engineering
Senior Project Week 1: Working at NW Logic?
The first week of my senior project has been quite hectic. The reason for my title: "Working at NW Logic?", is that although I will be working at NW Logic, I never actually went to the NW Logic office this week. Due to issues with the management at NW Logic, I wasn't able to go in at the beginning of the week, so I stayed at home and worked on pieces of my project there. Since I wanted to do some one on one work with my mentor, and the management at NW Logic was still figuring things out, I ended up working at my mentor (Manny)'s office at The Oregon Technology Business Center (OTBC). The picture shows the desk that I was working at, which is right next to my mentor's desk, and Manny is slightly cut off by the picture, but he seems happy with the arrangement. That being explained, I will probably be bouncing back and forth between OTBC and NW Logic, depending on how much my present work depends on NW Logic's employees.
Concerning my work for the week, the first week was primarily getting me settled in. We discussed a lot of the big picture of the project, and how many different companies would be able to use it, and how he wants the entire project to be Open Source. And i spent much of my time at home writing a small tidbit of code for him to look at to assess where my abilities were at, and where he needed to help me. He determined, as many of my teachers and mentors in the past have, that I work quickly and efficiently, covering many ideas, but my detail and note-taking (documentation) could use a little improvement. Many of my teachers can attest to that.
For those looking for an overview of the project, what I understand so far is that I will be working to detail chips and registers in JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) by hand, and then writing a Python script, to then convert that "chip object" into other bits of data, that other departments can then use for whatever they need to. This script is meant to transfer information between electrical engineers and computer engineers working at the same company, to make their collaberation on one project as efficient as it can be. My first task will be to make that Python script output IP-XACT, which I do not quite yet understand (it's similar to XML) as information. And later on I will want the script to output a Register Transfer Language (RTL) such as Verilog.
One thing I found both very interesting and entertaining, is that me and my mentor Manny are actually very similar. We have many of the same ideas on similar topics, and I find it extremely easy to talk to him and get along with him. I also learned with an abundance of happiness that he is also a great fan of Chipotle, and I'm sure we will visit the Chipotle near our workplace on many occasions.
I'm loving the work and I'm loving the company, but I also hope the issue with me working at NW Logic will be fixed soon so I can get more work done on the actual project.
Comments
Hmm...note taking and details...
Yes, please do get in the habit of taking careful notes (but don't do it on a random piece of paper that you are going to lose!). What type of work do these companies you're working for do?
It's a lot easier to keep
It's a lot easier to keep track of notes on a computer :) And all the notes I take on paper for this company are in a special notebook :)
So OTBC is a business that helps people who want to organize a tech startup, and it helps them get started, and gives many of them building space to work. They're a non-profit organization and their money comes from getting donations, and receiving money from the city of Beaverton.
NW Logic, which is the company I'm now going to be working at is in the intellectual property (IP) business. Basically, they sell plans for parts of computer chips, called IP-Cores. They're called Cores because they are standardized. The original purpose of NW Logic was to do contract work designing custom chips or boards, but now they mainly sell IP-Cores in three product lines: memory interfaces, PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express), and MIPIs (mobile industry processor interfaces).
It's a lot easier to keep
It's a lot easier to keep track of notes on a computer :) And all the notes I take on paper for this company are in a special notebook :)
So OTBC is a business that helps people who want to organize a tech startup, and it helps them get started, and gives many of them building space to work. They're a non-profit organization and their money comes from getting donations, and receiving money from the city of Beaverton.
NW Logic, which is the company I'm now going to be working at is in the intellectual property (IP) business. Basically, they sell plans for parts of computer chips, called IP-Cores. They're called Cores because they are standardized. The original purpose of NW Logic was to do contract work designing custom chips or boards, but now they mainly sell IP-Cores in three product lines: memory interfaces, PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express), and MIPIs (mobile industry processor interfaces).