One rule of economics is that if the exchange of information is free, the optimal solution will be found.  (The classic example is of a farmer renting a neighbors field so the neighbor cannot raise cows and eat his corn.  The rent is cheaper than the cost of building a fence and he raises more corn.)

If one side has most of the access to liability data then that party should be held in strict liability.   (An example is Coke bottles.  Coke knows statically how many bottles blow up when touched as a function of manufacturing cost and.  They can come up with the optimal solution for all, only if they include the cost of being made whole in their manufacturing cost.)

I find that companies can make information hard to get so to have you choose less than optima solution for you and beneficial to them.

I have been looking at a product that has two models and two power levels.  The performance data for the different models was given in different formats making the comparison.  Here are the choices and relative price:

3HP Higher End        100%

2HP Higher End          90%

3HP Lower End          80%

2HP Lower End          70%

The performance data for the different models was given in different formats making the comparison very difficult.  With the help of people much smarter than me, I was able to determine relative performance.

3HP Higher End        100%

3HP Lower End          79%

2HP Higher End          67%

2HP Lower End          66%

The Performance to Price ratio is:

3HP Higher End        100%

2HP Lower End         100%

3HP Lower End          99%

2HP Higher End          74%

This new data tell a different story.  A user may think by buying to lower cost profession model that they are getting a good deal.  In actually they are getting the worst of deal of all of them and it is tied as the lowest performer.  No wonder they made the data hard to read.

In the long run, if you don t provide the customer to best option, at the right price, for them, then some other company will and you lose that customer for life.

I was lucky to have had the chance to come to Cypress and work on PSoC.  At the interview,I immediately got it and told my wife this is the part I had been waiting for my whole career.  I have also met Engineers with as much passion or maybe more (Robert Ashby. David Smith, Barry Bines, and Gray Smock come to mind.)  I have referred to these people as zealots.

Well Cypress would like to put together a program to recognize these people and treat them with the respect they deserve as the Engineering gods that they are!  The problem is that some in the company feel the term zealot may be offensive to some.  Now this doesn t even make the top ten things offensive things I have said last year.  (Cypress has a whole wing of HR people that deal with the problems I cause.)  Cypress wants to call them Ambassadors.  With that name we should give them sports coats, funny hats, and hope they don t get beat up in the school yard.  (That last statement is even more offensive than zealot!)

 Questions

Do you find the term Zealot offensive?

Do you have a suggestion?

What do you think of PNuT ?

PSoC Pearl ?

PSoC Patriot ?

What would you like to be called?

I'll give a 5LP kit away for the best response!

 Our standard PWMs are made by continuously decrementing a register in a datapath (A0).  The compare register is used to detect when the count is below some compare value (D1) and set an output high.  For a 256 count PWM it can be implemented with a single instruction register of the datapath.  For a compare value of 50, the periodic output stream would be 206 low, followed by 50 high.  The frequency would by clock / 256.

 If the output frequency is too low and you can t increase the clock, then convert to a self dithering PWM.  If instead I change the datapath to continuously subtract 3 from the A0 and keep the same compare value of 50, the periodic output stream is:

69 low, 17 high, 68 low, 17 high, 69 low, 16 high

The output frequency is 3 * clock / 256.

Changing to subtracting 5 while keeping the same compare value, gives the periodic output stream:

42low, 10high, 41low, 10high, 41low, 10high, 41low, 10high, 41low, 10 high

The output frequency is 5 * clock / 256.

And so on.  If the value n is a relative prime to 256 (odd) and less than 128 is continuously subtracted from a register, the stream has n pulses and an output frequency of n * clock / 256.

This will also work from 16, 24, and 32 bit PWMs.  A 16bit PWM with a 24MHz clock has an output frequency of 366Hz.  Change it to a self dithering PWM with  n = 137 and you have an output frequency of 50.2kHz, but keeps a dithering resolution of 16 bits.

I never would have figured this out if datapaths didn't make it easy to build and try out.

 I will admit I watch a few.  A peeve I have is when they ask a contestant why they deserve to win, in most cases their answer is because they really really want it.  Maybe they will say that winning will validate their struggle to overcome some personnel demonm tragedy, or disadvantage. 

Maybe I have been a disciple of the Temple of Precision Questions and Answers (PQ&A) but I would expect someone to say that they deserve to win because they did the better job than all the others and show examples to verify their claim.

 When I am with a customer and they ask me why they should use PSoC, I don t explain how this sale would bump me over my quota, get a bonus, and take my wife to Hawaii.  They don t care!  They want their problem solved, period.  It s about them, not about me.  I need to explain why PSoC is the best option for them and answer every objection they have with a well thought out argument.

After thought:  Luckily PSoC makes this easy to do!

 I have been developing Datapath Components this week and I find that if I am disciplined about the documentation of the signal connections, that many times I am able to develop the component with no errors.  This was startling at first cause normally if something has a keyboard or a carburetor; it s going to give me big time trouble.  But I am getting used to it.  DATAPATHS ARE GREAT!  I haven t had this much fun in a long time.  If you aren t using datapaths, you should be.  If you are having a problem getting your head around them then contact me I and I ll see you get pointed in the right direction.