The Death of Analog

[Jozef]

With the advances in digital electronics and all the tiny devices and applications that all are digital, I can confidently say analog electronics will disappear and become an ancient useless technology that has no single application, exactly like the dirty vacuum tubes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Analog  O0

[tom66]

I can confidently say you are completely wrong. Analog will not die for a long, long time -- if it does die, it will only be because electronics have been obsoleted by something like photonics.

[xrunner]

Oh this thread is going to be fun! 

[firewalker]

Digital is just an expression of analog.

Alexander.

[don.r]

Exactly. Underlying all digital is analog. If analog dies, so does digital.

[Mechatrommer]

no... both analog and digital will die... arduino will rise! otoh...

Oh this thread is going to be fun! 

With the advances in digital electronics and all the tiny devices and applications that all are digital, I can confidently say analog electronics will disappear and become an ancient useless technology that has no single application, exactly like the dirty vacuum tubes.

this statement will come out of people who lost their trail (history). its like saying, human will die because robots are everywhere, or PC will die because tablets are everywhere, or we dont need Intelligent Designer because science can do everything.

[SLJ]

Have a 2003 Harley with speedometer and tachometer side by side.  Looking at purchasing another one new that only has a speedometer from the factory.  Asked if I could get it fitted with a tachometer also.  Yes but the refit is a combo digital spedo (w/digits) and tach.  I don't have any desire for digital speedometer on a Harley.  Just doesn't feel right.

As far as analog displays dying out, it wont it will just be different.  Digital will just get to be high enough resolution so it looks like analog in many cases.  Look at some of the new instrument clusters on cars.  High res LCD screens showing a combination of analog/digital instruments.

[Fraser]

Consider a range of voltage from 0 to 10V.....

With analogue there are infinite points between and so no sampling issues.

With digital there are not infinite sample points and an element of error may exist ...... digital is therefore an inferior technology 

No point in getting upset about Analogue Vs Digital...they both have their place in the world and I don't see either passing into obscurity any time yet.

I used to laugh when people stated that thermionic valve technology was obsolete and part of history. Completely dead. I suggested they Google Cathode Ray Tube in TV's, Magnetron in Microwave Ovens and X-Ray tubes in medicine, security and industry.

Technology is adapted to the needs of man....very little becomes truly obsolete at the base technology level.

 

[Jozef]

this statement will come out of people who lost their trail (history). its like saying, human will die because robots are everywhere, or PC will die because tablets are everywhere, or we don't need Intelligent Designer because science can do everything.

First there's no such a thing called "Intelligent Designer"

Humans are already got replaced by robots in many industries, do you live on this planet?

And yeah computer will die to be replaced by more advanced digital tablets

Oh did not that happen to Oscilloscopes?

Digital circuits at the very low level are analog of course but the technology or the way to approach the problem is different. When we say digital vs. analog we are talking about technologies at higher level not the atomic details of each...

[jahonen]

Consider a range of voltage from 0 to 10V.....

With analogue there are infinite points between and so no sampling issues.

With digital there are not infinite sample points and an element of error may exist ...... digital is therefore an inferior technology 

But electricity is quantized by nature because smallest non-divisible unit of electricity is charge of an electron/proton, about 1.6e-19 C. So there is no perfectly analog signal as such

Regards,
Janne

[Kaluriel]

Consider a range of voltage from 0 to 10V.....

With analogue there are infinite points between and so no sampling issues.

With digital there are not infinite sample points and an element of error may exist ...... digital is therefore an inferior technology 

But electricity is quantized by nature because smallest non-divisible unit of electricity is charge of an electron/proton, about 1.6e-19 C. So there is no perfectly analog signal as such

Regards,
Janne

then by that logic, a digital signal that has the accuracy of an electron, would be analog. only stretched over time in the case of serial

[SLJ]

The square wave will replace the sign wave... 

[c4757p]

For a more serious answer, no, analog design will never disappear, because there is extreme crossover between the two. If you want to run a digital signal saying "is the refrigerator door open?" from point A to point B, feel free to string up whatever wire you want wherever you want and pay no attention to anything. Hell, you could use a wet string with a high enough voltage. If you want multiple-Gbps data transfer, that's not digital. It's digital in the transmitter, it's digital in the receiver, but it's an RF analog signal in between, and you'd better have a good grounding in analog and RF circuit design if that signal is going to successfully get anywhere.

Also, try powering your holy-shit-that's-fast processor with a digital signal saying "yes, you are powered". Someone's got to do the power supply.

Sensors.

Human interface.

