If you’ve been following my analog posts you’ll know that one of my concerns has been that we don’t train enough engineers who are really comfortable working in this area.
Analog has two major problems: not only is it just generally more difficult to design (much harder maths!), but once you do you have to go and have a chip fabricated (i.e. spend time and money) to see how it works in practice. Digital designers have an easier job to begin with, better tools, and can reliably simulate using systems like field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) if they’d rather not work in software simulation alone. Plus there are a gazillion of them, which also helps them to make progress! Read More …
As well as explaining evolution (see my 
One of the things that has driven my work over the last decade has been an interest in analog systems (which I alluded to in an 
I love watching CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, but there’s one thing that makes me want to throw things at the television. Here’s how it goes. The investigators have found a security camera at the scene and have taken the tape back to the lab. They roll forward to the point where the crime is taking place, and look for clues about the perpetrator: maybe a badge, a signet ring, or tattoo. “Zoom in on the ring,” says the person in charge, and the grainy, highly-pixelated image of the ring fills the screen. “Now enhance that section.” Magically, the 50 or so pixels that show the ring vanish and a clear, crisp image of the ring appears in its place.