas. The only
known fact that you can predict is that answer will be either 1 or 0. That's
the good part. There is no sense of any probabability. The answer is always
“yes” or “no”. You can toss a coin and determine the answer..... Joking guys
.....
The
rules are a bit different from traditional algebraic rules. But that you
already know right. We are different. Our world is upside down. Let me take a
few examples :
1) A
+ 0 = A; as with regular math, adding zero to a number will equal the original number.
When thinking in Boolean terms, see A + 1 as being equal to 1. Know that
"A" could be any number, then adding it to its complimentary number,
A', still equals "1." Write the formula as (A+A') = 1. Keeping your
mind on Boolean terms; see "A" added to "A" as being equal
to A, or A + A = A
2) Know
the following Boolean multiplicative identities by heart: (0)(A)=0, (1)(A)=A,
(A)(A)=A, and (A)(A')=0. Memorize these Boolean additive identities: (A + 0)=A,
(A+1)=1, (A + A) = A, (A + A')=1. Understand that when you invert a variable
two times, you get the same variable.
3) See
(A + B) as being equal to (B + A). Visualize a circuit receiving an
"A" and a "B" feed; it doesn't matter how these feeds are
arranged, the result is the same. Know that Boolean algebra has commutative
property of multiplication rules like regular Algebra. See (A)(B) as being
equal to (B)(A). Know these two formulas well: A + (B + C) = (A + B) + C;
"A" times (B)(C)= (B)(A) times "C"
and so on and
so forth......
Let's not try to
break our heads trying to understand the details of this logic. It took us
months to make this transition from regular math to Bollean math. So as you
must see now that the lives that these combinational people lead are not so
simple after all. Hence they have strong dislike for the additional rules being
applied to them by the authority.
The Sequential Way :-
There are some
people who are too much dependant on their past life. They do not like to live
in the present. Rather they love to analyze their past behaviour and actions,
recall their lessons learnt and act accordingly. These are the sequential
people.
As they like to
recall their past hence for these people a large memory to retain all the
relevant informations of the past is a necessary requirement. They latch onto
these informations and use them accordingly to behave in the present state.
These are the so
called “golden boys” of the society as they follow all the rules and
regulations laid down by the authority. They always travel using the medium
which is the clock only after getting the green signal given by the
“Enable/Disable” authority.
As they are the
rule followers hence they are not viewed as threat to the authority and find
themselves in positions of prominence in our world.
(to be continued)
Its really nice......
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