[Telequipment]

analogue will live on here until I'm dead and gone, even down to my old analogue scope

[Telequipment]

And here

[ampdoctor]

For all practical purposes the universe is an analog system. Sure you could argue that on a quantum level it's digital but practically all our senses, the motion of seas and weather, every way in which we interact with the world is analog in nature.  And when it comes right down to it the sole purpose of any electronics product is for human beings to interact with the world in different ways. Therefore the only way analog electronics would ever cease to exist would be if human beings cease to exist.

When I went through school in the 90's the big push was to keep things that are functionally analog in the analog domain and digital in the digital domain.  For example, if we're designing some sort of pressure sensor that measures gradients then collects and stores data at certain intervals. Convert that stuff to digital!  However, if we have an audio signal pass it through the whole system within the analog domain. The concept being that every time we convert information we introduce noise and distortion into the signal path that needs to be dealt with. Currently, it appears that with faster processing power it's convert everything to digital, pass it through a microcontroller of some sort. Write 100k lines of code to process the information and return it to the analog domain only when absolutely necessary.  I don't know which is the better methodology but I sure love my analog electronics! Maybe it's because I can't write code worth a shit.  LOL

[SeanB]

Only advantage digital has is error correction up to a point, but then it vanishes. Analogue works down to the noise level, or in certain systems well below it.

Your GPS is analogue, with the desired signal buried way down in the noise of the receiver circuitry, but it can be recovered by either digital or analogue means to a point where it can be digital data again.

[free_electron]

With the advances in digital electronics and all the tiny devices and applications that all are digital, I can confidently say analog electronics will disappear and become an ancient useless technology that has no single application, exactly like the dirty vacuum tubes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Analog  O0

Digital is just a very narrowle defined case of analog ...

besides : have you looked at modern digital signals ? if you don't treat them as analog you get nowhere ...

[PA3BNX]

Hello EveryBody,

Analogue versus Digital !

No No No its Analogue to Digital to Analogue for ever I think.

At least in the real world of materials

Digital is an absolute winner in processing data no doubt about that I think.

All digital could be done in abstract thinking and solution finding.
So only here is no analogue involved anymore.
Yust think of math hi thats all digital.

[SLJ]

With the advances in digital electronics and all the tiny devices and applications that all are digital, I can confidently say analog electronics will disappear and become an ancient useless technology that has no single application, exactly like the dirty vacuum tubes.

Except many of those dirty vacuum tubes are still working after 90+ years and most digital only operates because it's fed by analog circuits.

[Mechatrommer]

First there's no such a thing called "Intelligent Designer"

if you say so...

Humans are already got replaced by robots in many industries, do you live on this planet?

who is more intelligent, the robot or the human? there is no intelligent designer, hence.... human are not intelligent. more so whatever designed by them?

Oh did not that happen to Oscilloscopes?

to the eye of who? the user? or the designer? to user: there is no such thing as analog or digital (product), whats that? they only know whats "beauty" or "ugly". to the designer? analog certainly not dying, from my inspection.

When we say digital vs. analog we are talking about technologies at higher level not the atomic details of each...

so do you think you can slap in a certain ps risetime digital chip in a minute and expect the product to work without analog knowledge? without annoying your ham neighboor? is that what you mean? i did help you with a step further (in my earlier post)... arduino guys will rise go to kickstarter and count how many duinos projects there.

anyway... dont take my statements seriosly

[nctnico]

With the advances in digital electronics and all the tiny devices and applications that all are digital, I can confidently say analog electronics will disappear and become an ancient useless technology that has no single application, exactly like the dirty vacuum tubes.

Digital is just an abstraction of analog.

[Lightages]

How did the death of analog involve the "debate" of an intelligent creator? I guess it's the same debate amongst the audiophools and sane people. (running and ducking)

[TheRevva]

...
But electricity is quantized by nature because smallest non-divisible unit of electricity is charge of an electron/proton, about 1.6e-19 C. So there is no perfectly analog signal as such

Non-divisible? Hmmm...
Last time I checked the human race had just spent some inordinate amount of money proving the existence of the Higgs Boson (and they're spending a truckload more as we speak on the LHC!).
So, the electron is the 'smallest non-divisible unit of electricity' as far as the accepted 'current theory' (pun intended) is concerned...
I'm willing to take bets that before I die, someone will 'split the electron' just as Rutherford 'split the atom' last century and we'll have a whole NEW bunch of math to comprehend.
A positive upshoot from this will be that our 'digital' systems might be able to make use of the effective increase in resolution thereby helping to assist in the continuation of Moores law.

