On May 11, 2009, at 3:04 PM, Joerg wrote: > al davis wrote: >> On Monday 11 May 2009, Joerg wrote: >>> I just hope universities don't rely on that route alone when >>> teaching RF design. >> >> Why not? It's no worse than some of the other choices they >> make, including some that you vigorously defend. >> > > Like what? > > >> Considering how much proprietary stuff they rely on, and by >> doing so they reject real opportunities for learning, System-C >> as a sole way to teach a particular part of the curriculum seems >> rather benign. >> > > It's ok as long as they don't neglect real HW design and testing, with > solder irons and all. I have found younger candidates to be seriously > lacking in that respect.
I agree, but I find it even more shocking that a 21st century engineer would not know programming. Programming skills are as important as literacy to a scientist, mathematician, or engineer these days. They cannot be left to specialized programmers any more than writing can be left to specialized scribes. > There comes a time when us older guys can't > help them anymore. The topper was a professor at my university who > said > that soon everything will be ICs, that transistors and most of that > discrete stuff would go away. I burst into laughter in the > auditorium, a > bit embarrassing ... Well, in case you haven't noticed, it's headed that way. My CCD measurement chains of 10-20 years ago were full of discrete transistors. IC's were not up to the job at the power levels required for a space instrument. Present day versions have no discretes, but use less power, and are faster and quieter. It's physics: the scaling laws tell you that in most cases, smaller transistors with shorter interconnections are better. You can only go so far down this road with discretes. Still need a big power transistor? Those are mostly IC's, too: millions of tiny transistors in parallel. What hasn't changed is the need to understand the physics of individual transistors: if anything in mixed signal VLSI that's *more* important than it was in the days of discretes. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ j...@noqsi.com _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user