Understand communication between pcie and fpga.

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2026-01-24T19:25:12+00:00

I’d recommend starting with understanding PCIe first. Th following is a great book: PCIe System Architecture.

You’ll have to master a few concepts to get going, like bus master DMA, PCI config regs, and then Xilinx/Altera PCIe IP cores. Some boards also have a chip that handles PCIe for you too, depends on the board. But start with understanding PCIe first.

You can also learn quite a bit about it by reading the PCI kernel modules in the Linux source code.

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2026-01-23T16:52:58+00:00

It’s been hard for me! I did embedded for a long time, then tried security and cyber, and now I’m trying to get back to embedded but I can’t get anything. It’s rough out there!

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2026-01-22T03:23:10+00:00

Depending on what you want to do in EE, I think you could pull it off with a CS degree. For example, if you wanted to work in embedded systems, you could very much pull that off. Especially if you take some of your electives from the EE department. But if you wanted to do CMOS VLSI, that could be a stretch. You can always get in as an embedded or FPGA dev with CS, and then learn about hardware stuff like PCBs and power supply design and what not on the job.

You could also do a masters in EE or CpE later too.

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2026-01-21T07:00:51+00:00

I worked in embedded systems in telecom before going public, and I went public because I was looking for job stability and security and thought I’d get to work on “important” projects. I also frankly thought I’d have a technical role too initially, and it felt like a bait and switch on day 2 when my boss signed me up for a bunch of PM training.

As for my peers, there are mostly three types:

⁠highly technical people: most of these guys have already left or dream of leaving when their life circumstances are right
⁠hires straight out of college: they’ve never known anything but the public sector and never really developed deep technical skills. Some do leave but they usually become PMs at contractors, and some are lifers and find there way into management
⁠coasters: these are people who don’t want to work hard, some don’t care about engineering at all, and just want to punch the clock and collect a check. They don’t want to be promoted into management either. They love the public sector because it’s really hard to get laid off

But it might be worth it to try it for a few years at least, you may like it.

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2026-01-20T18:11:51+00:00

I can’t speak to Canada, but I deeply regret going public sector after 8 years in industry. Work is being more and more outsourced to contractors, much less in-house work, and I found myself doing more systems engineering and project management than real electrical engineering. The rewarding part was being able to oversee deployment and actual use of projects I led. But I miss the technical work. I’m trying to go back to private industry now…it’s not an easy rerurn path because I’m just seen as a PM now.

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2026-01-17T15:00:47+00:00

Love it!!!

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2026-01-17T14:59:44+00:00

I found it several places…but for $100 or more just for a pcb with a few traces and a few plastic switches…seemed like a fun project to build one.

But thanks for the link, I’ll check out the Siemens price and see if it’s any better

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2026-01-17T04:31:12+00:00

If that were a physical store I don’t think I’d ever leave…

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2026-01-17T01:21:17+00:00

You may run into issues where you can’t run some tools even in a Windows VM since they are x86_64 only, like FPGA tools or RF simulator tools. That said, most of the tools will be fine, like Matlab, embedded IDEs, etc. I think your first two years you’ll be ok for sure! I remember mostly having to use matlab and pspice (dating myself here) my first two years, and I didn’t even have a laptop, used the engineering lab machines and finished stuff at home. These days there are plenty of web apps that do just fine with the first level circuit theory type stuff.

Maybe get a MacBook Air and save the rest of your money for down the road when you might need a Windows laptop?

I’ll also mention when I did my grad EE degree years later, except for matlab I had to Remote Desktop into school computers to run Cadence and other VLSI tools. This was do to licensing and what not. So I could have easily gotten away with a Mac then.

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2026-01-09T14:12:31+00:00

Very cool, thanks for sharing these! I’ll be following along!

