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On 6/11/2010 6:11 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Seriously... Doing what? Everything seems to be made of off-the-shelf
> parts (which, by definition, already exist). What's to design?
Have you ever opened an electronic gadget and peered inside? That PCB
isn't off the shelf. It may have off the shelf components on it, but
someone, somewhere had to design it. There may even be a customized chip
on it.
For example, my Wacom Intuos3 (RIP) was waterlogged, so it was an
opportunity to look inside. They have a chip on the board with their
logo. Probably some customized DSP to translate the signals generated by
the stylus and tablet grid.
These sorts of things need design all of the time. I work for a company
in the construction industry. We produce software for a niche market.
I've worked for an industrial equipment manufacturer (a sister company)
those machines need electrical design, and software to make them work,
some of that software is actually rather involving mathematically, and a
portion of it requires an understanding of calculus to really get a grip
on how to properly set the tuning parameters.
Somebody needs to design the drives that control the motors. They may
even want to produce a custom CPU for those drives because an
off-the-shelf CPU may not fit their needs exactly. Someone needs to
design the IO controller so each solenoid on the machine can be
controlled by the host system, someone needs to design the embedded
computer to command the system. Heck, we have engineers that design the
electrical systems for the machines. They also do the mechanical design
of the machine.
There are plenty of opportunities to apply your skills. Look at the
machinery at your company's lab, look at the analysis equipment. There
are people who design these things, and are always looking for ways to
improve the design, implement new features and cut costs.
--
~Mike
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>>> but if you want to do digital circuit design for a job there are
>>> plenty of opportunities in a vast range of industries.
>>
>> Seriously... Doing what? Everything seems to be made of off-the-shelf
>> parts (which, by definition, already exist). What's to design?
>
> I guarantee you that if you open up any phone/monitor/TV/camera there
> will be at least one custom IC that is not an off-the-shelf part.
Phones I can believe. (They have to be as tiny as possible, after all.
And battery performance is critical.) But other stuff? I'd be a little
surprised if, say, my LCD TV at home has any nonstandard components in
it. (Other than the LCD panel itself of course.)
> It's
> not just IC makers that design ICs, any company that has a relatively
> high-tec product does it.
From what I understand, any device that has more than about three
buttons on it probably contains a microprocessor. (That includes my
washing machine, and my toaster.) But it'll be a Z80, straight off the
shelf. Bolt it in there with a standard low-voltage power supply and
write some firmware. No call for any custom ICs there. (Aren't ASICs
prohibitively expensive to make anyway?)
> For example we design our own driver and
> controller ICs for LCD panels, I know Canon designs their DIGIC image
> processing IC, I imagine all other camera and display makers do
> similar.
I'm no expect, but I would have thought an LCD driver is more an
exercise in analogue rather than digital electronics.
It actually surprises me that somebody can make money just designing new
LCDs. To the untrained eye, they all appear to be identical, except for
size and resolution. Not sure why you'd ever need to design a new one...
> What about specialist electronic test equipment?
This exists?
> How about network cards and
> routers, someone needs to design the chipsets for those which are always
> being improved.
I was under the impression that a router is simply a board with an
off-the-shelf microprocessor, off-the-shelf RAM and a bunch of
off-the-shelf NIC driver chips. Somebody needs to design the PCB, the
power supply, and write the OS (which is usually performance and
security critical), but I don't see much requirement for any chip design.
> What about the thousands of companies that offer FPGA and ASIC
> design services - who are they doing work for? Who is working for them?
It's news to me that anybody is in this line of work. I have no idea who
their clients would be.
>>> If you were degree qualified I could point you to an opening we have
>>> at the moment.
>>
>> Really? Are you ser- oh, wait, you work in Germany, don't you?
>
> Yes, but this job is at our Oxford lab.
Mmm, that's not bad...
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Mike Raiford wrote:
> On 6/11/2010 6:11 AM, Invisible wrote:
>
>> Seriously... Doing what? Everything seems to be made of off-the-shelf
>> parts (which, by definition, already exist). What's to design?
