One of the wonderful things about working in a multidisciplinary environment like the Lab is the chance to learn from colleagues with very different backgrounds. Consider the side effects of placing me (human-computer interaction, information mapping) in the same office with Mr. Vieri (VLSI design, reversible computing). I am now fluent in the strange tongue that he and his group speak. At first, I was intimidated, even a little scared; now we can discuss fine design points with facility.

What have I learned, you might ask? Well, just let me give you a short glossary of some of the terms I've picked up.

Cadence -- The program that lives on Carlin's left-hand monitor. Never ventures into XEmacs's hood (right-hand monitor). Also a respectable jazz rag.

chip core -- what's left of a chip after you eat the outside. You usually throw this away.

CIF -- Image format for pictures of chip designers' faces. Better than GIF.

HSPICE -- Used to season chips (see chip core).

HP14 -- Early RPN calculator. Superseded by the HP28S, which got me through high school and undergraduate.

LVS -- The initials of the unspeakable name of the Goddess of Netlists, also known as Gemini. She must be pacified with appropriate sacrifices before the chip can be sent to the man in the wilderness (see MOSIS).

Magic -- Most important design factor. Hard to control, however.

metal-n -- The metal caste system. All transistors aspire to metal-1; only the select few by heredity are chosen. Skullduggery is common among proletariat (metal-4).

MOSIS -- Old man in wilderness who makes chips. Appears to have his own FTP site, though.

pad -- A big chunk of metal (see metal-n).

SKILL -- some sort of semi-functional language that appears to combine the application-specificity and basic cruftiness of Emacs Lisp with the procedural semantics of C. Yum.

Let's share what we have all learned from each other at this week's

G I R L S C O U T B E N E F I T

5:30 Seventh Floor Playroom