Which university produces good analog EEs?

On Sep 28, 12:01 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net>
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:05:46 -0700, Joerg
notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:23:30 -0700, m...@sushi.com wrote:

On Sep 25, 3:45 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

Hello Folks,

Happens a lot these days, last time an hour ago: Someone is looking for
an analog/mixed signal engineer (this time low power design). I could do
it but they absolutely want to have someone on staff. Which I can't do.
So, I often try to convince them to settle for a youngster who gets
coached now and then, instead of sitting there a year from now still
trying to find the perfect candidate.

Which US or Canadian university lets off the best analog/mixed EEs? I
know, I know, many can't even solder etc. It ain't like it used to be.
But there has got to be an alma mater that sticks out. Or maybe a
particular institute at one. And please, no pissing contests.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

I never interviewed a Georgia Tech grad, but Marshall Leach, Jr.
certain has the credentials.
http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~mleach/

I've interviewed plenty of UC Berkeley grads, and you could find an
analog designer there.This doesn't mean every grad from UCB will know
analog. The worse Ivy League has got to be hands down MIT. I assume it
was a good university at one time given it's reputation. But I
interviewed undergrads that didn't know basic s-plane stability
issues, as if they don't teach classic control theory anymore What
little analog they knew was bipolar.

Probably only the duds applied to your company ;-)

However I never had control systems, per se, undergrad... just a very
good math background to understand it if I needed it. (and that was
more than 45 years ago.)

Took non-linear control systems in grad school. Instructor scared the
piss out of me by announcing that, to weed down the class size, he was
giving an exam in undergrad control systems... pass or walk :-(

I got the best score, and "A" as my final grade ;-)

A real surprise are the University of Toronto grads. These guys know
analog and signal processing.

I don't know any of those.

The trouble with low power (assuming you mean micropower) is you
really need to be a careful designer, especially if the chip is
designed to have low quiescent power but handle high current. You also
need the benefit of seeing a few designs that didn't work, hopefully
not your own but from the company portfolio of goofs. One of the
classic bugs is designing micropower bandgaps, only to have them get
pumped from an on-board switcher. You have to throw in all sorts of
parasitics to make sure nothing sneaks into your reference.

Yep :-(

Maybe that's why there are no (cheap) ultralow brethren to the TLV431.
If you want less than 10uA cathode current on the board level it either
becomes very expensive, very large or you can forget about a reference.

Hardly a week goes by that I don't design a micro-power BandGap into a
chip ;-)

Dang, I just knew you'd say that ...

For us board level guys the situation looks pretty dire.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Micropower bandgaps show up in really mundane areas of chip design
nowadays, such as POR. Really overkill, but because customers know it
can be done, they expect it to be done. If you reverse engineer Maxim
chips, you'll find a bandgap comparator circuit in the POR. Plenty of
patents on such circuits, but never litigated to my knowledge. They do
save power since the bandgap and comparator are folded into one
circuit.

One of the trickier micropower circuits are those in thermal shutdown.
That is where leakage can really kill you, so parasitics are required.
However, it isn't exactly rocket science.

BTW, I forgot to mention it, but UCLA has a fair amount of analog
design classes. Lastly, there is the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (or close to that). They have all sorts of papers on
dynamic biasing scheme, i.e. schemes to make micropower op amps slew
quickly by boosting tail current, etc.

 

On Sep 28, 10:45 am, Jim Thompson <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-I...@My-
Web-Site.com> wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:23:30 -0700, m...@sushi.com wrote:
On Sep 25, 3:45 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:
Hello Folks,

Happens a lot these days, last time an hour ago: Someone is looking for
an analog/mixed signal engineer (this time low power design). I could do
it but they absolutely want to have someone on staff. Which I can't do.
So, I often try to convince them to settle for a youngster who gets
coached now and then, instead of sitting there a year from now still
trying to find the perfect candidate.

Which US or Canadian university lets off the best analog/mixed EEs? I
know, I know, many can't even solder etc. It ain't like it used to be.
But there has got to be an alma mater that sticks out. Or maybe a
particular institute at one. And please, no pissing contests.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

I never interviewed a Georgia Tech grad, but Marshall Leach, Jr.
certain has the credentials.
http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~mleach/

I've interviewed plenty of UC Berkeley grads, and you could find an
analog designer there.This doesn't mean every grad from UCB will know
analog. The worse Ivy League has got to be hands down MIT. I assume it
was a good university at one time given it's reputation. But I
interviewed undergrads that didn't know basic s-plane stability
issues, as if they don't teach classic control theory anymore What
little analog they knew was bipolar.

Probably only the duds applied to your company ;-)

Eh, maybe they just wanted a trip to Silicon Valley. I was amazed at
the number of MIT grads that had logic design on their resumes, but
didn't know how to draw basic mos logic gates. It turns out they
studied computer architecture with silicon compilation to get to the
end product. That just doesn't fly on small mixed mode chips where the
logic is implemented in rather coarse mos technology.

