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Building bridges
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14/09/2005
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Although not quite as pronounced today, engineering remains fundamentally split between digital and analogue disciplines. It’s a question every electronics student faces at an early stage – which draws you most strongly, digital or analogue? Too often, the answer would be digital, as it was based on logic rather than ‘black magic’.
Today, unlike a decade ago, there is no ‘soft option’. Digital design has more in common with analogue than ever, as transmission theory plays an increasingly important role in designing high speed and reliable digital systems.
Their fundamental difference also reflects an age old need to bring the two together in a way that is accessible to all. Not surprisingly, there have been numerous attempts at building this bridge in the past, few of which are still available. The downfall of many has been the challenge of creating a platform that is both flexible enough to be configurable by the user and functional enough to be targeted at a range of analogue tasks – the so called ‘programmable analogue device’.
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Author
Philip Ling
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