But I digress...

With my very limited understanding of quarks, I've come up with the following observations.
1: It's apparent that I personally have an oversupply of strange quarks - Everyone is always calling me strange
2: I'm also somewhat concerned about my ratio of up versus down quarks - Perhaps this helps to explain my self-diagnosed bipolarism?  Does anyone here have some spare uppers I can have?  (Perhaps an oversupply of down quarks is the cause of depression? LOL)
3: Perhaps I should refrain from comment on the top versus bottom debate other than to say that SOME guys prefer tits whilst others prefer ass.  Go figure!  Perhaps there is some linkage with the W boson (an obviously mis-spelt bosom!!!)

All this quark talk has really got me in a spin now.  It's time I allowed my mass to rest.

Edit:
BTW, I note with interest that the quarks tend to have 1/3 or 2/3 the electrical charge of an electron.  So much for indivisible huh?

[mikeselectricstuff]

...
But electricity is quantized by nature because smallest non-divisible unit of electricity is charge of an electron/proton, about 1.6e-19 C. So there is no perfectly analog signal as such

..but the physical position of those electrons in space, or within the atoms of a conductor is analogue, so regarding particles as any kind of digital entity is completely meaningless.
And that's even before we get Mr. Heseinberg involved....

[tom66]

That is assuming the universe isn't the product of a computer simulation. Wasn't there an experiment some physicists were attempting to conduct recently where they would measure the "quantisation" of the universe? Wonder what the conclusion was...

[xrunner]

That is assuming the universe isn't the product of a computer simulation.

Yea I read that somewhere.

But, getting into that would really be going off-topic. 

[Jozef]

Until we have an analog microprocessor, analog is almost non existence except for power supply and sensor circuits. Other than this all is getting replaced by digital.

I'm not arguing the physical world or the nature of electric signal, it's analog. Again I'm talking about technology or mechanism.

Analog meters? Ok they can be precise and no aliasing or precision problems but are we humans can sense such accuracy and details? we need a readable interface, which is the digital screen. Otherwise that analog whatever meter is giving you nothing but approximation, at least for the human eyes.

Death to OpAmps. 

[AlfBaz]

...
But electricity is quantized by nature because smallest non-divisible unit of electricity is charge of an electron/proton, about 1.6e-19 C. So there is no perfectly analog signal as such

..but the physical position of those electrons in space, or within the atoms of a conductor is analogue, so regarding particles as any kind of digital entity is completely meaningless.
And that's even before we get Mr. Heseinberg involved....

Hey mike...
I was reading up on various types of noise the other day and what you are saying seems to be at odds with what I read which goes something like this
Electrons live in energy bands. It may be in orbit around an atom in the valence band and for it to jump into the conduction band it has to absorb energy. Apparently it has to absorb a heap of energy in one go to jump through the "void" between the valence band and the conduction band.

I know nothing about the math but it seems that the energy required for the electron to exist in the "void" is a "complex" quantity, therefore it can't happen. This is why we have shot noise and for the same reason but due to different phenomena, flicker noise. The absorption and radiation of energy as electrons jump between energy bands

[duskglow]

This has to be the greatest troll thread I've seen all week.  Started with "Analog's going to die", someone else adds in the "intelligent designer" troll...   I'm in tears at the sheer skill involved.  A bit transparent, though.

  

I think this is one of those arguments, though, that won't actually ever get won one way or another.  Actually, both are.  So I'll just watch from the sidelines and see when it finally dies down.

[xrunner]

This has to be the greatest troll thread I've seen all week.  Started with "Analog's going to die", someone else adds in the "intelligent designer" troll...   I'm in tears at the sheer skill involved.  A bit transparent, though.

Shoot this is nothing.

Wait till you see my new thread "The death of electronics" 

[nuhamind2]

Every digital electronic contain analog behaviour

[Fsck]

This has to be the greatest troll thread I've seen all week.  Started with "Analog's going to die", someone else adds in the "intelligent designer" troll...   I'm in tears at the sheer skill involved.  A bit transparent, though.

Shoot this is nothing.

Wait till you see my new thread "The death of electronics" 

Hoorah for spintronics?

[Jozef]

Even when electronics is replaced by photonics, things will be digital.

[lemmegraphdat]

Existence is analog or so it seems. My perception is probably digital because I can't know everything. So what is my sample rate?

[SeanB]

Remember those energy bands are just a probability mechanism, the energy is somewhere in there if averaged over millions of atoms, but when there is one atom it is hard to measure, and when you have a hundred it is even harder to measure. Dr Heisenberg always wins.

