Everyone needs a Laptop Burka.... not!

Time for a quick aside. I'm a real sucker for two things: cool gadgets and great design (products, graphic design, advertisements, architecture, ...). I thought I'd share my favorite sites for those with similar interests:

http://www.engadget.com/
http://www.likecool.com/
http://dailyyoghurt.blogspot.com/
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/
http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/
http://gizmodo.com/
http://www.techcrunch.com/

As with everything, there's a lot of junk to filter through. Today there was on article on Wired's Gadget Lab site about a pretty ridiculous product called the Laptop Burka. As noted by Wired, the name's a bit offensive -- as is the idea in general. It'd be great to have a way to use the laptop in the sun -- but doesn't the Laptop Burka miss the point?

IEEE Design & Test Magazine's Special Issue on High-Level Synthesis

The July/August 2009 issue of IEEE Design & Test Magazine is a special issue on High-Level Synthesis. I've barely scratched the surface reading this issue, but I'm looking forward to spending more time reading it. While most of the articles are written by vendors or university researchers, there's one article that's been written by end-users:

Lessons and Experiences with High-Level Synthesis

by Soujanna Sarkar, Texas Instruments, Shashank Dabral, Texas Instruments, Praveen K. Tiwari, Interra Systems, and Raj S. Mitra, Texas Instruments

This article is a must read for those considering behavioral synthesis (C/C++-based synthesis). There's been a lot of hype about behavioral synthesis and expectations have been set (too) high. And, despite all the talk about openness and standards, there's very little data out there. This article is a step in the right direction -- let's hope there's much more. As well, there needs to be objectively comparable benchmark data.

In the coming weeks, I'm going to cover some of the more interesting lessons from this article. Stay tuned...