Everyone who is anyone loves bandying about the name of Clayton Christensen, the famed Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, who is regarded as one of the world’s top experts on innovation and growth and who is most famous for coining the term “disruptive innovation“. Briefly, the classical meaning of the term is as follows. A company, usually a large one, focuses on serving the high end, high margin part of their business and in doing so they provide an opening at the low end, low margin market segment.  This allows for small nimble, hungry innovators to get a foothold in the market by providing cheap but good enough products to the low end who are otherwise forsaken by the large company who is only willing to provide high priced, over-featured products.  These small innovators use their foothold to innovate further upmarket providing products of increasingly better functionality at lower cost that the Big Boys at the high end.  The Big Boys are happy with this because those lower margin products are a lot of effort for little payback and “The Market” rewards them handsomely for doing incremental innovation at the high end and maintaining high margins.  In the fullness of time, the little scrappy innovators disrupt the market with cheaper, better and more innovative solutions and products that catch up to and eclipse the offerings of the Big Boys, catching them off guard and the once large corporations, with their fat margins, become small meaningless boutique firms.  Thus the market is disrupted and the once regal and large companies, even though they followed all the appropriate rules dictated by “The Market”, falter and die.

Examples of this sort of evolution are many.  The Japanese automobile manufacturers used this sort of approach to disrupt the large American manufacturers in the 70s and 80s; the same with Minicomputers versus Mainframes and then PCs versus Minicomputers; to name but a few.  But when you think about it, sometimes disruption comes “from above”.  Consider the iPod.  Remember when Apple introduced their first music player?  They weren’t the first-to-market as there were literally tens of MP3 players available.  They certainly weren’t the cheapest as about 80% of the portable players had a price point well-below Apple’s $499 MSRP.  The iPod did have more features than most other players available and was in many ways more sophisticated – but $499?   This iPod was more expensive, more featured, higher priced, had more space on it for storage than anyone could ever imagine needing and had bigger margins than any other similar device on the market. And it was a huge hit.  (I personally think that the disruptive part was iTunes that made downloading music safe, legal and cheap at a time when the RIAA was making headlines by suing ordinary folks for thousands of dollars for illegal music downloads – but enough about me.)  From the iPod, Apple went on to innovate a few iPod variants, the iPhone and the iPad as well as incorporating some of the acquired knowledge into the Mac.

And now, I think, another similarly modeled innovation is upon us.  Consider Tesla Motors.  Starting with the now-discontinued Roadster – a super high end luxury 2 seater sport vehicle that was wholly impractical and basically a plaything for the 1%.  But it was a great platform to collect data and learn about batteries, charging, performance, efficiency, design, use and utility.  Then the Model S that, while still quite expensive, brought that price within reach of perhaps the 2% or even the 3%.   In Northern California, for instance, Tesla S cars populate the roadways seemingly with the regularity of VW Beetles.  Of course, part of what makes them seem so common is that their generic luxury car styling makes them nearly indistinguishable, at first glace, from a Lexus, Jaguar, Infiniti, Maserati, Mercedes Benz, BMW and the like. The choice of styling is perhaps yet another avenue of innovation.  Unlike, the Toyota Prius whose iconic design became a “vector” sending a message to even the casual observer about the driver and perhaps the driver’s social and environmental concerns.  The message of the Tesla’s generic luxury car design to the casual observer merely seems to be “I’m rich – but if you want to learn more about me – you better take a closer look”. Yet even attracting this small market segment, Tesla was able to announce profitability for the first time.

With their third generation vehicle, Tesla promises to reduce their selling price by 40% over the current Model S .  This would bring the base price to about $30,000 which is within the average selling price of new cars in the United States.  Even without the lower priced vehicle available, Tesla is being richly rewarded by The Market thanks to a good product (some might say great), some profitability, excellent and savvy PR and lots and lots of promise of a bright future.

But it is the iPod model all over again. Tesla is serving the high end and selling top-of-the-line technology.  They are developing their technology within a framework that is bound mostly by innovation and their ability to innovate and not by cost or selling price.  They are also acting in a segment of the market that is not really well-contested (high-end luxury electric cars).  This gives them freedom from the pressures of competition and schedules – which gives them an opportunity to get things right rather than rushing out ‘something’ to appease the market.  And with their success in that market, they are turning around and using what they have learned to figure out how to build the same thing (or a similar thing) cheaper and more efficiently to bring the experience to the masses (think: iPod to Nano to Shuffle).  They will also be able thusly to ease their way into competing at the lower end with the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, the Fiat 500e and the like.

Maybe the pathway to innovation really is from the high-end down to mass production?

