Page 54 - The Art and Science of Analog Circuit Design

Keitaro Sekine

Recent high speed digital LSI such as memory and CPU requests
much more analog circuit technology and digital signal processing sys-
tem (DSP) need AD/DA converter at their interface most of which are
analog circuits. Furthermore raising new system such as VHF/UHF com-
munication, HDTV, multimedia etc. should request much analog circuit
engineers.
From historical view, in the field of high speed and high frequency,
systems are implemented with analog technology at first, then according
process technologies developing, they are took over by digital. For exam-
ple in communication digital system are implemented in 9.6 kbit/s, while
coaxial 400 Mbit/s and light 1.6 Gbit/s use analog technology. Another
very interesting difference between two technologies are the number of
transistors to realize the same function. Digital systems use a lot of tran-
sistors while analog use only one hundreds or less transistors. (Unfortu-
nately this does not mean that design of analog system needs less human
resources including designer's skill.)
To summarize, our industries become aware of importance of analog
technologies and look for newcome analog engineer from university, but
insufficient number of analog circuit engineers are supplied by universities.

Creation and Education of Next-Generation Engineers
at the University

It is said recently that the number of Japanese high school students who
want to take entrance examination for science or technology course of
university has been decreasing year by year. Meanwhile the number of
graduating students in technology course of university who want to get
job at non-industrial company such as securities company and bank. For
30 years ago most student in department of electronics selected their
course because they wanted to be an electronics engineer. But at present
time, more than two thirds of them came with other reasons. In other
words, many students in electronics course do not have their interest in
electronics and study their curriculum only with a sense of duty. Instead,
many students are fond of hitting a keyboard. They tend to play not in
real world but in computer created virtual world. As a result, they think
what circuit simulator outputs as a real circuit itself. Even young
researcher in the doctor course sometimes write a paper using simulator
only without simple experiment.
This seems an origin of why young analog circuits engineers disap-
pear. Our discussion at the National Convention came to the conclusion
that it is because of disappearance of "Radio boy." Radio boy means such
a boy who likes assembling parts to make a radio receiver, HiFi repro-
ducer or transmitter as his hobby. We think many of them grew up to be
analog engineers and play an important role in the development of Japan-
ese electronics industries. Professor Yanagisawa at Tokyo Institute

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