EDN — 07.04.96 editorial

Editorial: July 4, 1996

Steven Leibson,
Editor In Chief

Reality check

At EDN, we're always seeking ways to better serve your information needs. Part of that service relies on reading the messages you send us via e-mail, snail mail (the US Postal Service), and on reader service cards. You tell us what you need to know, and we research the topics for you. Another way that we find out what you're doing is through surveys. Our MarketBeat surveys on the reader service cards have been helpful in telling us what you're doing. Many thanks to those of you who have taken the time to fill out these cards. Please continue to send us feedback on the reader service cards and via the Internet.

EDN isn't the only surveyor of engineers and engineering managers, however. Many electronics companies survey their customers, and sometimes these companies share their valuable survey data with us. Such a survey recently came my way from Hewlett-Packard (HP), which surveyed EDN readers in the United States and EDN Asia readers to determine current µC-design-usage patterns. Answers from survey respondents were included in the results if the respondent was a design engineer developing µC-based products. Respondents also had to either specify or buy oscilloscopes. The scope bit underscores HP's interest in this survey. HP wanted to know about a designer's instrumentation usage.

Because both US and Asian readers responded, the survey results give an interesting picture of the differences and similarities between engineering work done in both regions. For example, development work with µCs in the United States is almost evenly divided among 8-, 16-, and 32-bit µCs (34, 28.3, and 37.7%, respectively). Asian engineers seem far more likely to be working on 8-bit designs. The breakdown for Asian usage of 8-, 16-, and 32-bit µCs is 60.8, 23.7, and 13.4%, respectively. In addition, 2.1% of the Asian respondents said they were working with 4-bit µCs. None of the US engineers seemed to be working with 4-bit designs. Information like this helps me to sort out what EDN should be covering and also helps to explain why my counterpart Mike Markowitz, Editor in Chief of EDN Asia, needs a somewhat different article mix for his readers. EDN Asia would be more inclined to run an article on 4-bit µCs than would EDN, for example.

Three other results from this survey caught my eye. In response to a question about development time, roughly 70% of US respondents and 95% of Asian respondents (all working on 8-bit designs) said their projects lasted 12 months or less. In fact, about 40% of US respondents and more than 70% of Asian respondents working on 8-bit designs said their projects lasted six months or less. Those statistics confirm once more the incredible time-to-market and time-to-volume pressure we know design teams are facing in the late 1990s. These statistics also tell me that you need to know about real products that are available now or in the near future, not products that may be available a year or two from now. By the way, this time-development result is entirely consistent with other research EDN has done.

Although many of the survey results pointed out differences between Asian and US development engineers, results to two questions showed surprising similarity. Approximately 80% of all respondents are working on mixed-signal designs and are developing both hardware and software— no matter where the respondents are located and no matter what type of µC they're using. That result tells me that EDN's broad coverage of analog, digital, and software topics is what you need to get your job done. And, you can be sure that your feedback will continue to guide us in delivering the kind of editorial you need to do your job better. So, if you filled out a survey or gave us some other form of feedback recently, thanks.

Steven H. Leibson
Editor in Chief