In the hardware lab, everypony was busy finishing up the code for the internal memory system. The first 2 months saw to a lot of work. Albeit having sacrificed many evenings, drunk a lot of coffee (and tea, and ate cake for some reason) and made several trips to the karaoke bar, they had made a lot of progress and had succeeded in ticking many points on their red carpet-long checklist.
However, with great programming workload, comes equally great debugging.
"Oops, wait just a second, let me correct that," Flip Flop said. She deleted the faulty line of code and typed up the correction.
"Missed another one there. Forgot the semicolon," Sweetie said.
"Right. Oh my gosh, there are so many mistakes!"
"If you ask me Sweetie, I think that the bus speed is unnecessarily high. We could settle for less, and that won't hurt," Pos Edge said. "By the way Flip, you forgot to include the EIS arithmetic package."
"Yeah, but if we do, then we won't be able ramp up the processor frequency as much. The directors wanted it," Sweetie said.
"True, although I do prefer working with a much lower frequency," Jytter added. "It makes the system less prone to instability."
"Don't worry. With that newly developed architecture, there's surely gonna be less chances of that happening," Sweetie assured the rest of the gang.
"There, all done! Now we can run this thing," Flip Flop backed away from the keyboard and slumped onto her chair, spinning slowly. "I'm beat."
"Great, hit the simulation button please, Pos," Sweetie said.
Pos Edge clicked on the simulation icon, and waited. The screen flashed and readjusted itself in order to show a plot graph and some variables. The simulation started before abruptly ending a second later.
"Oh, what now?! I'm tired of going through this code all morning!" Flip Flop blurted.
"Relax, it's probably just some little detail you forgot. I'll take a look at it, okay?" Flip Flop stared at her with an annoyed face. She stepped away so that Pos Edge could take over the olive mare's place and immediately she began to run through the code.
She read through the memory controller description, starting from the pre-processing directives, then going down towards the module declaration, checking for any badly formed syntax or word before moving on to the architecture description. She spent a good amount of time looking out for errors and whatnot. She found none.
Not wanting to give up, she went through the settings and checked for any funny business that could have caused this. Of course, nopony ever touches the settings once it has been set. Ever.
Well, not really.
"O... kay. I can't find anything," the blue pegasus said. "What did you do, Flip?"
"This may sound stupid, but have you recompiled it?" Jytter asked.
"Ohhh... stupid not-auto-compiler! Sorry guys, I forgot about that..." Flip Flop gave an embarrassed grin.
"Classic," Pos Edge said, sighing all the while. She was not the least bit amused. Wasting no time, she recompiled the source code. The progress bar started from 0% and reached full capacity in just 10 seconds flat.
"Rerun the simulation again," Sweetie said. The blue mare proceeded to do just that. This time, the graphs started showing metrics from the simulation. They all watched as the plot graph displayed traces indicating the processor load and memory latency. "Moving up to 400... Come on, come on..."
The basic tests were finished, and the software entered into stress test mode. Arbitrary random sequences were transacted to and from the device-under-test. The protocol checker validated thousands upon thousands of read/write requests, interruptions and data. The workings of it all was marvelously engineered. Jytter and Chequer had really outdone themselves.
After about 5 minutes, the simulation came to an end. A final result was displayed in the terminal window beneath the plot graph. "It says... optimum parameters are 48% load at about 600 megacycles. Alright guys! That's settled. Good job." Sweetie exclaimed. "One less for us to worry about."
"Great work Jytter, Chequer," Flip Flop said, congratulating the two verification engineers.
"Hey, that's not all our credit. We all did this together," replied the stallion.
"So what's left on our schedule?" Pos Edge asked.
"Let's see. We've got the memory system down, CPU was done ages ago, peripherals too," Flip Flop said, squinting her eyes at the schedule pinned to the group's billboard. "Now there's... wait a minute," she paused, turning around with a wide grin.
"What?"
"We've finished the MMAP system implementation!"
"In two months?" Chequer asked. "Exactly! Told ya we could pull it off!" Flip Flop celebrated with a dance.
