Anablog
Technical Editor Paul Rako looks at analog technology in power supplies, interface, the signal path, and life in general.
Rako is headed to Analog Devices
It is with a sad heart I tell you that I am leaving EDN today. Next year I will start at Analog Devices. I will be working here in the Silicon Valley office. I loved my gig here at EDN, but Analog Devices asked me to get back to the bench and work on amplifier tools. In preparing for my recent article on error budgets, I fired up my old copy of PSpice and ran a few Monte-Carlo simulations. It remi ...... Read More
Comments (13)Analog Aficionados party Feb 18, 2012
I will be hosting the 3rd annual Analog Aficionados party Saturday, February 18, 2012. As always, this is the Saturday before the start of the IEEE ISSCC (international solid state circuits conference). 5:00 to 10:00. I get the venue and buy a couple grand in food for you maniacs, you buy your own booze. Neither I nor the venue, nor any sponsors I round up are responsible if you get drunk and ...... Read More
Comments (2)TI Tech Day unveils the MAVRK prototyping system
I was lucky enough to go to the Texas Instruments tech day here in San Jose last week. It was fantastic and I encourage all engineers to attend this an other conferences like our famous ESC conference now rebranded DESIGN West, if only because EDN’s own Margery Conner will be running her hardware design conference for LEDs as part of the show. . TI’s tech days were run like a mini ...... Read More
Comments (5)LTspice seminar with Mike Engelhardt
Last week I was lucky enough to get tipped off about the last seminar this year for Linear Technology’s free Spice program, LTspice. The seminar was given by the author of the program, Linear Tech employee Mike Engelhardt. From hanging around LT design engineers, I have heard that there is a little PSpice DNA in the company. Mike once said that he hired a former PSpice programmer to help wi ...... Read More
Comments (18)LTspice seminar today, TI Tech day Thursday, Computer History Museum Saturday plus eFlea breakfast
Lots of happenings this week in Silicon Valley: LTspice seminar today at Linear Techhttp://www.nuhorizons.com/xpresstrack/ltspice/ TI Tech day at the Doubletree Hotel on Thursday the 8thhttp://www.ti.com/ww/en/techdays/2011/docs/sanjose_agenda-dec.pdf Our usual eFlea breakfast (no flea market in winter) Saturday Dec 10, 2011, 7:00-10:00 PM Bobbi’s Coffee Shop 1361 S De Anza Blvd Cuper ...... Read More
Comments (2)Make 27.63 an hour and you are a professional
Sent by alert fellow Croatian, and offered without a rant or comment, is this link to a proposed law that will classify tech workers making over $27.63 an hour as “an employee in a professional capacity”. So there you have it, an arbitrary number you can strive for. $25 an hour is about $50k a year, so good luck with your career. Once you make it, you can call yourself a pr ...... Read More
Comments (0)Bangalore tech workers are the Ugly Indian
I saw a great article in the BBC about a volunteer group in Bangalore that calls themselves the Ugly Indian. The group is largely comprised of engineers and technical workers. Like engineers everywhere, they love to solve problems. The problem they decided to tackle was run-down sections of Bangalore that have become open garbage dumps. They don’t try to sell something to fix it. They don&# ...... Read More
Comments (24)Medical electronics webinar Dec 7
EDN editorial director Patrick Mannion has tipped me off to a medical electronics webinar. He notes: “Seems like something worth looking into. It’s titled “The Medical Electronics Balancing Act: How to lower cost while boosting innovation” and it’s on December 7, 2011 at 1 pm EDT.” This is a sponsored webinar, with contributors from Freescale and PTC, the ...... Read More
Comments (1)Fission Chips and Mushy EEs party Dec 14 2011
The fine folks at our sister publication EETimes are putting on an engineer get together here in Silicon Valley. It will be Wednesday, December 14, 2011 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (PT) in San Jose, CA. From the invite: Join Us! EE Times wants to solder the EE back into Christmas-ee, and we need you, esteemed engineer! We’ll be hosting our first ever engineering social event - Fission Chip ...... Read More
Comments (0)Linear Tech and Maxim smackdown at the loco
So my analog guru buddy Eric Schlaepfer, who worked at Maxim at the time, came over to St. John’s grill, where a lot of us analog folks get hammered, ahhh, errr, I mean conduct inter-company team-building exercises. Eric was all jazzed and had an advertisement for a new MAX17710 Maxim charger chip for micro-battery energy cell. He also brought over an ultra cool Maxim demo board with a thin ...... Read More
Comments (4)Ott, Gilbert, Sauer, Harvey, and Fong discuss the new Spice model for transmission lines
The previous blog post talks about Roy McCammon’s method to do Spice simulation of transmission lines. Before blogging about it, I sent the links to his original EETimes article to several analog aficionado pals. Their responses, praise, and repartee are printed below. Henry Ott, a former member of Bell Labs working for the Longlines division is a treasured source for anything about transmi ...... Read More
Comments (4)Improved Spice model of a transmission line
Diligent reader Roy McCammon wrote me to point out an article he did over at EETimes. He felt that not many “real” engineers would see it over there, so he wanted me to republish it in EDN. Sorry, Roy, that can’t happen. If you wanted EDN readers to see it, you should have sent it to EDN, not my sister management/lifestyle publication. I did have to admit Roy worked up a dandy ...... Read More
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