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docdivakar
Analog will always be a complementary part to digital and this symbiotic ...
notarboca
Analog will always, ALWAYS, exist. The human experience makes it so.
Demise of analog is exaggerated
Venu Menon
6/21/2012 12:44 PM EDT
Over the last 20 years, the world population grew at a compound annual growth rate of 1.4 percent, recently surpassing the 7 billion mark. During the same time period, overall semiconductor unit sales grew at a CAGR of 9.2 percent, reaching 660 billion chips in 2010, according to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organization.
What’s interesting is that the analog semiconductor unit CAGR during the same period was 10.3 percent. That’s 92 billion analog chips in 2010, or higher than the overall semiconductor market. That’s over 13 analog chips per human on the planet – each year!
It’s safe to say that “the demise of analog” has been greatly exaggerated.
This rising growth of analog content in products is driven by new solutions to old applications (think hybrid electric vehicles, televisions and LED light bulbs), new applications such as personal computing with smartphones/tablets and smarter automobiles and new markets in personal medicine, alternative energy and safety/security.
Across all of these areas, we are seeing a rapid increase in the use of analog chips as well as sensors. An average smartphone now has more than eight sensors! Over the next five years, the CAGR for sensors/actuators is forecasted to grow 6.8 percent faster than the overall IC market, according to IC Insights. A quick look at a typical block diagram of an electronic device illustrates the number of analog and mixed signal IC’s on a circuit board. These include amplifiers connected to a data source (such as a sensor), data converters, power management chips, clocks and timing devices and interface chips.
Let’s take a look at the manufacturing technologies for analog semiconductors. Unlike digital products which march to the beat of Moore’s Law, the logic gate counts of most mixed signal and analog products do not increase significantly from generation to generation. Consequently, analog manufacturing processes migrate much more slowly from one lithography node to the next.
Next: Analog platforms
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hm
6/21/2012 9:28 PM EDT
What you mentioned may be correct. But, if you look for opportunity to work as common EE, opportunities are much limited as compare to other field of EE.
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elctrnx_lyf
6/22/2012 6:45 AM EDT
In general it takes more time to master the art of analog design so it takes more time also to forget them.
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MClayton
6/23/2012 12:06 AM EDT
Digital IC manufacturing yields are defect-limited due to constant shrinking and high line densities.
Analog IC yields are parameter-limited (or test-limited, or design-limited) and only defect limited if they get very large.
Or so it seems to me over past 50 years.
We started out the IC industry making analog devices mostly, digital came along but it was mostly relay-logic on steroids. The real world is analog, so all digital chips have to interface to analog chips (or analog portions of same digital chip) to be useful to real world.
So analog will not go away...
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prabhakar_deosthali
6/23/2012 7:30 AM EDT
As long as the "POWER" related world is analog ( generation, transformation, distribution) analog will remain in power. That is my prediction. And as long human senses and gestures are analog the final interface for any electronic circuit will remain analog at both input and output end. All the intermediaries can well enjoy the digital world.
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Sanjib.Acharya
6/24/2012 4:01 AM EDT
Electronics can't survive without Analog. But the manufacturers might continue to face challenges in keeping up with the newer process technologies and at the same time , maintaining the required qualities such as robustness/reliability, higher noise margin etc.
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David Ashton
6/24/2012 5:45 AM EDT
As long as you need to get analog real world quantities into digital form, analog electronics will be needed. There has been more than one story in these columns of the perils of trying to get things done without any form of analog signal conditioning. Analog is not a competitor to digital, it's complimentary.
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nicolas.mokhoff
6/25/2012 9:40 AM EDT
The question becomes not whether analog is needed or inferior to digital, the question is can analog a digital engineers get along when they need to work together on system-on-chip designs. The two disciplines can learn much from each other and complement each other in the system architecture design flow.
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studleylee
6/25/2012 3:55 PM EDT
There are so many mediums and ways to paint. No method really 'dies':the end 'dictates' the means. So no, analog cannot die, it's implementation will evolve.
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UCCS1993
6/25/2012 6:15 PM EDT
Didn't Ramtron develop the FRAM memory and TI is a foundry? Seems like you are taking credit as the developer.
"We recently developed a fast-write, low-power, non-volatile memory called ferroelectric random access memory to enable ultra-low power mixed signal microcontrollers that consume less than half the power of equivalent flash-based devices. "
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vmenon
6/27/2012 1:13 PM EDT
Thanks for the question. Texas Instruments developed the FRAM manufacturing technology. TI has introduced several products with embedded FRAM memory. TI also manufactures products on this manufacturing process for a customer through a foundry arrangement.
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DadOf3TeenieBoppers
6/28/2012 9:35 AM EDT
The world is analog. It always has been, it always will be. 1's and 0's need to be converted into volts and amps.
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damngoodengineer
6/28/2012 1:06 PM EDT
Funny, how some of us analog types were just discussing the demise of analog and the absense of anything new we can use for music/audio purposes. Do a search on the CA3280 and then tell me how analog is going strong. What is your answer to those of us that want that CA3280 back? Use a I2C ADC/DAC? naw.
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notarboca
6/29/2012 10:47 AM EDT
Analog will always, ALWAYS, exist. The human experience makes it so.
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docdivakar
7/3/2012 12:27 AM EDT
Analog will always be a complementary part to digital and this symbiotic relation is becoming more important now a days than any time before. With the advances in 3D IC stacked chips, analog will play even greater role.
MP Divakar
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