>
> Have you ever opened an electronic gadget and peered inside? That PCB
> isn't off the shelf.
Sure. But that isn't logic design. That's designing a PCB - an entirely
different task.
> There may even be a customized chip on it.
Only if it's a ROM, PROM or EPROM. :-P
> For example, my Wacom Intuos3 (RIP) was waterlogged, so it was an
> opportunity to look inside. They have a chip on the board with their
> logo. Probably some customized DSP to translate the signals generated by
> the stylus and tablet grid.
I found a picture online of the motherboard for a C64. There was a chip
with the Commodore logo on it... but it was a bulk standard 6510.
> These sorts of things need design all of the time. I work for a company
> in the construction industry. We produce software for a niche market.
> I've worked for an industrial equipment manufacturer (a sister company)
> those machines need electrical design, and software to make them work,
> some of that software is actually rather involving mathematically, and a
> portion of it requires an understanding of calculus to really get a grip
> on how to properly set the tuning parameters.
And how many people in the entire world need to work on this software?
3? 17? 25?
> Somebody needs to design the drives that control the motors. They may
> even want to produce a custom CPU for those drives because an
> off-the-shelf CPU may not fit their needs exactly.
Given the vast profusion of extremely low-cost off-the-shelf
microcontrollers in existence, this seems highly implausible.
> Someone needs to
> design the IO controller so each solenoid on the machine can be
> controlled by the host system
Again, this sounds like a question of analogue rather than digital
electronics.
> There are plenty of opportunities to apply your skills. Look at the
> machinery at your company's lab, look at the analysis equipment. There
> are people who design these things, and are always looking for ways to
> improve the design, implement new features and cut costs.
Have you ever been in a real lab? ;-)
We have a special machine. It's only purpose is to shake things. But it
must shake in a precisely-controlled, completely repeatable mannar. So
a license to print money!
then it wouldn't be 100% repeatable, so that's no good. But then, hell,
The most high-tech thing we have is the mass spectrometers - and that's
about physical engineering, not fancy electronics. The next thing on the
list is the autosamplers - but they use a Z80 CPU to control a couple of
stepper motors. That's it. Somebody wrote the software, somebody
designed the mechanics, but no IC design involved.
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Am 11.06.10 12:32, schrieb Invisible:
> Tim Nikias wrote:
>>>> Learning aside: Hobbies were invented for fun, not for "productive
>>>> time management". ;-)
>>>
>>> Sure. But spending weeks wiring together little black blobs in order to
>>> make a few LEDs flash in a pattern with hypothetically means something?
>>> Most people wouldn't regard that as "fun".
>>
>> Well, but what some people call fun is beyond me, so why bother if
>> "most people" consider it fun? The only thing important is if YOU're
>> having fun doing it. If so, mission accomplished. :-)
>
> Sure. It would just be nice if the entire human race _didn't_ regard me
> as a total loser, that's all...
I don't. You gotta learn to let go of how other people see you. Here on
the newsgroups, building a CPU is the kind of thing you expect Povers to
do (whilst waiting for their 4 month renders to finish), so no worries
there.
As for other people: You can always find people who do other stuff than
you and thus show no interest in what you do. Do they count? Nope. After
all, I don't understand much about medicine nor do I want to study it,
but I'm sure happy there are doctors around.
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> Phones I can believe. (They have to be as tiny as possible, after all. And
> battery performance is critical.) But other stuff? I'd be a little
> surprised if, say, my LCD TV at home has any nonstandard components in it.
> (Other than the LCD panel itself of course.)
What, you think Sony just happened to find the "Convert 60 Hz 1080p signal
into 240 Hz" IC in the RS catalogue whilst their competitors couldn't?
> From what I understand, any device that has more than about three buttons
> on it probably contains a microprocessor. (That includes my washing
> machine, and my toaster.) But it'll be a Z80, straight off the shelf. Bolt
> it in there with a standard low-voltage power supply and write some
> firmware. No call for any custom ICs there.