However I never had control systems, per se, undergrad... just a very
good math background to understand it if I needed it. (and that was
more than 45 years ago.)

Took non-linear control systems in grad school. Instructor scared the
piss out of me by announcing that, to weed down the class size, he was
giving an exam in undergrad control systems... pass or walk :-(

I got the best score, and "A" as my final grade ;-)



A real surprise are the University of Toronto grads. These guys know
analog and signal processing.

I don't know any of those.



The trouble with low power (assuming you mean micropower) is you
really need to be a careful designer, especially if the chip is
designed to have low quiescent power but handle high current. You also
need the benefit of seeing a few designs that didn't work, hopefully
not your own but from the company portfolio of goofs. One of the
classic bugs is designing micropower bandgaps, only to have them get
pumped from an on-board switcher. You have to throw in all sorts of
parasitics to make sure nothing sneaks into your reference.

Yep :-(

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

 

[JosephKK]

Joerg notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net posted to
sci.electronics.design:

Tim Williams wrote:

"Fred Bloggs" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:46FBA647.1080905@nospam.com...

But does modern design practice use vacuum tube logic circuits
still?


Ah, but don't you recall that thread Win started a while ago?
Didn't his
solution involve a tube? ;-)


The HV switch? I think he went the white-knuckle route using a FET
stack. A ballast triode would probably have been the perfect fit.
Problem is, they don't make'em no more :-(

Ah but they do. High voltage (over 1000 V) vacuum tubes still
popular. I think Win even used a tube solution for a 10kV ramp
generator recently.

 

[Tim Williams]

"JosephKK" <joseph_barrett@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:_9GLi.3402$6p6.2118@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net...

Ah but they do. High voltage (over 1000 V) vacuum tubes still
popular. I think Win even used a tube solution for a 10kV ramp
generator recently.

That was the one.

Tim

--
Deep Fryer: A very philosophical monk.
Website @ http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

 

[Joerg]

JosephKK wrote:

Joerg notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net posted to
sci.electronics.design:


Tim Williams wrote:


"Fred Bloggs" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:46FBA647.1080905@nospam.com...


But does modern design practice use vacuum tube logic circuits
still?


Ah, but don't you recall that thread Win started a while ago?
Didn't his
solution involve a tube? ;-)


The HV switch? I think he went the white-knuckle route using a FET
stack. A ballast triode would probably have been the perfect fit.
Problem is, they don't make'em no more :-(



Ah but they do. ...

Who? There are some tube mfgs and probably the largest ones are Sovtek
and Svetlana but there ain't much in HV tubes there. It's all audio
because that is where the big bucks can be made.

... High voltage (over 1000 V) vacuum tubes still
popular. I think Win even used a tube solution for a 10kV ramp
generator recently.

IIRC he opted for a FET stack.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Joerg]

miso@sushi.com wrote:

On Sep 28, 12:01 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:05:46 -0700, Joerg
notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:23:30 -0700, m...@sushi.com wrote:

On Sep 25, 3:45 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

Hello Folks,

Happens a lot these days, last time an hour ago: Someone is looking for
an analog/mixed signal engineer (this time low power design). I could do
it but they absolutely want to have someone on staff. Which I can't do.
So, I often try to convince them to settle for a youngster who gets
coached now and then, instead of sitting there a year from now still
trying to find the perfect candidate.

Which US or Canadian university lets off the best analog/mixed EEs? I
know, I know, many can't even solder etc. It ain't like it used to be.
But there has got to be an alma mater that sticks out. Or maybe a
particular institute at one. And please, no pissing contests.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

I never interviewed a Georgia Tech grad, but Marshall Leach, Jr.
certain has the credentials.
http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~mleach/

I've interviewed plenty of UC Berkeley grads, and you could find an
analog designer there.This doesn't mean every grad from UCB will know
analog. The worse Ivy League has got to be hands down MIT. I assume it
was a good university at one time given it's reputation. But I
interviewed undergrads that didn't know basic s-plane stability
issues, as if they don't teach classic control theory anymore What
little analog they knew was bipolar.

Probably only the duds applied to your company ;-)

However I never had control systems, per se, undergrad... just a very
good math background to understand it if I needed it. (and that was
more than 45 years ago.)

Took non-linear control systems in grad school. Instructor scared the
piss out of me by announcing that, to weed down the class size, he was
giving an exam in undergrad control systems... pass or walk :-(

I got the best score, and "A" as my final grade ;-)

A real surprise are the University of Toronto grads. These guys know
analog and signal processing.

I don't know any of those.

The trouble with low power (assuming you mean micropower) is you
really need to be a careful designer, especially if the chip is
designed to have low quiescent power but handle high current. You also
need the benefit of seeing a few designs that didn't work, hopefully
not your own but from the company portfolio of goofs. One of the
classic bugs is designing micropower bandgaps, only to have them get
pumped from an on-board switcher. You have to throw in all sorts of
parasitics to make sure nothing sneaks into your reference.

