The World of Little Little Bird

My ICCAD paper was accepted. Yeah! Thanks a lot to Buddha's blessing. :)
See you friends in San Jose this November.

The ICCAD result will be out tomorrow. I had a paper submitted to it. My chance seems slim. Let's pray...

AMD Files Antitrust Complaint Against Intel In U.S. Federal District Court.

AMD's stock soared 6.3% today after it filed the law suit. Sigh~~~, I should have bought some AMD stocks. Heart is aching...

Intel is very very bad according to AMD's complaint. Here are some of the complaint:
Forcing major customers such as Dell, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway, and Hitachi into Intel-exclusive deals in return for outright cash payments, discriminatory pricing or marketing subsidies conditioned on the exclusion of AMD;
According to industry reports, and as confirmed by the JFTC in Japan, Intel has paid Dell and Toshiba huge sums not to do business with AMD.
Intel paid Sony millions for exclusivity. AMD’s share of Sony’s business went from 23 percent in ‘02 to 8% in ‘03, to 0%, where it remains today.
Forcing other major customers such as NEC, Acer, and Fujitsu into partial exclusivity agreements by conditioning rebates, allowances and market development funds (MDF) on customers’ agreement to severely limit or forego entirely purchases from AMD;
Intel paid NEC several million dollars for caps on NEC’s purchases from AMD. Those caps assured Intel at least 90% of NEC’s business in Japan and imposed a worldwide cap on the amount of AMD business NEC could do.
Establishing a system of discriminatory and retroactive incentives triggered by purchases at such high levels as to have the intended effect of denying customers the freedom to purchase any significant volume of processors from AMD;
When AMD succeeded in getting on the HP retail roadmap for mobile computers, and its products sold well, Intel responded by withholding HP’s fourth quarter 2004 rebate check and refusing to waive HP’s failure to achieve its targeted rebate goal; it allowed HP to make up the shortfall in succeeding quarters by promising Intel at least 90% of HP’s mainstream retail business.
Threatening retaliation against customers for introducing AMD computer platforms, particularly in strategic market segments such as commercial desktop;
Then-Compaq CEO Michael Capellas said in 2000 that because of the volume of business given to AMD, Intel withheld delivery of critical server chips. Saying “he had a gun to his head,” he told AMD he had to stop buying.
According to Gateway executives, their company has paid a high price for even its limited AMD dealings. They claim that Intel has “beaten them into ‘guacamole’” in retaliation.
Establishing and enforcing quotas among key retailers such as Best Buy and Circuit City, effectively requiring them to stock overwhelmingly or exclusively, Intel computers, artificially limiting consumer choice;
AMD has been entirely shut out from Media Markt, Europe’s largest computer retailer, which accounts for 35 percent of Germany’s retail sales.
Office Depot declined to stock AMD-powered notebooks regardless of the amount of financial support AMD offered, citing the risk of retaliation.
Forcing PC makers and tech partners to boycott AMD product launches or promotions;
Then-Intel CEO Craig Barrett threatened Acer’s Chairman with “severe consequences” for supporting the AMD Athlon 64™ launch. This coincided with an unexplained delay by Intel in providing $15-20M in market development funds owed to Acer. Acer withdrew from the launch in September 2003.
Abusing its market power by forcing on the industry technical standards and products that have as their main purpose the handicapping of AMD in the marketplace.
Intel denied AMD access to the highest level of membership for the Advanced DRAM technology consortium to limit AMD’s participation in critical industry standard decisions that would affect its business.
Intel designed its compilers, which translate software programs into machine-readable language, to degrade a program’s performance if operated on a computer powered by an AMD microprocessor.

NBA finals ended last week with Spurs getting their third title in seven years. The slogan from ABC is "The NBA finals, where legends are born". Now, legends have been born, and my life goes back to flat. All the excitements and happiness in front of TV have gone. But it might not be too bad for me. It is time for me to sit down and continue on my thesis. I haven't touched it for more than two weeks. I even felt a little awkward when I edited my thesis tonight.
For the last game of the NBA final, it was in San Antonio where is 90 minutes drive from Austin. The sale of tickets for game seven was started on Wednesday noon. At 11:59am, I was already waiting on the website with my officemate for the tickets. However, we didn't have luck to get the tickets. They were gone in a single minute before I found anything. Wish Spurs play well next season so that I can order tickets early enough.

Anaheim Convention Center 

I did a lot of shoppings on Saturday. I bought a desk, a file cart and a bookcase in the morning. I assembled the file cart at noon. In the afternoon, my roommate and I went to see some apartments. We'll be moving at the end of July. Then I went to Target and Walmart for food. The fridge was almost empty before I left. I arrived at home around 9pm. I was so tired. Today, it is the fifth game of NBA final. Go Spurs. And from tomorrow, everything returns to normal. There are a lot of things to be done. Come on.

It was Friday and time to come back. Airport shuttle picked me up from hotel at 7:50am. I was wondering why it was that early because my flight was at 11:20am. Later, I was glad that I left early. It took me more than 1 hour at LAX to check in the luggage. When I got in the shuttle, the driver told me there was another passenger from Hilton. He didn't appear so we went to another hotel to pick others and came back later. Then he showed up. To my surprise, he was Rob. Rob stayed on the same floor (8th floor) as I did and took the same shuttle to the airport. :) I had a nap on the plane. After I arrived in Austin, I felt the heat. It was 100 degrees around 5pm compared to the 70s in LA. However, home is better than anything.