That venerable electronic test standard IEEE Std 1149.1 (also known as JTAG; also known as Boundary-Scan; also known as Dot 1) has just been freshened up.  This is no ordinary freshening.  The standard, last revisited in 2001, is long overdue for some clarification and enhancement.  It’s been a long time coming and now…it’s here.  While the guts remain the same and in good shape, some very interesting options and improvements have been added.  The improvements are intended to provide support for testing and verification of the more complex devices currently available and to acknowledge the more sophisticated test algorithms and capabilities afforded by the latest hardware.  There is an attempt, as well, (perhaps though, only as well as one can do this sort of thing) to anticipate future capabilities and requirements and to provide a framework within which such capabilities and requirements can be supported.  Of course, since the bulk of the changes are optional their value will only be realized if the end-user community embraces them.

There are only some minor clarifications or relaxations to the rules that are already established. For the most part, components currently compliant with the previous version of this standard will remain compliant with this one. There is but one “inside baseball” sort of exception.  The long denigrated and deprecated BC_6 boundary-scan cell has finally been put to rest. It is, with the 2013 version, no longer supported or defined, so any component supplier who chose to utilize this boundary-scan cell – despite all warnings to contrary – must now provide their own BSDL package defining this BC_6 cell if they upgrade to using the STD_1149_1_2013 standard package for their BSDL definitions.

While this is indeed a major revision, I must again emphasize that all the new items introduced are optional.  One of the largest changes is in documentation capability incorporating  the introduction of a new executable description language called Procedural Description Language (PDL) to document test procedures unique to a component.  PDL, a TCL-like language, was adopted from the work of the IEEE Std P1687 working group. 1687 is a proposed IEEE Standard for the access to and operation of embedded instruments (1687 is therefore also known as iJTAG or Instrument JTAG). The first iteration of the standard was based on use of the 1149.1 Test Access Port and Controller to provide the chip access—and a set of modified 1149.1-type Test Data Registers to create an access network for embedded instruments. PDL was developed to describe access to and operation of these embedded instruments.

Now, let’s look at the details.  The major changes are as follows:

In the standard body:

• In order to allow devices to maintain their test logic in test mode, a new, optional, test mode persistence controller was introduced.  This means that test logic (like the boundary-scan register) can remain behaviorally in test mode even if the active instruction does not force test mode. To support this, the TAP controller was cleaved into 2 parts.  One part that controls test mode and the other that has all the rest of the TAP functionality. In support of this new controller, there are three new instructions: CLAMP_HOLD and TMP_STATUS (both of which access the new TMP status test data register) and CLAMP_RELEASE.
• In recognizing the emerging requirement for unique device identification codes a new, optional ECIDCODE instruction was introduced along with an associated electronic chip identification test data register.  This instruction-register pair is intended to supplement the existing IDCODE and USERCODE instructions and allow for access to an Electronic Chip Identification value that could be used to identify and track individual integrated circuits.
• The problem of initializing a device for test has been addressed by providing a well-defined framework to use to formalize this process. The new, optional INIT_SETUP, INIT_SETUP_CLAMP, and INIT_RUN instructions paired with their associated initialization data and initialization status test data registers were provided to this end. The intent is that these instructions formalize the manner in which programmable input/output (I/O) can be set up prior to board or system testing, as well as any providing for the execution of any tasks required to put the system logic into a safe state for test.
• Recognizing that resetting a device can be complex and require many steps or phases, a new, optional, IC_RESET instruction and its associated reset_select test data register is defined to provide formalized control of component reset functions through the TAP.
• Many devices now have a number of separate power domains that could result in sections of the device being powered down while other are powered up.  A single, uniform boundary-scan register does not align well with that device style.  So to support power domains that may be powered down but having a single test data register routed through these domains,  an optional standard TAP to test data register interface is recommended that allows for segmentation of test data registers. The concept of register segments allows for segments that may be excluded or included and is generalized sufficiently for utilization beyond the power domain example.
• There have also been a few enhancements to the boundary-scan register description to incorporate the following:
  1. Optional excludable (but not selectable) boundary-scan register segments
  2. Optional observe-only boundary-scan register cells to redundantly capture the signal value on all digital pins except the TAP pins
  3. Optional observe-only boundary-scan register cells to capture a fault condition on all pins, including non-digital pins, except the TAP pins.