Yep :-(

Maybe that's why there are no (cheap) ultralow brethren to the TLV431.
If you want less than 10uA cathode current on the board level it either
becomes very expensive, very large or you can forget about a reference.

Hardly a week goes by that I don't design a micro-power BandGap into a
chip ;-)

Dang, I just knew you'd say that ...

For us board level guys the situation looks pretty dire.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com


Micropower bandgaps show up in really mundane areas of chip design
nowadays, such as POR. Really overkill, but because customers know it
can be done, they expect it to be done. If you reverse engineer Maxim
chips, you'll find a bandgap comparator circuit in the POR. Plenty of
patents on such circuits, but never litigated to my knowledge. They do
save power since the bandgap and comparator are folded into one
circuit.

Yes, on chips this is no problem but no company has marketed those
individually at a decent price. Meaning the sub-10uA references are
usually not very suitable for mass production because you can't have a
reference in there that costs more than all the rest of the board. So we
have to use tricks such as pulsing and storing.

One reason why POR/BOR circuits contain precise references is that the
chips they are on need it elsewhere as well. For example, a uC with an
ADC on board. The often touted "cheat reference" consisting of four
equal resistors hung onto the rail doesn't cut the mustard.

One of the trickier micropower circuits are those in thermal shutdown.
That is where leakage can really kill you, so parasitics are required.
However, it isn't exactly rocket science.

BTW, I forgot to mention it, but UCLA has a fair amount of analog
design classes. Lastly, there is the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (or close to that). They have all sorts of papers on
dynamic biasing scheme, i.e. schemes to make micropower op amps slew
quickly by boosting tail current, etc.

We didn't have much luck with UCLA so far. They didn't understand my
module specs and couldn't even solder. Had to let them go. Europe would
be an option but the immigration procedure is a real hassle. Plus there
will be an expensive international move required unless you catch them
right after their degree. Europe doesn't have such an extreme shortage
of analog guys because larger companies there are often foolish. Some of
them consider anyone over 40 a geezer that needs to be replaced by a
kid. The consequences are very visible, for example with NXP's web site.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[RST Engineering (jw)]

....and some really nice HF RF linear power amplifier devices.

Jim

Who? There are some tube mfgs and probably the largest ones are Sovtek and
Svetlana but there ain't much in HV tubes there. It's all audio because
that is where the big bucks can be made.

 

[Joerg]

RST Engineering (jw) wrote:

...and some really nice HF RF linear power amplifier devices.

Ok, yeah, of course you can still get some of the really big tubes. But
those aren't practical and economical for a small HV circuit while the
old TV ballast triode might have been.

Who? There are some tube mfgs and probably the largest ones are Sovtek and
Svetlana but there ain't much in HV tubes there. It's all audio because
that is where the big bucks can be made.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Joerg wrote:

Who? There are some tube mfgs and probably the largest ones are Sovtek
and Svetlana but there ain't much in HV tubes there. It's all audio
because that is where the big bucks can be made.

http://broadcast.rell.com/tubes.asp


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[JosephKK]

Joerg notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net posted to
sci.electronics.design:

JosephKK wrote:

Joerg notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net posted to
sci.electronics.design:


Tim Williams wrote:

The HV switch? I think he went the white-knuckle route using a FET
stack. A ballast triode would probably have been the perfect fit.
Problem is, they don't make'em no more :-(



Ah but they do. ...


Who? There are some tube mfgs and probably the largest ones are
Sovtek and Svetlana but there ain't much in HV tubes there. It's all
audio because that is where the big bucks can be made.


... High voltage (over 1000 V) vacuum tubes still
popular. I think Win even used a tube solution for a 10kV ramp
generator recently.


IIRC he opted for a FET stack.

I am asking him.

 

On Sep 30, 7:00 am, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net>
wrote:

m...@sushi.com wrote:
On Sep 28, 12:01 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:05:46 -0700, Joerg
notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:23:30 -0700, m...@sushi.com wrote:

On Sep 25, 3:45 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

Hello Folks,

Happens a lot these days, last time an hour ago: Someone is looking for
an analog/mixed signal engineer (this time low power design). I could do
it but they absolutely want to have someone on staff. Which I can't do.
So, I often try to convince them to settle for a youngster who gets
coached now and then, instead of sitting there a year from now still
trying to find the perfect candidate.

Which US or Canadian university lets off the best analog/mixed EEs? I
know, I know, many can't even solder etc. It ain't like it used to be.
But there has got to be an alma mater that sticks out. Or maybe a
particular institute at one. And please, no pissing contests.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

I never interviewed a Georgia Tech grad, but Marshall Leach, Jr.
certain has the credentials.
http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~mleach/

I've interviewed plenty of UC Berkeley grads, and you could find an
analog designer there.This doesn't mean every grad from UCB will know
analog. The worse Ivy League has got to be hands down MIT. I assume it
was a good university at one time given it's reputation. But I
interviewed undergrads that didn't know basic s-plane stability
issues, as if they don't teach classic control theory anymore What
little analog they knew was bipolar.

