Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks. She went for a walk in the Silicon Valley. Pretty soon, she came upon a start-up company. She knocked and, when no one answered, she walked right in.
Inside the office, there are three workstations showing static timing analysis (STA) log files. Goldilocks was curious. She checked the log file from the first workstation.
“Setup time violation, the delay is too slow!” She exclaimed.
So, she checked the log file from the second workstation.
“Hold time violation, the delay is too fast!” She said.
So, she checked the last workstation.
“Ahhh, no timing violation, the delay is just right,” she said happily and taped out the design.
After she checked the three engineer’s workstations she decided she was feeling even more curious. So, she walked into the hardware lab where she was three circuit boards. Goldilock switch on the first circuit to see what happen.
“The chip does not boot, the power supply is too low!” she exclaimed.
So she switch on the second circuit.
“The chip booted and crashed, the power supply is too high!” she whined.
So she tried the last circuit.
“Ahhh, the chip boots up and start running, the power supply is just right!” She sighed. But just as she started running the firmware, it crashed with an stack overflow!
Goldilocks was very eager to get the system working this time, so she hook up the debugger. She ran the first program, but it pushed too much memory and crashed. Then she ran the second program, but it popped too much memory and crashed. Then she ran the third program and it was just right. Goldilocks gets the system up and running.
As she was tinkering the system, the three engineers came to work.
“Someone’s been messing with my STA log file,” growled the senior engineer.
“Someone’s been messing with my STA log file,” said the junior engineer.
“Someone’s been messing with my STA log file and the GDSII file is sent to TSMC!” cried the intern.
“Someone’s been switching on my circuit board”, growled the senior engineer.
“Someone’s been switched on my circuit board and burned my chip”, said the junior engineer.
“Someone’s been switched on my circuit board and it is up and running,” cried the intern.
The decided to look around some more and when they see the debugger output, senior engineer growled, “Someone’s been running my program,”
“Someone’s been running my program, too” said the junior engineer.
“Someone’s been running my program and she’s still there!” exclaimed the intern.
Just then, Goldilocks looked up and saw the three engineers. She screamed, “Help!” And she jumped up and ran out of the computer lab. Goldilocks ran out of the start-up office, and ran away from the Silicon Valley. And she never returned to the start-up of the three engineers.
