Page 48 - The Art and Science of Analog Circuit Design

Keitaro Sekine

4. Analog Design Productivity and the
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Challenge of Creating Future

Generations of Analog Engineers

introduction

Recently, digital techniques are very commonly used in the fields of elec-
tronics. According to the statistics taken by MITI (Figure 4-1), Japanese
integrated circuits industry has shown a growth of 5.5 times in the last
one decade (from 1980 to 1991). While digital ICs (MOS and bipolar
digital) grew 6.24 times in this period, analog ICs did only 3.57 times.
This reflects to a analog vs. digital percentage ratio, showing that analog
decreases from 25.9% on 1980 to 16.7% on 1991 (Figure 4-2). From
these facts, many people in the electronics fields might think that the age
of analog has been finished.

'80 '85 '90 '91
MOS Digital 100 346 650 691
Figure 4-1.
Bipolar Digital 100 352 340 336 Percentage of
Total of Digital 100 348 591 624 Japanese 1C
Linear 100 261 309 357 production.
Grand Total 100 325 518 555

Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers
(IEICE), one of the largest academic societies in electronics fields in
Japan, held special sessions to discuss many problems with respect to the
analog technologies in Japan at the IEICE National Convention in 1989
and again in 1992 chaired by the author. Both sessions attracted much
more participants than expected and proved that many serious engineers
were still recognizing the importance of analog technology. We discussed
the present status of analog technologies, how to create new analog tech-
nologies, how to hand them down to the next generation engineers and
how to use CAD in design of analog circuits to enhance productivity.
This paper is based on several discussions in these sessions and author
would like to acknowledge to those who discussed on the problems.

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