Probably only the duds applied to your company ;-)

However I never had control systems, per se, undergrad... just a very
good math background to understand it if I needed it. (and that was
more than 45 years ago.)

Took non-linear control systems in grad school. Instructor scared the
piss out of me by announcing that, to weed down the class size, he was
giving an exam in undergrad control systems... pass or walk :-(

I got the best score, and "A" as my final grade ;-)

A real surprise are the University of Toronto grads. These guys know
analog and signal processing.

I don't know any of those.

The trouble with low power (assuming you mean micropower) is you
really need to be a careful designer, especially if the chip is
designed to have low quiescent power but handle high current. You also
need the benefit of seeing a few designs that didn't work, hopefully
not your own but from the company portfolio of goofs. One of the
classic bugs is designing micropower bandgaps, only to have them get
pumped from an on-board switcher. You have to throw in all sorts of
parasitics to make sure nothing sneaks into your reference.

Yep :-(

Maybe that's why there are no (cheap) ultralow brethren to the TLV431.
If you want less than 10uA cathode current on the board level it either
becomes very expensive, very large or you can forget about a reference.

Hardly a week goes by that I don't design a micro-power BandGap into a
chip ;-)

Dang, I just knew you'd say that ...

For us board level guys the situation looks pretty dire.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Micropower bandgaps show up in really mundane areas of chip design
nowadays, such as POR. Really overkill, but because customers know it
can be done, they expect it to be done. If you reverse engineer Maxim
chips, you'll find a bandgap comparator circuit in the POR. Plenty of
patents on such circuits, but never litigated to my knowledge. They do
save power since the bandgap and comparator are folded into one
circuit.

Yes, on chips this is no problem but no company has marketed those
individually at a decent price. Meaning the sub-10uA references are
usually not very suitable for mass production because you can't have a
reference in there that costs more than all the rest of the board. So we
have to use tricks such as pulsing and storing.

One reason why POR/BOR circuits contain precise references is that the
chips they are on need it elsewhere as well. For example, a uC with an
ADC on board. The often touted "cheat reference" consisting of four
equal resistors hung onto the rail doesn't cut the mustard.

One of the trickier micropower circuits are those in thermal shutdown.
That is where leakage can really kill you, so parasitics are required.
However, it isn't exactly rocket science.

BTW, I forgot to mention it, but UCLA has a fair amount of analog
design classes. Lastly, there is the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (or close to that). They have all sorts of papers on
dynamic biasing scheme, i.e. schemes to make micropower op amps slew
quickly by boosting tail current, etc.

We didn't have much luck with UCLA so far. They didn't understand my
module specs and couldn't even solder. Had to let them go. Europe would
be an option but the immigration procedure is a real hassle. Plus there
will be an expensive international move required unless you catch them
right after their degree. Europe doesn't have such an extreme shortage
of analog guys because larger companies there are often foolish. Some of
them consider anyone over 40 a geezer that needs to be replaced by a
kid. The consequences are very visible, for example with NXP's web site.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

POR really should reflect what it takes to make the chip fly, not
necessarily some arbitrary specification. That is, logic needs at
least a VT, the worse case of N or P. So generally a chip POR will
have a circuit that insures you at least have enough juice to turn on
your worse case fet. Once you trust the logic (well, at least under
static conditions), the next step is to insure the bandgap is awake,
generally an output something above a VTN. Throw in a timer and
hysteresis to make sure the supply rail hasn't sagged. Stuff like
that. Thus POR is process and temperature dependent. However, as you
probably know, that doesn't give the customer the warm and fuzzy
feeling. They want to see something nice and snappy that can be
verified with a DVM.

 

On Sep 30, 7:00 am, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net>
wrote:

m...@sushi.com wrote:
On Sep 28, 12:01 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:05:46 -0700, Joerg
notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:23:30 -0700, m...@sushi.com wrote:

On Sep 25, 3:45 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

Hello Folks,

Happens a lot these days, last time an hour ago: Someone is looking for
an analog/mixed signal engineer (this time low power design). I could do
it but they absolutely want to have someone on staff. Which I can't do.
So, I often try to convince them to settle for a youngster who gets
coached now and then, instead of sitting there a year from now still
trying to find the perfect candidate.

Which US or Canadian university lets off the best analog/mixed EEs? I
know, I know, many can't even solder etc. It ain't like it used to be.
But there has got to be an alma mater that sticks out. Or maybe a
particular institute at one. And please, no pissing contests.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

I never interviewed a Georgia Tech grad, but Marshall Leach, Jr.
certain has the credentials.
http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~mleach/

I've interviewed plenty of UC Berkeley grads, and you could find an
analog designer there.This doesn't mean every grad from UCB will know
analog. The worse Ivy League has got to be hands down MIT. I assume it
was a good university at one time given it's reputation. But I
interviewed undergrads that didn't know basic s-plane stability
issues, as if they don't teach classic control theory anymore What
little analog they knew was bipolar.

