Hi all,

Thanks for all the replies.

My main concern was that non-reconfigureable ASICs would dominate and
therefore leave the hobbist no real way to build useful stuff. I can see
from your responses that this is probably not true. However, most of your
responses revolved around full digital FPGAs. What about analog stuff? What
do you feel will happen there? Will it continue to be implemented in
several chips? Go ASIC? Be replaced by DSP? Be implemented by
reconfigureable analog chips? Or a combination of these?

I love digital electronics, especially microcontrollers. However, I still
love analog/mixed signal stuff. I have also bee long concerned by the
apparent fact that very few people design at the transistor level anymore
would harm the industry by leaving hobbists(the best source of engineers,
IMHO) ignorant of and uninterested in electronics below the level of
configuring a customizable IC. I can already see this here at my school.
>From what I can tell, out of my EE class of about 2,000 students, very few
seem to have an interest in electronics at this level. I could be wrong,
and hope I am. Also, think of how often the more experienced members of
this list have to explain to people that one or two discreet transistors
does what they need(and how such a circuit works!), instead of a 14 pin IC.

Of course, intergration is a very good thing. We wouldn't have PICs without
it! But I just feel that in order for the design of ICs to change and for a
good understanding of how to interface to ICs, we need engineers to
understand what's going on inside, and it seems to me that you only get
this by doing some actual design once in a while involving electronics at
this more basic level.

I'd love additional comments if you can stand this discussion any longer :-)

Thanks,

Sean


+-------------------------------+
| Sean Breheny                  |
| Amateur Radio Callsign: KA3YXM|
| Electrical Engineering Student|
+-------------------------------+
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