Another week has passed (fifth) and my work on SHA1 is coming to an end. I’m right now before the testing phase which would be hopefully done by the end of the day. Summing up all my struggles with SHA1 I have to say it was more difficult than I assumed it to be initially. Of course algorithm itself is really easy (after all it’s just a few summations and XOR operations) but the thing that makes it non-trivial is Read more
As I mentioned in my previous post, my task for this week is to study the remoteproc framework. The goal is to discover how it works because later, I’ll be implementing about the same thing. Because of the limited resource and information on this specific framework, I had to start my research using the linux kernel (3.9.6) source code. I had to go through several C files in order to understand the said framework: remoteproc.h, remoteproc_core.c, remoteproc_elf_loader.c. Most of them contain Read more
I’m designing an HDMI transmitter. I often refer to XIlinx’s designs of the HDMI for demonstration on Spartan3 and Spartan6. The application notes for these two designs are very helpful especially the Spartan3 design. Moreover the coding itself is easy to understand. Here is the two application notes : for spartan 3 XAPP460 and for Spartan6 XAPP495 and here is the design files XAPP460 and XAPP495. You need to register with Xilinx’s website to be able to download the design Read more
The task at hand this week is to design an HDMI transmitter. I gotta admit it this is the most interesting project yet. HDMI is this cable that you connect between your computer and HD Display and magically high quality audio and video appears on that display. Of course it’s not only the cable but the whole system that takes audio and video data from your output device and delivers it to your display on time and without the need Read more
The last week wasn’t that productive, although I still learned a lot, mainly theory, about different hashing techniques. Did you know what are “nothing up my sleeve numbers” or Chaitin-Kolmogorov random numbers? Anyway, after looking more closely at the MD5 algorithm and consultation with my boss, we decided in the middle of the week that I should rather focus on SHA1 algorithm for now. The reason is simple, the later seems to be more implementation friendly and require less memory Read more
Miracle! The design we’ve been working on in the previous week works perfectly! Honestly speaking the main merit goes to my colleagues, as their part was more crucial (mine was just a wishbone master sending some 8-bit combinations through switches), but still, I feel relieved. Funny, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t believe if someone had told me few years ago that the sight of blinking LEDs would make me happy. There is a short video and some more detailed explanation Read more
This week i finished up writing the code for the receiver uart. My design includes a transmission register, a state register, a status register and a few counters. This was the first time, I was using a finite state machine in my design. My design would wait for a start bit and receive the bits with respect to a count that is a parameter. When it is time to sample the stop bit, the design would indicate if there was Read more
They say the first week is always the hardest. At the start of my second week, I was supposed to get the computer to read and write into an SD card by programming the PIC18F8722. After being on the receiving end of the massive scolding last week, I was being very fearful of getting it again and I guess the fear really hampered my thoughts and I wasted one day looking completely at the wrong direction in trying to find Read more
This is going to be my first weekly blog post at Aeste! I just joined this company as intern. As for the first week of my internship, Shawn asked me to study Git and do some C programming tutorials just to make sure that my understanding of the C language is decent enough to study the Linux Kernel which will be one of the main tasks during my internship here. Git is a version control tool to keep track of Read more
There were over two hundred applicants for our summer internship places this year. There was a stringent screening process and in the end, we have nine interns for the summer. We have a really good mix of summer interns this year. Our nine interns are working on various aspects of our new product, from chip-design through to web-application development. In terms of alma maters, we have five of whom are studying at some of the top universities in the world Read more