Probably only the duds applied to your company ;-)

However I never had control systems, per se, undergrad... just a very
good math background to understand it if I needed it. (and that was
more than 45 years ago.)

Took non-linear control systems in grad school. Instructor scared the
piss out of me by announcing that, to weed down the class size, he was
giving an exam in undergrad control systems... pass or walk :-(

I got the best score, and "A" as my final grade ;-)

A real surprise are the University of Toronto grads. These guys know
analog and signal processing.

I don't know any of those.

The trouble with low power (assuming you mean micropower) is you
really need to be a careful designer, especially if the chip is
designed to have low quiescent power but handle high current. You also
need the benefit of seeing a few designs that didn't work, hopefully
not your own but from the company portfolio of goofs. One of the
classic bugs is designing micropower bandgaps, only to have them get
pumped from an on-board switcher. You have to throw in all sorts of
parasitics to make sure nothing sneaks into your reference.

Yep :-(

Maybe that's why there are no (cheap) ultralow brethren to the TLV431.
If you want less than 10uA cathode current on the board level it either
becomes very expensive, very large or you can forget about a reference.

Hardly a week goes by that I don't design a micro-power BandGap into a
chip ;-)

Dang, I just knew you'd say that ...

For us board level guys the situation looks pretty dire.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Micropower bandgaps show up in really mundane areas of chip design
nowadays, such as POR. Really overkill, but because customers know it
can be done, they expect it to be done. If you reverse engineer Maxim
chips, you'll find a bandgap comparator circuit in the POR. Plenty of
patents on such circuits, but never litigated to my knowledge. They do
save power since the bandgap and comparator are folded into one
circuit.

Yes, on chips this is no problem but no company has marketed those
individually at a decent price. Meaning the sub-10uA references are
usually not very suitable for mass production because you can't have a
reference in there that costs more than all the rest of the board. So we
have to use tricks such as pulsing and storing.

One reason why POR/BOR circuits contain precise references is that the
chips they are on need it elsewhere as well. For example, a uC with an
ADC on board. The often touted "cheat reference" consisting of four
equal resistors hung onto the rail doesn't cut the mustard.

One of the trickier micropower circuits are those in thermal shutdown.
That is where leakage can really kill you, so parasitics are required.
However, it isn't exactly rocket science.

BTW, I forgot to mention it, but UCLA has a fair amount of analog
design classes. Lastly, there is the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (or close to that). They have all sorts of papers on
dynamic biasing scheme, i.e. schemes to make micropower op amps slew
quickly by boosting tail current, etc.

We didn't have much luck with UCLA so far. They didn't understand my
module specs and couldn't even solder. Had to let them go. Europe would
be an option but the immigration procedure is a real hassle. Plus there
will be an expensive international move required unless you catch them
right after their degree. Europe doesn't have such an extreme shortage
of analog guys because larger companies there are often foolish. Some of
them consider anyone over 40 a geezer that needs to be replaced by a
kid. The consequences are very visible, for example with NXP's web site.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Oh yeah, the lack of soldering skills. That would require the student
to have actually built something. These younguns just know how to
program. You've seen the posts where a pic uP is the solutions to any
task, not a state machine comprised of memory elements and
combinational logic.

 

[Joerg]

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Joerg wrote:

Who? There are some tube mfgs and probably the largest ones are Sovtek
and Svetlana but there ain't much in HV tubes there. It's all audio
because that is where the big bucks can be made.



http://broadcast.rell.com/tubes.asp

Big tubes, CRTs and the like you can get from Western mfgs. But any
regular tubes will be NOS.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Joerg]

miso@sushi.com wrote:

On Sep 30, 7:00 am, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

m...@sushi.com wrote:

On Sep 28, 12:01 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:05:46 -0700, Joerg
notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:23:30 -0700, m...@sushi.com wrote:

On Sep 25, 3:45 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

Hello Folks,

Happens a lot these days, last time an hour ago: Someone is looking for
an analog/mixed signal engineer (this time low power design). I could do
it but they absolutely want to have someone on staff. Which I can't do.
So, I often try to convince them to settle for a youngster who gets
coached now and then, instead of sitting there a year from now still
trying to find the perfect candidate.

Which US or Canadian university lets off the best analog/mixed EEs? I
know, I know, many can't even solder etc. It ain't like it used to be.
But there has got to be an alma mater that sticks out. Or maybe a
particular institute at one. And please, no pissing contests.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

I never interviewed a Georgia Tech grad, but Marshall Leach, Jr.
certain has the credentials.
http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~mleach/

I've interviewed plenty of UC Berkeley grads, and you could find an
analog designer there.This doesn't mean every grad from UCB will know
analog. The worse Ivy League has got to be hands down MIT. I assume it
was a good university at one time given it's reputation. But I
interviewed undergrads that didn't know basic s-plane stability
issues, as if they don't teach classic control theory anymore What
little analog they knew was bipolar.

