A view from our balcony

A view from the balcony of our old house 

We shifted our house recently. One thing about the new house is that it points away from downtown, so the great view we used to get from our old house (above) is now unfortunately gone...

Inventions

The first silicon transistor 

God, I have no work to do... it sucks and its so damn boring. Need to come up with some new ideas now... its been ages since I wrote my previous patent. Hmmmm... this needs some serious inspiration.

Let me compile a list of the most important patents/inventions in the history of electronic chips.

1947 - The mother of all inventions, the transistor, was invented
Shockley, bardeen and brattain did the honors

1958 - Gordon Gould invents the laser.
Jack Kilby (TI) and Bob Noyce (Intel) invent the integrated circuit

1968 - RAM invented by Rob Dennard

1971 - Microprocessor invented by Faggin, Hoff and Mazor.

This list makes interesting reading. Nothing really great and new's been invented since 1971. As most people involved with chip design would know, we face huge problems with designing better chips at this point in time. The present generation (us) seriously needs to start thinking and coming up with new ideas.

Think, dumbo, think. Else you're going to be just another also-ran who did what a zillion other people in the world do.

An interesting flight

This incident really happened. :)

Like I mentioned before on the blog, I went to india last month. So, there I was, waiting to board the flight at new york, when this really beautiful indian girl meanders into the boarding area. Like most guys would on seeing a cute girl like this, I started rubbing my eyes, and after telling myself I was behaving like a stupid teenager, went back to my novel.

The flight to paris was empty, and apparently the girl got bored or something, she suddenly came upto me and started talking. I was like: hell man, you broke up 10 months back and haven't seen anyone else afterwards, let's see if this girl is intelligent as well as good looking. At least its a good way to spend the 36 hours of the flight.

So we started talking, blah blah blah, and that later went on to flirting. This went on for some time, and then there was a six hour break at paris before going to madras.

BTW, an interesting aside... one really funny thing happened... that girl's name was malavika. I asked her if she had a nickname, and she was like, call me maal. All my friends call me that. I burst out laughing. She was like: why're you laughing? I asked her if she knew hindi. And she was like: "no, I don't... I later found out from a friend of mine after the nickname was kept what maal really meant."

So where was I? Break in paris.

It was 8 in the morning... we had breakfast together, and were hanging out at the airport. The paris airport is easily one of the best ones I've ever seen... and I've seen quite a few airports. Its got beautiful stores, and the french do everything with great class. So we went around all those nice great stores, still flirting n all.

I asked her to join me for lunch, and we had lunch, tried some great french wine... and were talking an awful lot of senti by now. Then, it was time for the flight to chennai, which was 18 more hours of talking, flirting, blah blah blah.

Just before landing at the madras airport, I was wondering if I should get her phone number. She was a nice girl, and was great fun to talk with, even though she wasn't intellectually the most intelligent girl I've seen. She found me interesting, I think... at least looking at the way she was talking.

So I asked her why she was going to madras and where she stayed n all... she points towards her ring finger, and says her marriage is on june 24th, and that's why she's going to india. She says the marriage is at so-and-so marriage hall, why don't I come?

I was thinking: Oh.. god... all this wasted effort!!! :-) And I paid those conniving french chefs for your lunch!!! Of course, I couldn't say this to her... and I was like:

WOW, that's great news.. congratulations!!! You must be all excited now, aren't you?

She was like: oh, yeah, marriage is a bit scary but I don't know, hopefully it'll work out.

Me thinking again: God, you're going to be married next month, why did you flirt with poor me?? Some kind of last attempt at flirting before getting married?

So this was how I landed in india. I really shouldn't be talking about this incident, because I made a big fool of myself. But hey, nobody knows who I am, and this story is funny.

(Actually, I've been telling my friends about this story too... we've been having a good laugh. This whole story sounds so much like a scene from hum tum)

Workoholism to joblessness

My last post was on workoholism. This one's on the opposite: joblessness.

I am between projects right now. And am leaving for florida for a week with some old school classmates on monday. Don't want to start work before then, cos' the break from work would be a pain.

