Future of Analog IC or RFIC?

[mesfet]

Hi All,

I am a bit scared after reading Abidi's papers on SDR. Sounds like more and more stuffs are done in digital domain, the analog portion will get less and less important, utimately be removed. The shrinking of device size simply go against analog circuit's linearity, noise....etc. Look back 10 years ago when cell phone was first out, RF system engineering is hot but now I guess most RF engineers are simply application engineers. Now, RFIC is hot, everywhere is hiring RFIC engineers. Is there still a lot to work on in RFIC? or people already started tweaking proven design and not doing any new design?


Mesfet+

 

[rfzheng]

I do not believe the analoy will disapear.. AD DA RF and power will never be replaced by didital. inversly, when the frequency being too high, their analog efficts are more obvious.

right now ,and ten years later is the same.

 

[husseinadel]

let's look in different view, for GHz operation , i think you will go for analog rather than digital for somethin you can do by both , simply it is the power , imagine power of digital circuits at 10 GHz and beyond!! i used some standard cells in my design at 100MHz, and i believe that using digital circuits will consume huge power at GHz opertation , power directly proportional to loading capacitance and frequency of operation,

 

[avanticrk]

Remember the real world is Analog

 

[gamma1]

Yes, Analog designer is more and more demanding

 

[microbasly]

it is the first gate with the real world

 

[dingjingfeng]

I believe Analog and RF designers are more and more demanded

 

[layout_designer]

it is a very improbable that analog design will get wiped out.

 

[rajharvijay]

I read a recent article about job scenarios in webpage and it says that more and more work will be outsourced to other countries like china, india etc.

what i believe that nowadays more digital work and less analog work will gives full digital world and very compact field in digital are.

though real world is analog and deals in voltage and current but 75% people are talking about digital world.

what should be goal of the person in field of circuit design?

i am studying analog circuit designs but thinking to switch on digital design area.
any comments on that.....

 

[renwl]

There's no future for designers.

 

[chenjia]

Analog is everywhere,I think.

 

[psmon]

RFIC will always be around... more wireless standards are defined

 

[neo79]

Analog will always be there, just which part of it is there.

 

[kpsai26779]

for very high frequencies and at low level of abstraction (device level) digital circuits are treated as analog.

 

[bobchentan]

The nature of the world is analog. And recently analog especially RF analog becomes hot!

 

[wchenx]

so, let's talk about salary, RF designer, Analog designer, Digital designer, which one can get more pay?