Probably only the duds applied to your company ;-)

However I never had control systems, per se, undergrad... just a very
good math background to understand it if I needed it. (and that was
more than 45 years ago.)

Took non-linear control systems in grad school. Instructor scared the
piss out of me by announcing that, to weed down the class size, he was
giving an exam in undergrad control systems... pass or walk :-(

I got the best score, and "A" as my final grade ;-)

A real surprise are the University of Toronto grads. These guys know
analog and signal processing.

I don't know any of those.

The trouble with low power (assuming you mean micropower) is you
really need to be a careful designer, especially if the chip is
designed to have low quiescent power but handle high current. You also
need the benefit of seeing a few designs that didn't work, hopefully
not your own but from the company portfolio of goofs. One of the
classic bugs is designing micropower bandgaps, only to have them get
pumped from an on-board switcher. You have to throw in all sorts of
parasitics to make sure nothing sneaks into your reference.

Yep :-(

Maybe that's why there are no (cheap) ultralow brethren to the TLV431.
If you want less than 10uA cathode current on the board level it either
becomes very expensive, very large or you can forget about a reference.

Hardly a week goes by that I don't design a micro-power BandGap into a
chip ;-)

Dang, I just knew you'd say that ...

For us board level guys the situation looks pretty dire.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Micropower bandgaps show up in really mundane areas of chip design
nowadays, such as POR. Really overkill, but because customers know it
can be done, they expect it to be done. If you reverse engineer Maxim
chips, you'll find a bandgap comparator circuit in the POR. Plenty of
patents on such circuits, but never litigated to my knowledge. They do
save power since the bandgap and comparator are folded into one
circuit.

Yes, on chips this is no problem but no company has marketed those
individually at a decent price. Meaning the sub-10uA references are
usually not very suitable for mass production because you can't have a
reference in there that costs more than all the rest of the board. So we
have to use tricks such as pulsing and storing.

One reason why POR/BOR circuits contain precise references is that the
chips they are on need it elsewhere as well. For example, a uC with an
ADC on board. The often touted "cheat reference" consisting of four
equal resistors hung onto the rail doesn't cut the mustard.


One of the trickier micropower circuits are those in thermal shutdown.
That is where leakage can really kill you, so parasitics are required.
However, it isn't exactly rocket science.

BTW, I forgot to mention it, but UCLA has a fair amount of analog
design classes. Lastly, there is the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (or close to that). They have all sorts of papers on
dynamic biasing scheme, i.e. schemes to make micropower op amps slew
quickly by boosting tail current, etc.

We didn't have much luck with UCLA so far. They didn't understand my
module specs and couldn't even solder. Had to let them go. Europe would
be an option but the immigration procedure is a real hassle. Plus there
will be an expensive international move required unless you catch them
right after their degree. Europe doesn't have such an extreme shortage
of analog guys because larger companies there are often foolish. Some of
them consider anyone over 40 a geezer that needs to be replaced by a
kid. The consequences are very visible, for example with NXP's web site.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com


POR really should reflect what it takes to make the chip fly, not
necessarily some arbitrary specification. That is, logic needs at
least a VT, the worse case of N or P. So generally a chip POR will
have a circuit that insures you at least have enough juice to turn on
your worse case fet. Once you trust the logic (well, at least under
static conditions), the next step is to insure the bandgap is awake,
generally an output something above a VTN. Throw in a timer and
hysteresis to make sure the supply rail hasn't sagged. Stuff like
that. Thus POR is process and temperature dependent. However, as you
probably know, that doesn't give the customer the warm and fuzzy
feeling. They want to see something nice and snappy that can be
verified with a DVM.

The customer won't even be able to hold a DVM to it if on-chip. What
customers like me really want to see is a POR plus BOR where brown-outs
are handled properly. Anything less than that is a risk. For some reason
it usually takes the uC folks years to figure that out, no idea what
they find so difficult about it.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 02:03:59 -0700, miso@sushi.com wrote:

On Sep 30, 7:00 am, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:
[snip]

We didn't have much luck with UCLA so far. They didn't understand my
module specs and couldn't even solder. Had to let them go. Europe would
be an option but the immigration procedure is a real hassle. Plus there
will be an expensive international move required unless you catch them
right after their degree. Europe doesn't have such an extreme shortage
of analog guys because larger companies there are often foolish. Some of
them consider anyone over 40 a geezer that needs to be replaced by a
kid. The consequences are very visible, for example with NXP's web site.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

POR really should reflect what it takes to make the chip fly, not
necessarily some arbitrary specification. That is, logic needs at
least a VT, the worse case of N or P. So generally a chip POR will
have a circuit that insures you at least have enough juice to turn on
your worse case fet. Once you trust the logic (well, at least under
static conditions), the next step is to insure the bandgap is awake,
generally an output something above a VTN. Throw in a timer and
hysteresis to make sure the supply rail hasn't sagged. Stuff like
that. Thus POR is process and temperature dependent. However, as you
probably know, that doesn't give the customer the warm and fuzzy
feeling. They want to see something nice and snappy that can be
verified with a DVM.