[BravoV]

I can confidently say analog electronics will disappear and become an ancient useless technology that has no single application, exactly like the dirty vacuum tubes.

Looks like a troll post to me, but I'll bite.

As long there is a "human factor", analog is and will be staying with us until the computer/robot roams the earth like the sci-fi e.g: Terminator or Matrix and etc.

Here, let me pick just a simple topic regarding human interface, out of many tons of facts out there like for human visions, skin/touch, smell, brain interface  and etc ..., one of the fact that analog still has long journey :

1. Sound reproduction for human's ears, until today there is no speaker can reproduce the sound "exactly" identical like the singer/band is performing in front of you. The analog development for this technology is still faaaaar... from perfect even though it has been for very long time since ... "Mr Watson—Come here—I want to see you". 

<just fill out the rest of this list your self>

2. ...
3. ...
.
.
.

[G7PSK]

This looks like a case of. Analogue is dead long live analogue.https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif

[BravoV]

This looks like a case of. Analogue is dead long live analogue.https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif

Dude, why your smileys always broken ?     

[G7PSK]

This looks like a case of. Analogue is dead long live analogue.https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif

Dude, why your smileys always broken ?     

I thought that was just how they rendered for me when I read my own posts every one's else's are OK must be my browser i use chrome or could that be due to anti virus (Norton)https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/bangheadonwall.gif

[AlfBaz]

This looks like a case of. Analogue is dead long live analogue.https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif

Dude, why your smileys always broken ?     

Probably using an analog browser 

either way analog may be dying but analogue electronics will live for ever

[komet]

I'm willing to take bets that before I die, someone will 'split the electron' just as Rutherford 'split the atom' last century and we'll have a whole NEW bunch of math to comprehend.

I'll take that bet. $1000?

[Telequipment]

I could be in trouble here, this is a picture of a noise source I just built Ineed for a  simple spectrum analyser, which connects to the PC ideal for seeing the plot of filters, it's analogue should I stop before I'm arrested 

[amyk]

Over 2 pages and no one has mentioned Bob Widlar?

[AlfBaz]

I could be in trouble here, this is a picture of a noise source I just built Ineed for a  simple spectrum analyser, which connects to the PC ideal for seeing the plot of filters, it's analogue should I stop before I'm arrested 

If you want a true noise source, see if you can channel this thread into your SA

[vlf3]

By: xrunner...

Wait till you see my new thread "The death of electronics" 

Then were screwed ! 

[jpb]

I don't know if this thread was meant to be taken seriously, but I'll stick my oar in anyway.

Digital has taken over a lot of functions that used to be analogue but as others have pointed out you probably need to interface to an analogue world at some stage.
Also, digital technology can only operate so fast, for instance a digital filter is a wonderful thing but it would be a bit mad to try and filter a microwave signal with one.
On the audio front, good error correcting codes and encoding of signals might allow the capturing of great sounds, but the final audio amplifier is still likely to be analogue
(I'm a bit more hazy on this as there are digital speakers around).

Personally I can see that for function generators (for example) it is great to have the phase accuracy of DDS and digital calibration but I feel nostalgic for analogue systems
which probably required pots to be trimmed. But even here, the output amplifier is not digital - the DAC can only drive about 20mA into 50 ohms.

As digital systems get faster, the transmission about the chip itself and between chips requires more rather than less analogue understanding, so some engineers

Things come and go. When I was a teenager and first got into electronics it was all discrete components and a lot of fun. I then began working in electronics and it all
seemed to come down to VLSI chips and a lot of the fun went away. But now electronics as a hobby seems to be making a resurgence.
at least will need to keep studying the subject.

[4to20Milliamps]

as digital system become faster they get closer to modeling analog ones, but the goal is to not have any loss in the conversion process.

“ When we observe natural phenomena and endow them with computational
significance, it is not the algorithm we are observing but the process. [But in the
1940’s it was] digital technology and theory that was to become the main
paradigm of computation…[processing] information transformed and coded in
binary. With analog machines, on the contrary, there would be few or no steps
between natural objects and the work and structure of computation.”

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.91.5296&rep=rep1&type=pdf

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~jwmills/ANALOG.NOTEBOOK/klm/klm.html


Next time you fire up your computer and it can carry on a natural conversation with you......then you can begin to debate if analog is no longer necessary.

[jucole]

With the advances in digital electronics and all the tiny devices and applications that all are digital, I can confidently say analog electronics will disappear and become an ancient useless technology that has no single application, exactly like the dirty vacuum tubes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Analog  O0

Is this for real?

