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Cornell University FPGA Class Projects for 2008
Matt writes "The new crop of Cornell University ECE 5760 projects are now online. Some really cool projects, as well as the previous two years' worth of projects." Since it's mid-December, many other schools, too, have either just let out or are about to; can you point to any other online collections of cool technical projects?
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A disclaimer: i hold a phd degree in physics and am working in research. When i studied, libraries were still the most common way to acquire knowledge, so i am biased.
However, i observe the following thing: AFAIR Wikipedia itself says it is not meant to be a "first source". Wikipedia can give you hints where to search in detail, and for sure that *is* great. However, a citation in a paper or your report serves two purposes:
a) make your work understandable for the reader (being nice to the reader)
b) give credit to the original author (being nice to the original author)
c) make clear what you have done/not done (being nice to yourself by specifically avoiding to be accused of scientific misconduct)
The traditional approach is that general text books should seldom be cited, and if so, very specifically. To me, if a student cites a specific wikipedia page the latter condition is fulfilled. So if a reasearch group somewhere on the world used FPGAS in a certain way, it is fair to cite their works and not an wikipedia article which was written from an enthousiast about an article which cooked the results of that group down in an popular science journal. However i suggest, if the wikipedia version is well written, to insert a sentence in the introductory part of the report like "Technique x using y is now widely researched and review reports and intodudory materials are commonly available [a,c,b]", which [a,b,c] beeing wikipedia, a textbook or something (not that you may put several references in a single citation). If it helped you, it can be mentioned. Dont however mention textbook knowledge which is expected from you and your peers.
The following things should be kepti in mind:
a) anything referring to a standard should carry the standards official publisher in the reference
Bad example: cite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11 for the standard instead of the standard itself. *However* iff the article on wikipedia contains additional information like ABOUT the standard and you want to mention this informally in a meta-sentence (e.g. "IEEE 801.11 is seen by the broad public as the only WLAN standard [quote to wikipedia]"), then it is for sure allowed.
b) dont fall for the illusion that wikipedia is faster than the scientic journals. i assure you its not. In the subjet i work, wikipedia is at least 4 years behind the *published* knowledge and understanding.
c) Wikipedia tends to be good for general knowledge and bad for specific in depth-knowledge. The theory behind the subject i am researching in mentioned only on the surface, but even the context with some papers from the beginning of the *last* century is missing (i'll add it when i find time).
So all in all: Saying to a student: "start at wikipedia" might be ok. One should also say "but follow the threads".
Hear, hear. As a guy with an ECE degree who now writes software for a living, I constantly marvel at how different the two disciplines are, and how most "software engineering" strikes me as... not really engineering.
While it's true that it's possible to mathematically prove many pieces of software to be correct (heh, or to mathematically prove them incorrect, as would be the case with most software out there), it's pretty rarely done. To be fair, it's incredibly difficult with most non-trivial programs, of course.
But there's something incredibly satisfying and elegant about having a hardware design that you can prove is correct.
Now, of course, many other things can horribly break that design (yay for analog effects, process deficiencies and defects, etc.), but that's a far cry from "well, it compiles, so it'll probably work." But that's reality for ya.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.