Indeed. My latest POR had hysteresis of 3.5VT/3VT plus a delay to
ensure it held "resetbar" down long enough.

POR was used only on the digital sections... analog functioned on a
"bandgap ready" signal.

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

 

[Joerg]

miso@sushi.com wrote:

On Sep 30, 7:00 am, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

m...@sushi.com wrote:

On Sep 28, 12:01 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 11:05:46 -0700, Joerg
notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Fri, 28 Sep 2007 10:23:30 -0700, m...@sushi.com wrote:

On Sep 25, 3:45 pm, Joerg <notthisjoerg...@removethispacbell.net
wrote:

Hello Folks,

Happens a lot these days, last time an hour ago: Someone is looking for
an analog/mixed signal engineer (this time low power design). I could do
it but they absolutely want to have someone on staff. Which I can't do.
So, I often try to convince them to settle for a youngster who gets
coached now and then, instead of sitting there a year from now still
trying to find the perfect candidate.

Which US or Canadian university lets off the best analog/mixed EEs? I
know, I know, many can't even solder etc. It ain't like it used to be.
But there has got to be an alma mater that sticks out. Or maybe a
particular institute at one. And please, no pissing contests.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

I never interviewed a Georgia Tech grad, but Marshall Leach, Jr.
certain has the credentials.
http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~mleach/

I've interviewed plenty of UC Berkeley grads, and you could find an
analog designer there.This doesn't mean every grad from UCB will know
analog. The worse Ivy League has got to be hands down MIT. I assume it
was a good university at one time given it's reputation. But I
interviewed undergrads that didn't know basic s-plane stability
issues, as if they don't teach classic control theory anymore What
little analog they knew was bipolar.

Probably only the duds applied to your company ;-)

However I never had control systems, per se, undergrad... just a very
good math background to understand it if I needed it. (and that was
more than 45 years ago.)

Took non-linear control systems in grad school. Instructor scared the
piss out of me by announcing that, to weed down the class size, he was
giving an exam in undergrad control systems... pass or walk :-(

I got the best score, and "A" as my final grade ;-)

A real surprise are the University of Toronto grads. These guys know
analog and signal processing.

I don't know any of those.

The trouble with low power (assuming you mean micropower) is you
really need to be a careful designer, especially if the chip is
designed to have low quiescent power but handle high current. You also
need the benefit of seeing a few designs that didn't work, hopefully
not your own but from the company portfolio of goofs. One of the
classic bugs is designing micropower bandgaps, only to have them get
pumped from an on-board switcher. You have to throw in all sorts of
parasitics to make sure nothing sneaks into your reference.

Yep :-(

Maybe that's why there are no (cheap) ultralow brethren to the TLV431.
If you want less than 10uA cathode current on the board level it either
becomes very expensive, very large or you can forget about a reference.

Hardly a week goes by that I don't design a micro-power BandGap into a
chip ;-)

Dang, I just knew you'd say that ...

For us board level guys the situation looks pretty dire.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

Micropower bandgaps show up in really mundane areas of chip design
nowadays, such as POR. Really overkill, but because customers know it
can be done, they expect it to be done. If you reverse engineer Maxim
chips, you'll find a bandgap comparator circuit in the POR. Plenty of
patents on such circuits, but never litigated to my knowledge. They do
save power since the bandgap and comparator are folded into one
circuit.

Yes, on chips this is no problem but no company has marketed those
individually at a decent price. Meaning the sub-10uA references are
usually not very suitable for mass production because you can't have a
reference in there that costs more than all the rest of the board. So we
have to use tricks such as pulsing and storing.

One reason why POR/BOR circuits contain precise references is that the
chips they are on need it elsewhere as well. For example, a uC with an
ADC on board. The often touted "cheat reference" consisting of four
equal resistors hung onto the rail doesn't cut the mustard.


One of the trickier micropower circuits are those in thermal shutdown.
That is where leakage can really kill you, so parasitics are required.
However, it isn't exactly rocket science.

BTW, I forgot to mention it, but UCLA has a fair amount of analog
design classes. Lastly, there is the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology (or close to that). They have all sorts of papers on
dynamic biasing scheme, i.e. schemes to make micropower op amps slew
quickly by boosting tail current, etc.