[GK]

So how do you get your sensed low-level quantity into your DAC without any analogue circuitry? Got any idea low ADSL transmission works? Ever seen a "digital" power supply?.........etc...etc......

Pretty daft opening for a thread.

[NiHaoMike]

On the audio front, good error correcting codes and encoding of signals might allow the capturing of great sounds, but the final audio amplifier is still likely to be analogue

There are a lot of modern audio amplifiers that use Delta Sigma conversion and are thus fully "digital" all the way up to the power stage. (Where digital is defined as a signal that has discrete levels and small deviations in the levels do not change the information represented by the signal.)

Analog is here to stay, but analog encoding of information (especially in wireless transmission) is slowing going away. Analog TV is mostly gone in the US, much to the delight of videophiles and HTPC builders alike. Few realize that analog TV is lossy compressed through color space encoding and interlacing - just compare composite video to 640x480 VGA. (Now if only they decided to use the cheaper to implement and more robust OFDM instead of 8VSB...)

Where things blur even more is that it's possible (and surprisingly common) to use digital logic to decode and encode "analog" information, often working much better than the old style of analog encoding and decoding. In every modern (composite/Svideo) video decoder, the signal is digitized before the decoding is done by digital logic within.

[rolycat]

Is this for real?

Well, based on his previous posting history - which is the only metric available to us - Jozef is opinionated, frequently offensive, and given to making sweeping statements based on limited knowledge and/or data.

So yes, I suspect it is for real.

He may have been trying to articulate a point better made by NihaoMike and others, that analogue encoding is disappearing.

Alternatively he may be an otherwise perfectly pleasant bloke who joins forums principally in order to troll them.

[Neilm]

So how do you get your sensed low-level quantity into your DAC without any analogue circuitry? Got any idea low ADSL transmission works? Ever seen a "digital" power supply?.........etc...etc......

There are actually digital power supplies - the output goes straight into a high speed (low resolution) ADC.

Analogue circuits won't die, but if the quality of some of the people applying for "Analogue Engineers" is anything to go by, teaching analogue circuits is dead.

Neil

[Rick Law]

Consider a range of voltage from 0 to 10V.....

With analogue there are infinite points between and so no sampling issues.

With digital there are not infinite sample points and an element of error may exist ...... digital is therefore an inferior technology 

But electricity is quantized by nature because smallest non-divisible unit of electricity is charge of an electron/proton, about 1.6e-19 C. So there is no perfectly analog signal as such

Regards,
Janne

Well, so is everything else.  Time, distance...

So, The Matrix is indeed possible...  If a simulation can run at the resolution of dividing our world into 10E-35 meter-cube chunks, our best technology cannot discern a simulated world from a real one.  In fact, physical laws itself can't tell the difference.

Rick

[c4757p]

There are actually digital power supplies - the output goes straight into a high speed (low resolution) ADC.

Even then, designing a high-speed ADC is a non-trivial analog task.

Analogue circuits won't die, but if the quality of some of the people applying for "Analogue Engineers" is anything to go by, teaching analogue circuits is dead.

Take it from someone who's currently in school - yes it is.

[Jozef]

Over 2 pages and no one has mentioned Bob Widlar?

But these days this finger is aimed at analog. And I add my finger too. 

[Jozef]

Well, based on his previous posting history - which is the only metric available to us - Jozef is opinionated, frequently offensive, and given to making sweeping statements based on limited knowledge and/or data.

So yes, I suspect it is for real.

He may have been trying to articulate a point better made by NihaoMike and others, that analogue encoding is disappearing.

Alternatively he may be an otherwise perfectly pleasant bloke who joins forums principally in order to troll them.

Something you don't want to hear of course it's not real...and if you consider this trolling yes it's...anything that does not please your lazy dumb egos is considered a troll.

Lack of realizing the reality and admitting it is much worse than lack of diving into vintage theories and dreams and locking yourself in the Widlar's cave.

[duskglow]

I may be new on this forum, but isn't this crossing a line by any measure?

[c4757p]

I may be new on this forum, but isn't this crossing a line by any measure?

A few.

[Simon]

I may be new on this forum, but isn't this crossing a line by any measure?

A few.

And indeed he has been banned. Users displaying such behavior will get the poster banned once we are informed. Now you can carry on the debate.

[ftransform]

the people who took this thread seriously.... take a deep breath. its ok. look at the relaxing sine wave. is the square wave nearly as relaxing? I don't think so.

analog > digital

[Simon]

Well it seems like the OP did, having a joke is one thing, to beleive in the insane thing you are saying and abusing others because they are not tit's like you is not nice, hence the banning, Your welcome to carry on having a laugh at the topic and idiot that posted it !