The Boundary Scan Description Language annex was rewritten and includes:

• Increased clarity and consistency based on end-user feedback accumulated over the years.
• A technical change was made such that BSDL is no longer a “proper subset” of VHDL, but it is now merely “based on” VHDL. This means that BSDL now maintains VHDL’s flavor but has for all intents and purposes been “forked”.
• As result of this forking, formal definitions of language elements are now included in the annex instead of reliance on inheritance from VHDL.
• Also as a result of this forking, some changes to the BNF notation used, including definition of all the special character tokens, are in the annex.
• Pin mapping now allows for documenting that a port is not connected to any device package pin in a specific mapped device package.
• The boundary-scan register description introduces new attributes for defining boundary-scan register segments, and introduces a requirement for documenting the behavior of an un-driven input.
• New capabilities are introduced for documenting the structural details of test data registers:
  1. Mnemonics may be defined that may be associated with register fields.
  2. Name fields within a register or segment may be defined.
  3. Types of cells used in a test data register (TDR) field may be defined.
  4. One may hierarchically assemble segments into larger segments or whole registers.
  5. Constraints may be defined on the values to be loaded in a register or register field.
  6. A register field or bit may be associated with specific ports
  7. Power port may be associated with other ports.
• The User Defined Package has been expanded to support logic IP providers who may need to document test data register segments contained within their IP.

As I stated earlier, a newly adopted language, PDL, has been included in this version of the standard.  The details of this language are included as part of Annex C. PDL is designed to document the procedural and data requirements for some of the new instructions. PDL serves a descriptive purpose in that regard but, as such, it is also executable should a system choose to interpret it.

It was decided to adopt and develop PDL to support the new capability of  initializing internal test data register fields and configuring complex I/Os prior to entering the EXTEST instruction.  Since the data required for initialization could vary for each use of the component on each distinct board or system design there needed to be an algorithmic way to describe the data set-up and application., in order to configure the I/O Since this version of the standard introduces new instructions for configuring complex I/Os prior to entering the EXTEST instruction. As the data required for initialization could vary for each use of the component on each distinct board or system design, this created the need for a new language for setting internal test data register fields in order to configure the I/O. It was decided to adopt PDL and tailor it to the BSDL register descriptions and the needs of IEEE 1149.1.

Since the concept of BSDL and PDL working together is new and best explained via examples Annex D is provided to supply extended examples of BSDL and PDL used together to describe the structure and the procedures for use of new capabilities. Similarly Annex E provides example pseudo-code for the execution of the PDL iApply command, the most complex of the new commands in PDL.

So that is the new 1149.1 in a nutshell. A fair amount of new capabilities. Some of it complex. All of it optional.  Will you use it?

My world is about to change but I fully admit that I don’t get how. That’s right…everything changes this Saturday, April 3rd when the Apple iPad is released. Am I the only one who looks at it and thinks of those big button phones that one purchases for their aging parent? Yes, I know Steve Jobs found the English language lacking sufficiently meaningful superlatives to describe it. And, yes, I know there will be hundreds of pre-programmed Apple zombies lining the streets to collect their own personal iPad probably starting Friday evening. But, I don’t understand why I would want an oversized iPhone without the phone or the camera or application software or a keyboard and why and how this gadget will change civilization. Don’t get me wrong, I know it will. But I don’t see how the iPad will revolutionize, say, magazine sales. Why would I buy Esquire for $2.99 when I get the print version for less than $1 and throw it out after reading it for 30 minutes (full disclosure: I am a subscriber – I admit that freely)? I also know I can’t take the iPad to the beach to read a book because it will get wet, clotted with sand and the screen will be unreadable in sunlight. But, I’m sure the iPad will be a huge hit. And I’m sure my life will change. Just tell me how. Someone…..please….?

For no apparent reason, but moreso than ever before, I have come to believe that the World Wide Web can truly be the source of all knowledge and a savior for the lazy (or at least an inspiration to those who need examples to learn or get started).

I was writing a simple application in C the other day and needed to code up a dynamic array. It seemed to me that actually typing out the 20 or so lines of code to implement the allocation and management was just too much effort. And then it occurred to me – “Why reinvent the wheel?” People write dynamic arrays in C every day and I bet that at least one person posted their implementation to the WWW for all to see and admire. A quick search revealed that to be true and in minutes I was customizing code to suit my needs.

Now…did I really save time? In the end, did my customizations result in no net increase in productivity? In many ways, for me, it didn’t matter. I am the sort of person who needs some inspiration to overcome a blank sheet of paper – something concrete – a real starting point – even a bad one. Having that implementation in place gave me that starting point and even if I ended up deleting everything and rewriting it I feel like I benefited, at least psychologically, from having somewhere to start.

It is also valuable to see and learn from the experience of others. Why should I re-invent something so basic? Why not use what’s already extant and spend my energy and talent where I can really add value?

But it is also true that although the WWW may indeed be “the wheel” it sometimes provides a wheel made from wood or stone, that has a flat tire or is damaged beyond repair. For me, though, even that is beneficial since it helps me overcome that forbidding blank sheet of paper.