Kevin Hubbard

buymeacoffee.com/bml_khubbard...

Today I enhanced my Sump3 logic analyzer to let AI analyze millions of captured digital samples. A task far too time‑consuming for humans to tackle. In plain English, I asked "How many times does bsb_frm assert to logic-1 between the cursors". "10" It worked, first try, in spades. This is the way.

I did a YouTube podcast with Brian Tristam Williams of Elektor Publishing this week. Discussed my new book "Mastering FPGA Chip Design : For Speed, Area, Power, and Reliability" and also technology progression from 1970s to present day. It was fun and would do again. www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2xi...

My book just showed up in the wild, in Germany! I am still waiting for my print copy to cross the big pond. I've only ever seen my original PDF manuscript, so this is very exciting. A REAL BOOK! It's about $35 for print or eBook versions. I worked very hard on this. www.elektor.com/products/mas...

Today I finished the last chapter on my manuscript. 28 chapters, 310 pages. It's been quite the year long journey. It's the one book that I have in me. I really hope it turns out well. Even if it doesn't, I know I gave it my best. It has been a personal and professional journey well worth taking.

This took all day. So frustrating. Backtracked a whole bunch trying to conserve BRAMs. Going to try and add some foreground color next with all the wasted BRAM bits. "Hello World!" digital style in 1280x1024 analog VGA.

Generating VGA video with nothing but logic gates, ASCII text on a 1280x1024 display with an Artix-7 FPGA ( @digilent.bsky.social BASYS3 board ). VGA is EXTREMELY forgiving. With a 100 MHz reference oscillator, 107.4627 MHz (900/8.375) is as close as I can get to a 108 MHz dot-clock. Not a problem.

Probably still my favorite computer. Got me through high school and the start of college. So much in such a little package ( for the time ). Even connected me to a VAX PDP-11. The Apple //c.

The more Python I write, the more I realize it is the most perfect and most likely the last computer programming language that I will ever learn after doing this for 45+ years now. Today was a very good day at BlackMesaLabs. I feel like that fictional "10x Engineer" bullshit.

I'm still hopping on Twitter every couple of days. I'm only there to post articles about Elon Musk though. What an awful person. Trump and Musk truly deserve each other. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/w...

@woolaf.bsky.social Tom told me to follow you. What I've discovered over the years is that @radiofreetom.bsky.social is never wrong.

So my "retirement plan" from designing digital chips for profit ( ASICs and FPGAs ) since the 1990s is to stop at age 70 (2040) and just start writing software and fill up my GitHub site with useful free and open source Python programs. That's my dream anyways. I very well might be hallucinating.

It brings me endless joy that Chat-GPT both knows about and correctly describes my open-source project.

I was going through some old photos and ran across one of my very first code review. The year : 1978. The reviewer : my mother.

@jentaub.bsky.social Happy Birthday!

Starting "America Against America" by Wang Huning. "An outlook of why US is potentially heading toward a decline. Published in 1991, still widely read amongst high level Chinese political figures and bureaucrats. Any serious student of US-China relations will benefit greatly from reading this book."

Certainly sucks to be the CFO of Twitter these days. It's a mass exodus from X. "The Guardian has announced it will no longer post content on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, from its official accounts." www.theguardian.com/media/2024/n...

@stonekettle.bsky.social has a new essay on that other social media website. Check it out. www.facebook.com/Stonekettle/...

Today I stayed off Twitter, and: No Tesla, drove my 1994 Honda. No WaPo, read The Guardian. No SpaceX into orbit, I never left Issaquah. No Starlink, just Xfinity ISP for me. No AWS, just a stack of old Linux laptops. I bought two books and 2lbs of coffee from Amazon. I wish I knew how to quit you.

I started something new: I am turning my FPGA blog series (link) into a book, "FPGA Chip Design for Speed, Area, Power, and Reliability." I even signed a contract with a publisher last month. I look forward to sharing with everyone when I am done in 2025. blackmesalabs.wordpress.com/2024/05/27/b...

My oldest daughter is 3rd generation UW Husky. She took me to the UW-USC game last night (26-21 Win!). I always enjoy going back on campus and seeing what is new and what hasn't changed. The Paul Allen Electrical Engineering building left of fountain is amazing. I love being back. Class of 1993.

This was my November 6th post on that other place. I'm still trying to figure out how to move forward.

New post on downloading and installing "free" Intel/Altera version of the excellent ModelSim Questa VHDL+Verilog simulator. I've been using this simulator professionally for 30 years now and it's great to have it up and running at home for hobby projects. blackmesalabs.wordpress.com/2024/04/21/m...

I find it odd that we all don't have $500 sunglasses that act as 1080p displays for our iPhones and stream Roku TV shows direct to our eyes. People won't walk around wearing $1,000 ski goggles for this - Ray Bans though!. Is it only battery technology that is preventing this, or something else?

Kevin : Write a thriller novel starring Steamboat Willie as a secret agent that HALO jumps into Taiwan to stop a Chinese invasion. The novel should involve AI and TSMC and have a happy ending.

DALL-E failed my Turing test. "Draw me an image of a TSMC worker in a bunny suit making computer chips."

Being able to deposit a check at your bank by taking a picture of it with a telephone at home is one of those technology progression things I just never would have predicted. Remember "Back to the Future - Part II" where Fax machines in every room was the big tech prediction of the future?

Constant reminder in life: "Everything comes to an end." youtu.be/1Q7IfrS8CI4?...