Back in the 1970’s I was an Analog Applications Engineering Section Head at Signetics Corporation (later bought by North American Philips) and was having a lot of trouble finding competent analog engineers. It seemed that the “bits only” ideology had found fertile ground and very few engineering students wanted to study analog electronics. Of course, colleges and universities tailor their course offerings to suit student demands, so there were few analog classes offered, furthering the problem of finding analog talent.
I decided to approach the local universities to speak to the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Student Groups at those schools. I entitled my talk The Decline and Fall of the Analog Engineer. This title was to catch the attention of people who felt that “analog is dead” and also those who realize that analog is still much alive. The latter was really my point. I wanted students to know that analog is very much alive and explain why it will always be alive. Only California State University, San Jose accepted my offer. The talk was highly successful with many engineering professors in attendance as well as students to hear what I had to say. This talk led to a long relationship with that San Jose State University where I was eventually asked to talk about Survival. This title reflected the student mentality of surviving the educational process and wondering how they would survive the work environment. But that is another story.
Today we see a different decline of the Analog engineer in that we no longer have a lot of need for purely analog engineering talent. Analog engineering is still very much alive, but more and more we are seeing the need for analog engineers to have some of the skills of software engineering as well. This comes into play when we realize that, while the real world is and will always be analog, processing digital information is much easier, so we will want to convert analog information into digital information for processing.
Note that I did not say digital processing is more accurate. This is intentional because, while digital processing may be easier it is not necessarily more accurate. After all, the first computers were analog machines.
At any rate, an analog engineer today is very often required to have at least some digital hardware skills. He/she should also be able to write effective programs in one of the “C” languages (C, C+, C#) and should have a familiarity with VHDL.
Nevertheless, the decline and fall of the analog engineer is still, as it was in the 1970’s not a decline in need, but a decline in the people choosing to study and to work with analog circuits. Do not make the mistake of thinking that digital processing is necessarily better than analog. It is only different, not always better. Analog processing can often be faster with lower power. Of course, this is not always true, but depends upon circuit needs. Those who want to be different, who want to stand out, should seriously consider analog electronics. Or, perhaps I should call it mixed-signal, which is what it has become today.