Engineering Elegance

Trivial Do/While Loop

A trivial do/while loop is an useful technique in C programming to make a multi-statement macro. Consider the following multi-statement C preprocessor macro and if-statement with two branches: #define aemb(x) { do_this(x); do_that(); } if (x > y) aemb(x); // Branch 1 else aemb(y); // Branch 2 Compiling these codes would give a parse error, because the first semicolon after do_this(x) terminates the if-statement, and causing ‘else’ unexpected. To make matter worse, the solution of sandwiching the multi-statement in curly Read more

By cyberglory, ago

7 Reasons You Need To Intern At A Startup ASAP

Quoting the blog entry: Yesterday morning was weird. I realized that June 30th means the last day of co-op and the beginning of what Northeastern calls Middler year. Since I’m finishing up an amazing six months as a BostInnovation intern, I feel like it’s about time I shared a little bit about what I’ve learned. This is mostly because I checked out some screenshots from a couple of the interviews I’ve done (Pictured Left), and if I don’t look ecstatic, Read more

By Shawn, ago

Z: Revenge Is Sweeter (Than You Were Before)

You might have realized from my previous post that I often bring a lot of emotion to programming. I code best and come up with the best designs when I’m happy and on a roll, but that’s also when I miss the most blatant bugs. When I’m down and struggling, I take longer to synthesize information, but because I force myself to inch my way toward progress, I sometimes discover things I had never known and would never have known Read more

By philipzloh, ago

Introduction to uClinux

As mentioned in the previous post, I’ve decided to work on μClinux kernel porting as my project in AESTE. I will briefly introduce it in this post. μClinux (Micro-Controller Linux) is a linux kernel targeted for embedded devices without memory management unit. μClinux was first implemented in DragonBall integrated microprocessor, Motorola MC68328 back in 1998, and it has now ported to many embedded systems in various areas. Examples of these devices include Apple iPod, Sigma Designs EM8500 based DVD players, IntelliCom Read more

By cyberglory, ago

Z: 99 Red Balloons

Some people observe that life is an uphill journey and all that matters is The Climb. I believe no such simple analogy for my career here at Aeste. You may remember that my task is to port the AEMB to QEMU and that I have successfully replicated an existing architecture as a first step. I was under no illusion that what was to come after that would not be much more difficult—but to say that I was completely prepared would Read more

By philipzloh, ago

Malformed XML and Tarballs.

Week 2 Day 1: So, the project decided. Its porting LLVM compiler into AEMB. Time to get the code. Should get svn version or release version? First, lets try the svn version. The error said: svn: Malformed XML: not well-formed (invalid token) Eh? What now? This must not be the only problem on this earth. Google it, found this. Week 2 Day 2: Spent the whole day try to hand-tweak each time the problem occurred. Still stuck. Week 2 Day Read more

By tedxmmu, ago

Shaiful: First week at AESTE.

Hello and good day, As part of task as an intern at Aeste, I was asked by my supervisor to regularly write blog about the task and the experience here. So, this is it. Ahmad Shaiful Amiruddin bin Taher, born in Marang, Terengganu. Final year student, BE(Hons) candidate from Faculty of Engineering, Multimedia University Cyberjaya Campus. Graduation expected, 2012. Insha Allah. Well, how did I end up here at a start-up company when every colleagues of mine all chasing those Read more

By tedxmmu, ago

Z: AEMB QEMU

Here I am, on the third day of my internship at AESTE, typing away my thoughts and recollections from the past half-week. In the background, the whirring of the air-conditioning and fan accompanies Jason Mraz and James Morrison as they prescribe that everything will be fine (if it’s broken code then fix it)… I arrived at AESTE on Wednesday feeling anxious (read: a little scared) because I was clear of my abilities. I wasn’t gonna try to fool anyone into Read more

By philipzloh, ago

A Good Start Accounts for Half the Success

During my first week in my company, I was very excited and eager to choose my very own project. However I am very new to the work that I am going to do. I have only very basic experience in C programming, minimal knowledge in assembly language and almost zero Verilog/VHDL. I doubt my ability to program something from scratch. Luckily I am allowed to modify an existing open source code. I am interested in working on making an instruction Read more

By tanagabiru, ago

FreeRTOS Preemptive Kernel

This post presents the sixth and the last phase of porting FreeRTOS for AEMB processor. In the previous post, both interrupt and interrupt handling were implemented to serve the mechanism of the preemptive kernel. Although, things seemed fine and set, yet the kernel failed to work when FreeRTOS tasks were created. This problem by far was one of the most complex problems that I faced during my progress in the project. It was hard to tell what was going wrong!! Read more

By oiasam, ago