>> Err why would you be surprised?  It's a necessary activity to be able to 
>> test your own products!
>
> Sure. But how often do you need to design new test equipment?

Whenever you bring out new products?

> Sometimes it seems like there isn't a job in existence where you can avoid 
> having customers shout at you...

Since working for 6 or 7 years and regularly having meetings with many 
different customers I have never once heard anyone shout or get visibly 
angry.  Everyone seems pretty professional and we all seem to understand 
each other pretty well, even if we often don't agree on what is "best" :-)

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On 6/11/2010 9:03 AM, scott wrote:
>
> 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.
>

Actually, I think that's one of the things Wacom actually sells. Not to 
end-users, of course.

-- 
~Mike

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On 6/11/2010 8:31 AM, Invisible wrote:

>> 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.
>

Look at a PC, someone had to design that north bridge, and the south 
bridge, and the bus arbitrators, and all of the little glue pieces that 
keep information flowing from one point to the other.

Often if you look closely at what is going on in a PCB you'll find that 
there will be logic gates being used to manage signals in the device.

>> There may even be a customized chip on it.
>
> Only if it's a ROM, PROM or EPROM. :-P
>

Generally ROM's are about as off-the-shelf as you can get.

>> 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.
>

I thought there were a few small additions to it...

>> 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?
>

Way more than that. Any company that wants to create a building can use 
the software to do that.

>> 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.
>

Until they realize they can take up less space by embedding a simplified 
version of the micro controller with some of the external logic they're 
using, which makes the device smaller and lighter and cheaper to ship.

>> 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.

A lot of control system design is strictly digital. Unless you have a 
sensor somewhere that gives an analog output.

>> 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? ;-)

No...

> 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!

A lot of that is recouping the time their engineers spent designing that 
device. But, then they turn around and find ways to make the device less 
expensive (for them) to produce. They know what their clients will pay, 
and what a fair market rate is for the machine, so they'll charge that 
and pocket the rest.

> 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

I'm sure there's some electronics somewhere to translate the readings 
into something that is either plotted on a piece of paper or sent to a 
computer via serial communications

> 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.

Maybe not, but they probably have some logic somewhere outside of the 
CPU to manage signals, enable and disable drives, and such.

-- 
~Mike

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Invisible wrote:
> The Motion Picture Experts Group might need to know the difference 
> between a Type-I and Type-II Discrete Cosine Transform, but most people 
> only *implement* MPEG standards, not design them.

I think you underestimate how much knowledge it takes to implement something 
like that from the spec.  You can't just follow the instructions without 
understanding them and expect it to work.

> Most companies do not design ICs. They purchase them off the shelf and 
> assemble them.

I think you underestimate how much knowledge of ICs it takes to build a 
board. And lots and lots of companies design custom chips.

> (Indeed, I was under the impression that the number of 
> companies world-wide who actually have IC fabrication plants is very 
> small - although admittedly you don't need to actually have a fab to 
> design new ICs.)

Indeed. Lots more people took 35mm photographs than there were people 
developing photographs.

> It certainly doesn't call for a C programmer.

No, but lots of the enterprise software calls for a SQL programmer, a PHP 
programmer, an ASP.NET programmer, or a VBA programmer.  How do you think 
the things get customized.

> And game engines... Well, that's probably way, way less exciting than it 
> sounds anyway. ;-)

I expect designing the games is more cool than coding them. I expect coding 
game engines is more cool than most anyting "enterprise".

>> Sure, most are not as glamorous as designing the next GPU for the 
>> PlayStation 4,
> 
> Actually, I imagine most jobs are way less exciting than they sound. ;-)

Welcome to the real world, where jobs suck bad enough they have to pay you 
to do them.

> Seriously... Doing what? Everything seems to be made of off-the-shelf 
> parts (which, by definition, already exist). What's to design?

Uh, the next off-the-shelf part? Optical mice are off the shelf, but the 
chips running them had to be designed. Remote controls are off the shelf, 
but the chips running them had to be designed. Of course once it's off the 
shelf, it's already designed. But someone had to design every one of those 
off-the-shelf bits you found. Someone designed the XBox-360 GPU before the 
XBox-360 was an off-the-shelf part.

Nowadays it's actually cheaper to build a specific chip for what you want to 
do than cobble together off-the-shelf parts, for most applications. You use 
the software to design a chip, and you ship the tape to the fab and they 
mail you back a crate of chips.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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Invisible wrote:
>> What about specialist electronic test equipment?
> This exists?

You would be amazed at the amount of special test equipment is used to test 
cell phones, for example. They even have a device with rubber fingertips you 
can program to turn on the phone, make a call, then turn off the phone 
again, thousands of times a day.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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Invisible wrote:
> I'd be surprised if there aren't already off-the-shelf parts you can buy 
> for MPEG4 decoding. Surely there are for MPEG1...

Generally, what you buy is an off-the-shelf core, not an off-the-shelf chip. 
ARM doesn't sell chips as much as they sell cores. Cores are the new ICs.

> Sure. But how often do you need to design new test equipment?

Every time you have a new type of product to test.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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Invisible wrote:
> And how many people in the entire world need to work on this software? 
> 3? 17? 25?

Qualcomm alone has several thousand people who do this sort of job, and 
that's just in one city in one company.

> Given the vast profusion of extremely low-cost off-the-shelf 
> microcontrollers in existence, this seems highly implausible.

But it's even cheaper to set up your own chip with an ARM core and whatever 
other custom logic you need.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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Invisible wrote:
> They put LCDs into cars now? :-P

You know, every time you have one of these conversations, I can't help but 
imagine your cutting edge technology is this:

http://theradiokitchen.net/wp-content/uploads/image/80scellphone.gif

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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Invisible wrote:
> Have you ever been in a real lab? ;-)

Not every lab is a chemistry lab.   Go to a lab where they're doing tests of 
radioactivity, radio frequency signals, astronomy, or even cutting-edge 
medicine instead of your stuff, and you'll find lots of custom chips.

You think the chips in glucosometers or those devices that test for 
allergies or whatever aren't using custom chips?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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Am 11.06.2010 15:07, schrieb Invisible:

>> Nope. While most people don't /care/ how computers work, my experience
>> is that many of them still tend to be impressed when people know.
>
> Rly?
>
> Clearly I'm going to the wrong sort of parties...

If the people or atmosphere at those parties make you feel inferior, 
then yes - definitely.

Also I wouldn't bet on meeting the woman for life on a party. Definitely 
not on a party where you're having a miserable time.

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