Ok, CAME to America would be more accurate. Just thought I'd let you folks know that I'm here in Raleigh, NC, pursuing my Master's in Computer Science at NC State University

Some of you might recall I had mentioned that I'd be doing my MS sometime, and had asked for advice on this forum for specializing in Embedded Systems.... http://www.8052.com/forum/read.phtml?id=16841
Well it took me some one and a half years to finally get around to it! :-D

I guess this post is just a sort of epilogue to that thread; NC State does have a good research program for embedded systems (http://www.cesr.ncsu.edu) , but it's just not the 8-bit kind, and does not seem very practical to me... I had actually corresponded with (the) Jack Ganssle for advice on this issue, and what he said is perfectly true: there is a big gap in what goes on in the industry and what goes on in universities.

This post is more relevant (i.e less off-topic) than it seems. I actually received mails from several students who read my afore-mentioned post. They also wished to pursue their Master's and were interested in the 8-bit variety of embedded systems, but could not find anything relevant at the univs. The same topic also came up on other forums (eg comp.arch.embedded). The only advice I could offer them was that which I had received. I also went on to suggest (with the proper disclaimers) that they take VLSI/ASIC design, real-time systems and computer architecture courses, which I felt were the next best thing. I don't think I was very wrong there.

The fact is universities are research-oriented. I guess most of the problems faced in the embedded industry are
(1) too varied,
(2) too specific to their respective projects, and
(3) much too urgent
to merit any sort of lenghtened research.... and usually us engineer types come up with some quick-n-dirty fix for those problems that most scientists would frown upon. Somehow I find these fixes more "R&D-ish" than most R&D going on in universities :-)) A sort of "eXtreme R&D" if you will.

As for me, I don't know as yet what I will specialize in, but in all probability its not what I will eventually make a career out of :-D

As you can imagine, I was particularly busy the last few months, and hence had barely any activity on this forum (not that I was much of a contributor before). Now you'll have to put up with my point-less contributions again :-))

kundi