On the next two days, I attended different sessions and visited different exhibitors. The Indian intern at my group this summer got the best paper award this year. Congratulations to him. Zhong went back to China on Thursday and left me his brick thick proceedings and a Disneyland plush toy. They are not gifts for me, but for me to take back to Austin and then to Pittsburgh during my defense. :) I went out for lunch with some CMU friends on Wednesday. I had dinner with Prof. Peng Li Thursday night.
The biggest event happened on Thursday afternoon. Kelvin was about to leave. So we were both packing our luggages. Suddenly, we found Hilton was shaking and the windows were rattling. We immediately realize that it was an earthquake. I grabbed my laptop, which is my biggest asset, and rushed to the stairs. After we got out, we didn't see any panics. People behaved as usual and no one except us escaped out. We thought we might have made a mistake. We then re-enter the lobby and asked the receptionist. She confirmed the earthquake, but was indifferent with it. She told us Hilton was strong enough to endure the quakes. Since we were the only two making a fuss, we went back to my room quietly. The news were all over TV. It was reported as a 5.3 degree earthquake, though later corrected to 4.9 degrees.

I got up early to practise my talk and had no mood attending the key note talk by IBM chief technologist. I made another rehearsal to my advisor at noon. It was better, but still not good enough. Anyway, let it be. At 2:30, I stepped up to the podium and gave my talk. I controlled the time well and gave an OK talk. It was the first time for me to present in a conference in front of 200 audience. Kelvin said that I was nervious. I was glad that I got through it. The two questions were ok. I wanted to thank Zhong for bringing my suits and lending me his tie. :)
I met Haikun and Laopang as well. I'm glad that Haikun attended my talk.
After the talk, I went Extreme DA's demo. Guy gave a great talk I think. Kelvin and his gangs did a very solid job.
In the evening, I attend the CMU CSSI alumni and friends party. When I returned to hotel, I found my dear Spurs lost to Pistons. Sigh. After two beers, I went to bed with relaxation. My tasks at DAC have been done.

I got up early on Monday morning. After I grabbed by breakfast, I met my manager at the convention center and waited for 1 hour and a half before exhibition opened. We watched about 5 demos that morning. After lunch, I got a phone call from my advisor for a meeting. My advisor was satisfied with my slides, but frustrated with my rehearsal. I was frustrated too. I spent the evening writing down the scripts of my talk. Kelvin came on Monday and visited me.

my room at Hilton 

Fireworks at Disneyland 

I had a paper accepted to Design Automation Conference this year. The conference was held from June 13 to June 17 at Anaheim, California.
I left Austin on Sunday (June 12) morning and arrived in Hilton Hotel around 4:30. As soon as the airport shuttle stopped, Zhong called me. We then met, and picked up our conference badges from the convention center next to Hilton. Both Zhong and I were on the 8th floor, but our rooms are at two farthest corners. We then headed out for dinner together while watching Game 2 of NBA finals. Spurs won easily which made Zhong a little depressed. After I sent my slides to my boss, I went to bed around 9:30 pacific time.
Right after I went to bed, I was annoyed by loud noises. The noises lasted for 10 minutes before I decided to see what happened. I was amazed to find out that they were from the fireworks at Disneyland. The fireworks were so beautiful that I quickly snapshot some photos. My camera is too crappy which did a poor job.
The Hilton Hotel let me down. They charge over 200 buck per night including tax. However, for any services, they ask for extra charges. Here are a few. $12.99 per day for internet access, $12 per day for gym, and $1.5 per local phone call. The only good part is the spacious room with lots of large windows. Two sides of my room are windows, though I didn't see good views except the fireworks.

We found a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment in Farwest neighborhood. The bed rooms are much larger than the "den" that I'm living in now. My current apartment management sucks. When we talked with them for getting a 2-2 apartment two weeks ago, they were arrogant, saying that they had tons of people on the waiting list, no 2-2 would be available, even there was, the rent would be $965, blahblah. When I went there to sign the moving statement, they asked me whether I would like to look at their 2-2 apartment for $880 per month. Totally bullshit. Will move next month whatsoever.
Spurs won the first game of NBA finals. Manu looks unstoppable. The only thing that can stop him in my humble opinion is injury. :) I should have been 厚道, or his fans would kick my ass. Go! Spurs.
DAC is next week. I'll leave Austin tomorrow noon. I will stay in Anaheim till Friday morning. The schedule is pretty tight. We have a lot of exhibitions to visit, including the famous Extreme DA. :P And more important, I can see many of my friends there.

I went to the garage again in the late afternoon. The vent window was installed in 30 minutes. I spent 100 bucks on it. I put everything either in the trunk or in the drawer. Now my car looks real clean. Hope this will make thieves away from my car.
It rained damn hard this morning. I was waken by the thunder and heavy rain. I rushed out in 30 seconds and move my car under a spare roof parking space. All was done in 2 minutes, and when I got back, I was all wet. I looked at my clock, it was 3:30am.
I started to look for a new apartment this week.
Good news today. Spurs won in Phoenix.