"But we're not done yet," Sweetie exclaimed.
"Yes, we all know that," Chequer said.
"We still have external circuitry- that's easy, baseband, power management... oooh, what's this? I've never seen this one before. Looks like this one came in this morning."
"What is it Flip?" Pos Edge said as she made her way towards the billboard. On it, a piece of paper showing a to-do list was pinned next to the array of lists for the other components. It was a simple and short list, yet the novelty of the term used, made it somewhat intriguing.
"What's a... touchscreen?" she asked.
"I have never heard of it," Jytter said.
"Neither have I," Chequer added.
"That must be the name for that secret glass screen the R&D department were making. I can't believe we're going to use it in this project!" Sweetie exclaimed.
"More new components? Oh boy. More fun for us," Pos Edge sighed.
"Oh don't you see? We're gonna go in history! First ponies to create a device with a... touchscreen!"
"Yeah, but what's so speacial about it? Is it there for ponies to touch?"
"See, it allows ponies to use their hoo-"
"Sweetie," a deadpanned voice called out from the door. They all turned around in surprise to see Sand Box standing by the entrance. "Auditorium in 15 minutes. That goes for all of you too."
Everypony nodded. Flip Flop gulped. Seeing that they all had understood his message, he left, heading towards other parts of the office.
"Auditorium? What for?" Pos Edge asked.
"Are we in trouble?" Flip Flop added.
"Nah, I don't think so, he would never have caught us that day," Chequer replied.
"It must be another lecture. The last time it happened, it was about the baseband," Jytter offered. "Well, I wonder what this is going to be about."
"Applying a low potential difference will cause the middle conductive layer to have a uniform magicostatic field..."
"Man, I don't understand anything!" Stark Pointer blurted in a whisper. "Why do we even need to attend this lecture?"
Love Lace sat silently in her chair. Luckily for her, she had learned about some basic concepts in circuit design from another colleague, so she knew what the research ponies are talking about. Some, on the other hand, had no clue as to what a magicostatic field even was.
"They're going to cover the basics of using this new touchscreen thing, and they've got codes as well," she whispered.
"Well until that happens, I'm taking a nap. Please do me a favor and do not disturb me until somepony mentions the word 'sample code' or 'API'. Thank you. Come on Sif, let's take a nap."
"Please, Stark, act your age for an hour. And Elsif, don't you even think about saying yes," she scolded.
"Don't you worry Love, I'm actually kind of interested about all this magionics thing."
"No, not you too! Sif! Don't leave me!" Stark silently begged her marefriend, fearing she would turn over to the hardware side.
"Leave her alone Stark, she'd said that she wanted to listen."
"But if she does that, she's gonna end up working for the hardware design team! I won't have that!" He started sobbing quietly, although it was obvious by the lame (and fake) nature of it, that he was being dramatic.
"Silly, I won't be going anywhere Starky. And what's up with me working for the hardware guys?"
"It's horrible in there! You can get burned by the soldering iron! There're risks of magic shock and that gruesome-looking MSD gun is a killer!" He pretended to convulse, as if being shocked by magic, and eventually collapsed and laid his head on Elsif's lap, pretending to faint.
"And FYI, I don't think you zap ponies with it. They've got safety precautions," Love Lace retorted in a hush. Stark Pointer got back up again, trying to think of a comeback.
"Well, still, I don't trust them. Hardware guys... always causing software problems. Not our fault your software didn't comply with our ISA-"
"Can you all please be quite? I must understand this!" Jytter interrupted him in his mockery, whispering loudly from across the row.
"Well I'm sorry for inter-"
"Shush!" The brown stallion silenced the group.
"Fine, fine. Sheesh."
"And so when a hoof or hooftip is placed onto the glass, this creates a makeshift capacitor..."
"Wow, that's pretty intuitive. Why didn't we think of that?" Hex said.
"If we had, then those ponies at the lab wouldn't have their jobs now would they?" Chequer replied. She had split from the hardware design team to sit with her husband, as usual.