So what do I do to kill the next 3-4 days?

Maybe I'll read a few novels. There's this frederick forsyth book which I took from my college library called the avenger. I know I've read it once before, but have forgotten the story. Talking about the library, the first book I borrowed from the library after coming to the US was Satanic Verses. That particular book was banned in india and I was itching to get hold of it for ages, just to find out what it was about.

The Satanic Verses got all kinds of attention in india, what with the fatwa on Rushdie n all. Besides, religion is one thing that's always captivated me. Me being a rationalist, its always been difficult for me to kind of understand the philosophy of praying to idols, breaking coconuts in temples n god knows what else, falling at the feet of people like jayendra saraswati who charges 20 k if he visits somebody's house, etc.

Talking about books which antagonized religion, there's the da Vinci code which says jesus was married to mary magdalene (whom many church figures are supposed to have branded a prostitute)... recently, there are dozens of books/treatises which have been written saying what's written in the da Vinci code are true/false.

Religion largely goes on faith. If someone believes in it, the faith really helps him out, I think. For people like me who don't believe anything without reason, the faith which acts as a source of moral support isn't there. Thus far, I have got by just fine without it. Will it work in the future? I don't know.

Accents

We were having a research group meeting today. My indian roommate (I don't want to take any names - let me call him ABCD - no pun intended :) - he's not a ABCD anyway) wanted to mention something. I haven't heard him speak in public before, and was really really surprised when I heard heavily rolled rrrrrrs coming out of his mouth.

Why do indian people put on accents? Do they want to blend into american society better/faster?

On the other hand, aren't they putting themselves at a disadvantage by not being themselves? Just to get an analogy with an indian situation: suppose you're tamil and you're in hyderabad... and you can't speak telugu. You'd prefer to bargain with an autowallah in tamil than in telugu, right?

But then, one thing that I've definitely noticed is that even though other indians in my circle think my roomie is being stupid to put on an accent, I find he's got many more american friends than the rest of us guys. Doesn't look like there's one correct answer to this question of putting on accents.

Genius

Willim Shockley (Seated) with Walther Brattain and John Bardeen, who shared his Nobel Prize in 1956 

I've seen many brilliant people... I have never idolized any of them, although I do have a healthy respect for their intellect.

Bill Shockley is one guy I really look up to, however, and consider a genius. My PhD advisor knew Shockley well when he was alive, and tells me that no one has ever impressed him with his intellect as much as Bill Shockley did. And when my advisor, who himself is considered a demi-god in electronics circles says that, you sit up and listen.

For those who don't know who Bill Shockley is, he is the guy who invented the transistor. And he's known to most people who design chips as one of the greatest intellects of this century. The list of things he invented makes your jaw drop! He made electronics possible.

I wonder if we'll see such genius again in this generation. Will we again see someone inventing something like the transistor which changes all our lives? I don't really know.

One area which could potentially be as path-breaking is silicon photonics. The basic idea is this:

The optical fibers you hear about and which made long-distance telecommunication possible are great for long distances, but are not a good idea for short distances cos' of the high cost of their lasers and detectors. (You need a laser and a detector to encode and decode info from the fiber) The cost of these optical components is high cos' they're made of compound semiconductor devices like GaAs, which are really tough to manufacture. If you make these components out of silicon, which you make normal chips out of, you can use optics even for short distances due to the low cost, which makes possible applications like connecting an optical fiber to your computer and then logging onto an internet connection.

Bottom line: You can download a movie in 10 seconds! Voice over IP becomes a cakewalk, cos' of the high bandwidth offered by optics.

That's why I believe Silicon photonics is going to be the next big thing to hit our lives, after electronics and computers. The only problem is that silicon doesn't emit light well, but when man wants to do something really badly, he always does it. I do believe silicon photonics will one day be possible. Intel is pumping an obscene amount of money into silicon photonics research.

I'm trying to put a snap of bill shockley on this post. Its the first time I'm using the photo post option, so it should be interesting to see if it works without any hitches.