Fast buffer idea

The problem with a transistor with Ft=10 GHz is that beta=1 at 10 GHz!

I like phemts and mmics for fast stuff. Bipolars never seem to be as fast as they promise, unless you tune them, and that's just RF.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

In contrast, here's a possible vision of the future:

Works fine for art. I mean, engineering is art, too, so why not?

I'd love to have waveforms at my fingertips.

The ultimate in breadboarding: instant simulation results, without the trouble of soldering things together, and producing magic smoke.

Downside: while we have the computational power to do it (if not necessarily the optimizations to avoid Amdahl's law*), SPICE development has been utterly stagnant over the past three decades. It would be foolish to think that would change "because VR".

But one can hope.

*Numerical simulations are timestepped, but there are some known shortcuts, like for quasi-periodic cycle-averaged systems, which are common enough to be worth addressing. Unfortunately they aren't in any free tools...

Tim

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Seven Transistor Labs, LLC 
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

On a sunny day (Fri, 26 May 2017 08:54:11 -0500) it happened "Tim Williams" wrote in :

Long time ago I tried walking into a building (where I was for the first time) and hit the glass entrance door. I was OK (made a loud bang, they were really concerned, told me I was number n who did that).

So, once we get used to 'virtual objects' we may get into the habit of ignoring those and hit the real car or person ... Then there could be no longer a difference between reality as we know it and what the machine makes us believe. the Matrix, next you will grow up in a tube, get your brain interface, wait, why need a brain at all, why need life. SillyCon rules.

Maybe there is a planet somewhere where this transition did happen. And an endless ever repeating simulation of life is all there is left. ...

I love oscilloscopes. I have about 60 of them.

Soldering together and measuring circuits is not only art, it's real. I suspect that people who sell low millions of 15 cent parts will never invest in supplying a really accurate electrical and thermal model of their parts. They don't even edit out obvious blunders on the data sheet, not years after being alerted to them.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

I never said 1970. I said 1971.

So I was 7 years off. Sue me.

My measurement was far more accurate than the HP 5326 could give.

And I still made millions. In 1980's dollars.

Had no clue how to handle it, and lost it all. But next time will be different.