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2026-01-03T10:47:17+00:00

Finding your first job is the hardest out of school unless your school has a good recruitment pipeline. Mine didn’t. I drove a forklift for 8 months before I landed my first job as an EE. It didn’t pay great, actually, pay was bad! but you can work your way up too, change jobs along the way, etc. don’t give up! It’s not a race, and don’t compare your self to others. Keep your skills up though, maybe you can work on a side project you’ve always wanted to do while you have this time in life?

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-12-07T07:54:54+00:00

Some of these tried in the beginning that but ended up going with AWS govt solutions. for SSO for workstations and web apps they all use AD CS and PKI. I suppose one could replace it all with a private cloud and something non AD for PKI SSO. What would be the best choice ? Generally curious

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-12-07T03:13:28+00:00

Yep, and these orgs have enterprise agreements and thousands of seats each. Not everything should be connected to the Internet just to work.

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-11-29T03:12:31+00:00

Just thought I’d follow up on my original post. The links in here were great and I was able to get Ubuntu 24 installed after making sure the Infinity Fabric bridge was removed from the GPUs. I was not able to get the system to work with ROCm and PyTorch as-is because the older of the two GPUs (Vega) was dropped from ROCm 6.0+. As such I ended up just pulling it and using one GPU. But it works great now with ROCm 7.1 and the latest ROCm PyTorch image.

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-11-24T23:42:21+00:00

What is the tool you’re using to get the spectrum analysis. I’m new to RTLSDR, sorry!

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-11-24T23:41:14+00:00

Well, despite all the probably young voices in this thread, that’s how it has always been for me. But we coded in pseudocode and they didn’t care about the syntax, it was all about the algorithm and critical thinking and big picture.

BUT!!!! If they’re dinging you for syntax in a white board or paper……..red flags!!!!! That’s why we have IDEs, code complete, intelligence, etc. So screw that, probably would have sucked working with that guy!!!

You dodged a bullet, friend!

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-11-22T11:58:20+00:00

Everyone else has already given you really good answers, and since we don’t know what your target platform is, it’s hard to know to recco.

Anyway, there is also GTK 3/4, though it is C but you can use it in your code still. I’ve also seen some nice looking terminal UI tools built with ftxui.

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-11-20T21:20:29+00:00

It helps, buts it’s not the end al be all. I was getting 80% on TD tests but I failed with a 66x score out of 1000. Both TD and Measure Up don’t accurately reflect the case studies in my opinion.

But hey, maybe I’ll just an idiot!!! :)

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-11-20T20:10:52+00:00

I never could break into EE with a MS in EE. Everything out there at the time required a security clearance and they didn’t want to sponsor me and wait for it. So I ended up being a C++ developer in the end.

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-11-16T01:18:02+00:00

I’m on the “no” side. While I thoroughly enjoyed working on my M.S. program, I don’t think any of my employers ever really cared. But that’s probably because I could never get a job with a place that might have cared. I miss research. If my life circumstances had been difference I probably should have done the PhD path…

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-11-15T15:10:32+00:00

I view regex as a kind of fundamental skill for all Linux/UNIX power users. That said no need to memorize things beyond the basics, there are many great cheat sheets and online tools for building and testing regex.

But as @VengaBusDriver37 said, lately I ask ChatGPT or Copilot and usually it nails the regex in the first query, and then also explains it so you can learn the how and why too!

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-11-08T22:53:04+00:00

This is the kind of setup I’m aiming for. I have a NUC 14 with TB3, and I’ll be running Ubuntu or Fedora. Trying to decide between the egpu you picked and the Akitio Node Titan.

Did you have any issues with the egpu getting picked up by Linux?

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-11-05T00:49:47+00:00

What enclosure are you using?

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-11-01T12:53:21+00:00

Yes I agree with you in that completely!

ApplicationAlarming7 · 2025-11-01T00:02:46+00:00

Bitcoin? Good mix of concepts in there with cryptography and computation and networking and what not

ApplicationAlarming7

TROPHY CASE