[xygor]

Maybe analog never existed.  Just a concept to smooth over the details.

"But let your word 'yes be 'yes,' and your 'no be 'no.' Anything more than this is from the evil one."  Matthew 5:37

http://www.onbeing.org/program/uncovering-codes-reality/feature/symbols-power-adinkras-and-nature-reality/1460

[G7PSK]

They said that stone tools were dead but we are still using tools made of silicon.

[duskglow]

Xygor, I'm a spiritual person and even I think that's stretching it, to put it kindly.   But if that's a troll, good one.

EDIT: I only mean that to apply to the scriptural reference, not to the link.  Though after reading the link, it kind of has the style of the "electric universe" stuff...

[4to20Milliamps]

I don't know what's worse someone starting a troll thread and admitting it......or someone starting a troll thread and acting like it was to weed out trolls,
 either way pretty lame.

I'll never understand why people are so quick to close their minds, patterns are the key to the universe, don't take my word for it watch some videos about
Feynman and listen to what he says.

More analog stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscillon

There is no way to understand things you are not familiar with, and the only way to become familiar with them is to make observations and explore,
that ugly rock you stepped over may be full of gold.

[lewis]

This whole thread is moot - there is no such thing as digital.

[xrunner]

It can now be renamed "The Death of Jozef".

[IanB]

Of course if you look at it the right way, the thread title has some validity. There is indeed an accurate observation there.

[onlooker]

Talking about whether digital is base on analog or whether analog should be just an approximation of "digital" (everything is in quantization) is not answering  a relevant question: What is the future trend of the number of EE who practice digital electronics vs those practice analog.

Here, we do need to have a common understanding on the distinction btw "analog" and "digital" based on common sense.  There is also the question as to what measure to use to gauge the trend.

It seems the proportion of analog in EE becoming ever smaller is the trend, just as the well known quote said "Old soldiers never die; They just fade away."

[rolycat]

This whole thread is moot

Since one meaning of moot is "subject to debate", that's very true.

there is no such thing as digital.

That rather depends on the domain of discourse, doesn't it?

[c4757p]

Is seems the proportion of analog in EE becoming ever smaller is the trend, just as the well known quote said "Old soldiers never die; They just fade away."

You'll never abstract away analog completely, so it will not fade away, but become smaller. Sadly I am imagining a world like in Lowry's The Giver where the one analog guru who remains is all we need, passing down his remnants of the Old Electronics to the next and then going to join Widlar... 

[lemmegraphdat]

Is seems the proportion of analog in EE becoming ever smaller is the trend, just as the well known quote said "Old soldiers never die; They just fade away."

You'll never abstract away analog completely, so it will not fade away, but become smaller. Sadly I am imagining a world like in Lowry's The Giver where the one analog guru who remains is all we need, passing down his remnants of the Old Electronics to the next and then going to join Widlar... 

Portioning analog. That sounds digital.

[xrunner]

You'll never abstract away analog completely, ...

Especially for some guitar players. They love analog tube amps. 

[AlfBaz]

Of course if you look at it the right way, the thread title has some validity. There is indeed an accurate observation there.

I started this interesting electronics hobby with transistor cct's and op-amps. Even when I started messing around with logic it was all 74 and 4000 series chips and I still found that very interesting.

On the software front I was interested in basic and assembler on the C64. Then I discovered these tiny 8 pin OTP mcu's. The development version was more expensive because it had a little window in it to erase the program so I bought a UV eraser. A few years later the flash versions came out and I was thoroughly hooked on "digital" but more importantly I was hesitant to say that I was still into "Electronics".

To this day, if I'm doing "digital" I don't feel I'm doing "Electronics". Even to the point where I was messing around designing my "mini PC", after a few months I lamented the old electronics world. Then I hit signal integrity issues, welcome back analogue... but hang on a minute, why on earth is nearly all the text on this subject alluding to it as some kind of "black magic"?

[c4757p]

Then I hit signal integrity issues, welcome back analogue... but hang on a minute, why on earth is nearly all the text on this subject alluding to it as some kind of "black magic"?

For the same reason many of the rest of us think RF is black magic. Lack of interest combined with the perception that it doesn't matter as long as someone gets it done.

[Psi]

I think it's true to say that in the future digital will play a bigger and bigger role in the task of an engineer building a product.
Where as analog will be more concentrated in the R&D, design and manufacturing of those digital components.