That works fine for simple things, like the controller on your microwave or
a keyboard, but anything that needs to deal with higher bandwidth or do more
complex tasks in a special way would benefit from a custom IC.
> (Aren't ASICs prohibitively expensive to make anyway?)
Not if you're planning to use it high volume products.
> I'm no expect, but I would have thought an LCD driver is more an exercise
> in analogue rather than digital electronics.
It's mostly digital, but then any high speed digital design becomes an
exercise in analogue electronics when you have to start taking into account
the capacitance and resistance of the tracks :-)
> It actually surprises me that somebody can make money just designing new
> LCDs. To the untrained eye, they all appear to be identical, except for
> size and resolution. Not sure why you'd ever need to design a new one...
In addition to size and resolution, in case you didn't notice the colour,
viewing angle, brightness, power consumption and thickness has also been
improving, and still is. Hence new ones still need to be designed.
>> What about specialist electronic test equipment?
>
> This exists?
Just because some things are not sold doesn't mean they don't exist. We
have a lab full of stuff designed by us for only us to use. The guy who I
work with used to work in a department of Siemens specially dedicated to
designing test equipment for internal use. I would imagine most electronics
design companies have departments like this.
> I was under the impression that a router is simply a board with an
> off-the-shelf microprocessor, off-the-shelf RAM and a bunch of
> off-the-shelf NIC driver chips.
So what happens when a new network standard comes along (eg 802.11n),
someone needs to design an IC for that, and it's not just one company that
designs an IC and everyone else buys it, there are loads of chipsets
designed with slightly different characteristics.
And still the person who designs the *board* needs to be someone who has a
deep understanding of all the ICs, even if they didn't design them
themselves. Board design isn't just a case of joining up the wires as it
says on the datasheet.
>> What about the thousands of companies that offer FPGA and ASIC design
>> services - who are they doing work for? Who is working for them?
>
> It's news to me that anybody is in this line of work. I have no idea who
> their clients would be.
Google "FPGA design service", I get 1.2 million results.
> Mmm, that's not bad...
Until you get some form of qualification though, you're going to fail at the
first hurdle for most jobs.
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> For example, my Wacom Intuos3 (RIP) was waterlogged, so it was an
> opportunity to look inside. They have a chip on the board with their logo.
> Probably some customized DSP to translate the signals generated by the
> stylus and tablet grid.
Oh yeh that's a good one. We have a lot of contact (no pun intended) with
touch panel companies, they are all offering their custom ICs to process the
touch panel signals into easily usable form. They will even license their
designs to us to include with our ICs to reduce costs.
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On 11/06/2010 2:10 PM, Invisible wrote:
> ...which isn't useful unless you happen to design chips for a living,
> with approximately 0.0% of the population does.
Tisk, Tisk. Using 1 decimal place means that 25 thousand people in
England could design chips for a living and not show up in your figures. :-P
--
Best Regards,
Stephen
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Stephen <mca### [at] aolDOT com> wrote:
> On 11/06/2010 11:32 AM, Invisible wrote:
> > Sure. It would just be nice if the entire human race _didn't_ regard me
> > as a total loser, that's all...
>
> It's not the entire human race it is mostly you.
despite feeling like a loser, he also puts a lot of self-importance on hiw own,
to be known by the entire human race as such... :)
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Tim Nikias wrote:
> As for other people: You can always find people who do other stuff than
> you and thus show no interest in what you do. Do they count? Nope. After
> all, I don't understand much about medicine nor do I want to study it,
> but I'm sure happy there are doctors around.
Ironic how society values doctors, but computer programmers are seen as
losers who can't handle real life...
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>> ...which isn't useful unless you happen to design chips for a living,
>> with approximately 0.0% of the population does.
>
> Tisk, Tisk. Using 1 decimal place means that 25 thousand people in England
> could design chips for a living and not show up in your figures. :-P
Also I don't think anyone doing anything as specific as "digital IC design"
takes up more than 0.05% of the population, it's simply too narrow a
classification. Most of the people I know that do this also do other
electrical stuff, hence their job title is "electrical engineer" and not "IC
designer".
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