We didn't have much luck with UCLA so far. They didn't understand my
module specs and couldn't even solder. Had to let them go. Europe would
be an option but the immigration procedure is a real hassle. Plus there
will be an expensive international move required unless you catch them
right after their degree. Europe doesn't have such an extreme shortage
of analog guys because larger companies there are often foolish. Some of
them consider anyone over 40 a geezer that needs to be replaced by a
kid. The consequences are very visible, for example with NXP's web site.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com


Oh yeah, the lack of soldering skills. That would require the student
to have actually built something. These younguns just know how to
program. You've seen the posts where a pic uP is the solutions to any
task, not a state machine comprised of memory elements and
combinational logic.

There were elaborate uC solutions I found in my career that I have
replaced with 20-30 cents worth of logic chips and some diodes. This
"TV-dinner" behavior already started with the advent of PALs. Almost
everyone was jumping on them (except me ...) and they were wasting lots
of power. And money.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

Joerg wrote:

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Joerg wrote:

Who? There are some tube mfgs and probably the largest ones are Sovtek
and Svetlana but there ain't much in HV tubes there. It's all audio
because that is where the big bucks can be made.



http://broadcast.rell.com/tubes.asp


Big tubes, CRTs and the like you can get from Western mfgs. But any
regular tubes will be NOS.

Some of the HV stuff is still being made in small runs.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 15:32:48 GMT, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

RST Engineering (jw) wrote:

...and some really nice HF RF linear power amplifier devices.


Ok, yeah, of course you can still get some of the really big tubes. But
those aren't practical and economical for a small HV circuit while the
old TV ballast triode might have been.

Cute trick: use an HV rectifier, like a 1B3, and control its filament
voltage to make it an amplifier. I used to do that when I was a kid...
flashlight battery, rheostat to filament (with long plastic shaft!),
neon sign transformer, charging a bank of oil caps, with the loop
closed manually. You could run the xenon flashtubes just below the
point where they'd fire spontaneously.

Amazing I'm still alive.

John

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

John Larkin wrote:

On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 15:32:48 GMT, Joerg
notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net> wrote:

RST Engineering (jw) wrote:

...and some really nice HF RF linear power amplifier devices.


Ok, yeah, of course you can still get some of the really big tubes. But
those aren't practical and economical for a small HV circuit while the
old TV ballast triode might have been.


Cute trick: use an HV rectifier, like a 1B3, and control its filament
voltage to make it an amplifier. I used to do that when I was a kid...
flashlight battery, rheostat to filament (with long plastic shaft!),
neon sign transformer, charging a bank of oil caps, with the loop
closed manually. You could run the xenon flashtubes just below the
point where they'd fire spontaneously.

One TV tech I worked with when I was 13 would reach into those old
tube type color TV sets and grab the second anode lead, then touch
someone. ONCE. Most people never got close to him again, after that.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[krw]

In article <IxYKi.1745$P21.675@newssvr19.news.prodigy.net>,
notthisjoergsch@removethispacbell.net says...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

Joerg wrote:

Phil Hobbs wrote:

Joerg wrote:

Phil Hobbs wrote:

Joerg wrote:

Hello Folks,

Happens a lot these days, last time an hour ago: Someone is
looking for an analog/mixed signal engineer (this time low power
design). I could do it but they absolutely want to have someone on
staff. Which I can't do. So, I often try to convince them to
settle for a youngster who gets coached now and then, instead of
sitting there a year from now still trying to find the perfect
candidate.

Which US or Canadian university lets off the best analog/mixed
EEs? I know, I know, many can't even solder etc. It ain't like it
used to be. But there has got to be an alma mater that sticks out.
Or maybe a particular institute at one. And please, no pissing
contests.


Try out Montana State and the University of Colorado.


Thanks, that's a start. I just fear that guys who've lived in places
like that would not enjoy Bay Area life (I wouldn't). But definitely
worth a try.

It's amazing what a W-2 form can do to motivate someone--ask me how I
know, I've lived in NY for 20 years now.


Has to have the right numbers in there. Big bucks will motivate. It's
just that in the Bay Area it needs to be really big bucks.

It's also a matter of lifestyle. Country folks (like me) may tough it
out for a while but many of our neighbors are Bay Area transplants.
People who packed it all up the millisecond they retired.


I hate the Bay Area--I went to school there, and very nearly went to
work at HP Labs on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto, which was about six
blocks from where I lived at the time...but fortunately IBM's offer came
through before HP's. If I believed in chance, I'd feel lucky. As it
is, I feel blessed.

Cheers,

Phil "Same lab for 18 years now" Hobbs


Poughkeepsie? That's where my father had to go, looong flights back in
them days. He worked at IBM in Germany.

I worked in P'ok for 19 years. Great place to be *from*.

It would definitely be too cold up there for my wife. Her ideal place
would be where winter simply doesn't happen. Like Hawaii, but there is
no work for me and getting to clients would take forever.

From there, we moved North 200 miles but looking to get out for
somewhat warmer climes now (the instant the house sells). The
Winters do suck and it looks like we'll be there one more. :-(

--
Keith