[Mechatrommer]

Where as analog will be more concentrated in the R&D, design and manufacturing of those digital components.

hence analog will not die. if analog die, digital will die. btw, the claim that the world is analog is questionable. what if its actually digital? in super miniscule scale (alot lot smaller than a quark) that we are unable to perceive? that we can only perceive that this world is an "apparent analog"

[Psi]

Yep, it cant die, but from the perspective of an engineer working in a company building products it may die if they no longer work with analog.

It's not all that surprising that as the field of electronics matures various areas will separate and stand on their own.
We could easy end up with analog and digital becoming totally separate in qualifications and people working in just that area.
The same way other things have separated, like computers into programming, networking, databases, web.

If there is enough scope for people to specialize then that specialization will push the areas further apart.

[Mechatrommer]

thats not dying, thats branching, the point that i was trying to highlight. each area will be localized, but not dead. just like religion and science once was (not again). more and more people think that science is "entirely" separated from religion (no i'm not talking about religions that made lies). and btw, no we cannot equate between (vacuum-tube vs transistor) and (analog vs digital) transistor tries to do what vacuum did, so vacuum is superceeded and obsolete. but digital is not trying to do what analog do, this ee disciplines just, "branches".

[Psi]

but digital is not trying to do what analog do,

Not yet, but maybe.. if new semiconductor technology (maybe graphene) make cheap 32bit ADC, DAC, MCUs that can run in the many GHz's range you could make an opamp that works digitally inside and overcomes some of the annoying properties of analog opamps.

[lewis]

This whole thread is moot

Since one meaning of moot is "subject to debate", that's very true.

there is no such thing as digital.

That rather depends on the domain of discourse, doesn't it?

I don't know enough about Planck time and elementary charge to comment. But what's a logical 1?

[rolycat]

there is no such thing as digital.

That rather depends on the domain of discourse, doesn't it?

I don't know enough about Planck time and elementary charge to comment.

Me neither 

But what's a logical 1?

The negation of a logical 0?

[AlfBaz]

Can you punctuate this so it makes sense? Alan while John had had had had had had had had had had had the better effect on the teacher

This has been bothering me for a while, so here's my attempt
"Alan while John had had had had had had had had had had had the better effect on the teacher", he stuttered...

[lewis]

Can you punctuate this so it makes sense? Alan while John had had had had had had had had had had had the better effect on the teacher

This has been bothering me for a while, so here's my attempt
"Alan while John had had had had had had had had had had had the better effect on the teacher", he stuttered...

Haha! You're the first to bite. It's: Alan, while John had had "had", had had "had had". "Had had" had had the better effect on the teacher.

Alan and John are both writing essays at school. Both John and Alan are describing a divorce. John wrote "the man had a wife but she left him" in his essay, Alan wrote 'the man had had a wife but she left him'. The teacher prefers Alan's version because it is grammatically more correcterer.

Edit - there's actually a wiki page for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_a_better_effect_on_the_teacher

[AlfBaz]

arghh it's doing my head in 

[airiclenz]

Maybe this is OT (ON topic) but in my opinion analog will never die because as long as we have ears and will generate music with electronics, I guess analog is pretty safe.
Also is digital just a "high-contrast" version of analog ( ... I know).

Just my 2 cents.
A.

[SLJ]

Sine wave or square wave? That is the question...

[c4757p]

Sine wave or square wave? That is the question...

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The microvolts and megohms of analog design,
Or to just whack in a bigass FPGA,
And by abstraction avoid them? To digitize;
No more; and by a microcontroller to say we end
The measurement and the thousand electric shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To digitize;
To develop: perchance to code: ay, there's the rub;
For in that programming what debugging may come
When we have shuffled off this SMPS coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would build the power supplies,
The transmission lines, the test gear,

... oh, I give up, it's dinner time.

[duskglow]

Oh ohmeo, ohmeo, wherefore art rhou, ohmeo... deny thy current and refuse thy gain...

[lewis]

Sine wave or square wave? That is the question...

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The microvolts and megohms of analog design,
Or to just whack in a bigass FPGA,
And by abstraction avoid them? To digitize;
No more; and by a microcontroller to say we end
The measurement and the thousand electric shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To digitize;
To develop: perchance to code: ay, there's the rub;
For in that programming what debugging may come
When we have shuffled off this SMPS coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would build the power supplies,
The transmission lines, the test gear,

... oh, I give up, it's dinner time.

Brilliant!

[Strada916]

Well if a sine wave is analogue and the square wave is digital. Then Digital can not exist without analogue as a square wave is multiple harmonics of a sine wave. 

