Blog: Making Giant Leaps

One small step for man …
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Was my first thought recently when stood in a queue outside the supermarket, patiently inching forward, maintaining the newly established standard unit of a ‘social distance’ from my nearest neighbours.

That thought led me to the next which was that almost every person on the planet is currently sharing the same experience, a feat that almost certainly hasn’t happened since 1969 when Neil Armstrong spoke those words as he stepped onto the surface of the Moon.

I wondered if other peoples thoughts had been provoked in this way and were intrigued to find out, but those in the vicinity didn’t appear to have the look of conversation about them. They seemed more focussed on predicting the time it was going to take to get to the entrance, assessing the number of people before them, how long the one at the front took to gain entry and crunching the numbers. It wasn’t long until I found myself crunching the numbers too and wondering how I was going to avoid this agonising journey to the end in future. The next thought came … ‘be early!’, another small step and the idea continued to resonate ‘be early!’. Another small step and I began to feel the frustration; I should have had a plan, I nearly always have one, next time I will be early and not have to number crunch.

One consolation I drew was that I could see the supermarket entrance, so my goal was in sight, and the issues to overcome to reach my goal (the queue) was quantitative. I’d also crunched the numbers so knew to within a fair degree of accuracy when I’d attain it. Unfortunately, relating this to a design project, the queue isn’t quantitative, and it could take very many small steps to reach the goal. But you could have a plan and be early by adopting a methodology for your project. Early analysis at the RTL level with tools such as Sigasi and ALINT-PRO or EC-FPGA will turn those small steps into giant leaps. Stay safe, everyone.