Engineering And The Art of Accidental Enema Prevention

Caught your eye with that title, didn't I? How many of you have plopped down on one of those newfangled light sensor-equipped toilets, one that's supposed to auto-flush only after your bum lifts off the seat, but one which inevitably gushes fresh water into the bowl (and, along with it, various substances onto your bum) while you're still 'on the throne'? Every time this happens to me, I think about writing this blog post, and it unfortunately happened several times while I was traveling last week both before and during CES, and again Tuesday while I was at the MacWorld Expo. It's one obvious and incredibly annoying example of the need to not only do computer-based simulation, but also exhaustive subsequent prototype evaluation, prior to taking a chip or system into production.

Video is another example that often comes to mind. Tossing reference clips at an encoder, or reference bitstreams at a decoder, often delivers insufficient fault coverage. You need to take the testing to the next level; bring the chip or system into the real world, throw some real-world images and bitstreams at it, and adjust your algorithms based on the artifacts and other problems that you encounter. Prototype testing is a requirement that the FPGA vendors continue to fiscally benefit from. They like to tout how they're obsoleting ASICs, and indeed the cost-effective low- and mid-range densities in their product lines (along with structured ASICs) are housing designs that historically might have gone to a cell-based ASIC. But although the biggest, budget-busting showcase chips in their product portfolios aren't going into high volume production, they're still finding significant use (ironically, often at semiconductor competitors) as ASIC prototypes. Granted, they may not run at ASIC speed. But they still provide useful functional results.

What examples of the need to do real-life prototype testing can you think of? And have you also been the victim of an accidental enema? No pictures, please