[AlfBaz]

Being a far more common man, limericks seem the order of the day

There once was an amp pushed by voltage
Whos value determined by ohmage
Forums abound with dicks with no sound
Knowledge to calculate wattage

[onlooker]

Well if a sine wave is analogue and the square wave is digital. Then Digital can not exist without analogue as a square wave is multiple harmonics of a sine wave.

But, this is only one of the man-made choices for understanding the nature. The alternative is "equally" true. A sine wave can be decomposed as superposition of a series of square waves. Actually it is more intuitive. In essence, that is what a DAC tries to do anyway. If you want to think about it, this is the delta function/Greens function approach.

[AlfBaz]

Well if a sine wave is analogue and the square wave is digital. Then Digital can not exist without analogue as a square wave is multiple harmonics of a sine wave.

But, this is only one of the man-made choices for understanding the nature. The alternative is "equally" true. A sine wave can be decomposed as superposition of a series of square waves. Actually it is more intuitive. In essence, that is what a DAC tries to do anyway.

But a pure sine wave has no harmonics and is the underlying premise for a very large part of fundamental math for understanding electronics in the first place

[c4757p]

Being a far more common man, limericks seem the order of the day

The analog style's a way
To build a circuit today
But some day soon to come
We'll hear from some bum
That digital is here to stay.


(Yeah, it's not perfectly accurate, but it rhymes! Just pretend you heard it in 1965...)

[c4757p]

But, this is only one of the man-made choices for understanding the nature. The alternative is "equally" true. A sine wave can be decomposed as superposition of a series of square waves. Actually it is more intuitive. In essence, that is what a DAC tries to do anyway. If you want to think about it, this is the delta function/Greens function approach.

Sine is more useful. First, an ideal square wave can't even exist in an ideal world (it's non-differentiable), but the purity of a sine wave is limited only by the precision with which it can be generated. Second, try working out RF harmonics and whatnot in the "square frequency domain". It's mathematically valid, but it just doesn't work practically.

[AlfBaz]

an ideal square wave can't even exist in an ideal world

When dealing in digital, we wish analog was dead 

[SLJ]

The analog style's a way
To build a circuit today
But some day soon to come
We'll hear from some bum
That digital is here to stay.

That day was yesterday...

[c4757p]

That day was yesterday...

(Yeah, it's not perfectly accurate, but it rhymes! Just pretend you heard it in 1965...)

I took a bit of artistic license in the name of a couple lazy rhymes.

[rolycat]

A fellow named Jozef once said
"In the near future analog's dead"
When challenged he roared
And was swiftly declawed
Thanks to Simon, who sat on his head.

[c4757p]

After squinting at roared/declawed for a while, trying to figure out how the hell they rhyme, I noticed that you're British.

I am giggling like an idiot at the imagery of Jozef being declawed with Simon perched triumphantly upon his head.

[IanB]

After squinting at roared/declawed for a while, trying to figure out how the hell they rhyme, I noticed that you're British.

Even though I'm living in America, I can't figure out how they don't rhyme. I guess I'll have to ask some American friends tomorrow to read it out loud...

[c4757p]

Well, you're in California, you're weird. I'm from New York where we speak right, thank you very much!

Seriously, though, these are pretty close to how I'd say the words:
roar
claw

Just stick a 'd' on the end and there you go.

[IanB]

Well, you're in California, you're weird. I'm from New York where we speak right, thank you very much!

Seriously, though, these are pretty close to how I'd say the words:
roar
claw

Oh I see, you would say something like "Ro-arrr" for roar, with a diphthong and a closing "r" sound?

However, New York is an interesting location to pick, as in NYC can be found quite a different pronunciation without the "r":

New York non-rhotic accent

Listen to how he says "pour", for example.

[vk6zgo]

The "roar" & "claw" sounds to an Australian ear,like "ro-" (as in "rot"),&"clo-" (as it "clot").

As such,it differs from the "normal American" example in the "how to speak New York" link,where it is more like "Roarr"

The  "New York" pronunciation,with the "r" present,but not emphasised, sounds normal to an Aussie.

[IanB]

In my (southern English) pronunciation, roar and raw sound essentially the same 

[c4757p]

We've got different accents all over the place, and they're all "right" 

[rolycat]

We've got different accents all over the place, and they're all "right" 

But apparently some are more equal than others...

This is a clip from the rather splendid QI in which Stephen Fry explains that airline pilots with a Scottish accent are trusted far more than those with a Brummie one. He also does an impression of an Aussie pilot which to my ears at least sounds pretty authentic.