"Maybe next time we can come up with something like this."
Hex and Chequer were the duo of science and technology. It was no wonder that they were one of PI's valued staffs: they were an idea generator. Sometimes, they get called for brainstorming sessions because their ideas were quite interesting and novel.
"You know what's better? If ponies could use some sort of glove on their hooves, and they could interact with the objects on the screen."
"Yeah, that'll be great! Maybe if we used magnetic bands or something that could be detected-"
"Then use magnetic field sensors in the screen or whatever-"
"And then process the data into three-dimensional movements-"
"Then we become robots! Like in Power Ponies!"
"It'll be cool!"
The couple squeed relatively loudly. The next thing they knew, they were panting. "Ok, maybe not Power Ponies," Chequer said, breathing heavily.
"But magnetosensors aren't that accurate, hun," Hex said.
"Yeah, they aren't." Both of them sighed, wearing a visage of dejection. Part of the downsides of their brainstorming sessions, was that half—if not more—of their ideas were unrealistic or impractical.
"Guess we'll have to wait."
"Or, maybe we can..."
"The newly introduced capacitance causes disturbance in the magicostatic field, thus changing the magical potential and the point of contact..."
"I still don't agree with how A.K. Yearling finished that book though. I mean, enough with cliffhangers already! She did that last time!" Pos Edge said.
The trio were grouped together in a far corner of the array of seats, mostly to avoid being rude whilst discussing their favorite past-times. "You know her style. If she wants to get the readers hooked, she will," Lisp said.
"Don't worry, the movies will eventually tweak things out. Though that'll make things weird since the story isn't finished yet," Flip Flop added.
"I don't think I want to watch any movie adaptation ever again! Pony cinematography just isn't that great. Why can't we be like the griffons?" the blue pegasus exclaimed. The last time she watched something of the like, it was horribly interpreted. The actors were bad and stage direction was non-existent.
"There are good ones too, you know? Can't just discard them all, silly filly!"
Equestrian cinematography was just starting to bloom in the last few years. Beforehand, there would only be plays and nothing more. During the first Global Arts Festival some few years back, ponies had met with artists from different kinds and were influenced by their expression of art. One of them was cinematography. The griffons considered themselves pioneers in this, although the dragons (mostly the oriental ones) claimed that they were first.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. But still, that doesn't change anything. Equestrian actors need to get better. And fast."
"The sensor grid placed below the ensemble detects the local change in magical potential, and a sensor unit detects this. A controller unit then encodes this location information and transmit it via SDI..."
"So whadda ya think? Wanna give it a shot?" Button was filled with excitement. He wished that Sweetie could at least consider giving a thought about coming with him to assist in the demonstration.
"I don't know Button, we still got a lot of work to do."
"Come one Sweetie, it's just for two days. We'll take the last train home."
"I know, but it just feels wrong to leave the rest of the group doing work while I'm on a short break," Sweetie said, troubled by the offer his friend had made.
Ponyville Schoolhouse was hosting the annual Family Appreciation Day, and Button Mash's little brother, Bitly, wanted him to participate this year.
Of course, talking about programming and codes to little colts and fillies wouldn't be so interesting, so he wanted to take Sweetie Belle along so that she could explain the circuitry as well. Heck, maybe she could smuggle some test boards and equipments from the lab, too!
"Please, pretty please? You said that you were sort of ahead of schedule. I know you don't wanna leave your team, but please... Do it for me?" He tried the pearly-eyed approach.
"Alright... I'll think about it okay? Now could you please stop that. It's making me sick."
"Heh, got a taste of your own medicine now-"
"Do you want me to come or not?" Sweetie threatened.
"Okay, okay. I'll stop now."
"Now, moving on to the software integration. We have developed some low-level drivers in P, mostly for conversing with the device, but as for high-level API-"
"DID SOMEONE SAY API?!" Stark Pointer shouted in full vocal strength. The entire auditorium stared at him. "Oh, heh... my bad."