DFT Digest

Today was travel day for me. Started off in Long Beach, had a fairly nice flight – no one sitting next to me, so my legs weren’t suffering, but the plane had a couple really vocal toddlers – thank God for iPods.

Checked into my hotel in Austin, checked a couple e-mails, changed and walked down to Ironworks BBQ on Red River, right next to the convention center. Mmmm, BBQ…

Picked up my badge and ITC swag bag, complete with proceedings disks, a chance to win an iPod Touch, and a coffee mug.   Ah, well, I love a good mug, but I was hoping for a t-shirt. I still wear my shirts from 2007 and 2008. Those were some sturdy shirts! Uhh, getting off point. Sorry.

I was there in time for the first panel discussion, ‘40 years of reliable Computing at Stanford CRC.‘ Less of a panel discussion than a history of CRC presented through the eyes of several former students and associates, many stories were told of the work accomplished since the early/mid-seventies, and of it’s founder Edward McCluskey: celebrity, if not legend, in the IC Test community.

Born amidst the turbulence of anti-war protests, CRC has, over the years produced and documented research on many of the concepts that we DFT’ers today take for granted: fault equivalence, bridging faults, n-detect, psuedo-random test – don’t take it from me, go look at their extensive bibliography.  Besides that, if you hang around the Test crowd long enough, you realize that many of the more prominent figures have had some association with Stanford CRC.  A smart bunch…

From the panel, we walked over to the reception, a celebration of this being the 40th year of ITC – where a couple hundred people ate, drank, and reconnected.  Personally, I was delighted to meet many more people this year, already, due to this thing I call DFT Digest.  I really appreciate your comments, and hope you keep reading!

See you tomorrow, ITC!