Anablog

In addition to all the great tech presentations, I made sure to get down to the show floor to see all my analog pals. I am sorry to report that I did not have nearly enough time to see all the analog companies, in no small part because the show floor did not stay open after 6:00 PM, I assume because the organizers think Detroit is too dangerous a place to be after nightfall. That was not my experience. On the couple times I walked between Cobo hall the Renaissance Center the closest thing to a gang that I saw was four kids with skateboards. A cop was chasing them off the plaza and it made me a little sad to see the area was more of a police state that a vibrant downtown.

Another thing that limed my time on the show floor was that the SAE had on display the results of a contest at local high school where the kids build an electric car and submit it for voting on the innovation and accomplishments. I thought this was a great way to promote innovation and engineering in our society and I spent a lot of time over there getting pictures and information for a series of articles I will be filing over the next month. So if I didn’t get to a particular companies booth, I do apologize, there were an astonishing number of analog companies at the show, I noted 34 of them on my map and that was before I realized that outfits like Analog Devices had a room upstairs but no booth on the show floor. So here is a stream of consciousness description of my peregrinations in the exhibit hall.

The first booth I dropped by was capacitor maker United Chemi-Con. I knew that they were a leader in electrolytic capacitors but what surprised me was that they had some great ceramic caps that can be used in automotive applications to absorb load dump—the 100 volt, 300 mS pulse that happens when a mechanic pulls the battery cable off while the car is running in order to see if the alternator is working. Derrick Fitzpatrick came over as soon as he saw me looking at the display. He works out of the Chicago office and explained that United Chemi-Con was able to supply the large volumes the auto business needed as well as keeping up the fantastic quantity levels expected by the big three.

Next up were my pals at International Rectifier. I missed by buddy Graham Robertson but Tom Harvey was there with a great demonstration on how an IR driver part can slow down the PWM edges and reduce EMI. Tom explained that that IR was big in four major automotive areas. One was MOSFETs, with another area being intelligent power switches. On top of that IR offers a lot of great parts for high voltage drivers. Finally they have rugged IGBT that meet the demanding performance and cost targets in automotive applications. Tom had worked on the hybrid program at Ford so he really knew automotive power. He mentioned how electric power steering can knock off ½ mpg of a small car.

I next caught Kevin Buermann over at the Multek flexible circuits booth. He had a table full of great flexible circuits that would get the attention of any engineer. He said the did not do prototype quantities but would work with a local vendor, All-flex, who was willing to do small quantities and could transfer the production to Multek when the volumes justified their better pricing. 

It was great to see Underwriters Laboratories there. Andrew Harding has worked for UL for many years, including a stint in the San Jose office near where I live. I am hoping to write an article about taking a product through the approval process and Andy was a great help. He had a few neat things to say about the approval process. Andrew pointed out “The test house is not looking to fail people”. He notes that going to a test house like UL is not some test, but a partnership where they want you to pass as much as you want to pass. 

Next up were the nice folks at Cirrus Logic. They were showing off their cool audio solutions for the show. One neat app was a graphical interface that let you set the filtering and audio chin performance while you drive around in the prototype car. A USB interface to the development system lets you examine all the features in the Cirrus system. They also had some way-cool hardware demo boards.

Cool displays like this are what makes the SAE show such a blast to attend. SAE Convergence rolls around every two years, check it out.