PCI & World Cup

Writing the PCI driver for two different FPGA boards embedded with PCI bridge chip for my current assignment. Doorbell Interrupt, Mailbox Registers, I2O FIFO, DMA…..blah, blah, blah. Based on my previous experience, I was able to complete the “template” driver for Linux platform within two days. But care must be taken to provide the mechanism for accessing the unique features which is not common across all the PCI bridge chips. Both of the PCI bridges come with different features. These are the tricky parts. A glance on our testbed for E1 testing:

After all, the finalists for this year World Cup are France and Italy. How come these two teams entering the final? Italy beat Australia with a late late penalty. It will not given by Graham Poll (English Referee). Again, they beat German with a late late goal with a beautiful curling shoot from a defender. It’s a bit of luck. France, almost knock up in early group stage, beat the World Champion, Brazil.

It was pity that German could not enter the final, anti-climax. I actually don’t favor German because of the way they play the game. I still remember that I had to sacrifice my sleep just to watch them converting the penalty in 1990. Anyway, under the guidance of Juergen Klinsmann, German starts playing attractive football with a lot of pace and attacking minded. Much, much entertaining compared to last time. Hmm…there was a debate on the first choice goalkeeper during the start of the tournament. Oliver Kahn or Jens Lehmann? At the end, the long term No 2 became the No 1 and long term No 1 became No 2. Could this happen in our country? It was strange and unacceptable from Kahn’s point of view. Lehmann did say that he didn’t know the reason why he had edged out Kahn. My personal view is that Klinsmann would like to challenge the mentality of his squad and intend to reform the German football. I heard today that Lehmann is willing to offer his starting place to Kahn. Just wonder whether Lehmann will do the same if German enters the final.

Registered my second level of German course yesterday. Borrow three books (stufe 1) from the library after librarian persuaded me to do so.