Your favorite 10 analog IC's

The Xilinx Coolrunner flash CPLDs (and similar) are the next gen of this sort of thing. The smallest ones are something like 4x the logic of a a 22V10, have a more general architecture, and cost something like $1.20. They are surface-mount and have to be programmed on-board, which can be a small nuisance.

John

So knowing what you know now, would you recommend that a kid start at $50K a year (or whatever they make fresh out of school these days) with the usual terms, or $40K + residuals? Do you think they'd take the cut in pay for the future money, or jump on the early gravy train?

Good idea, but please do bring a bucket of money. ;-)

Still get residuals?

If you've never been fired for insubordination, you've not lived. I got fired from Dickson Electronics (a hybrid house) for redirecting their business plan from heavily military to a mix between military and commercial... showing a healthy profit in the process. They went bust about two years after they fired me and sold out to Siemens. I think that's even gone now.

It's a shame that more companies don't realize that the best asset is the loyal employees.

...Jim Thompson

Well, whadya know, Intersil just put it on "to be discontinued". My (our) bad luck!

Tim.

I've always taken a peverse pleasure in dancing on the grave of a company that tooled one around or ignored one's genius. I applaud the deaths of Metricom, Synergistic Controls, Westover, and a certain I**** who I can't yet name because of anti-defamation clauses in legal settlements.

John

I dance upon the remains of MFS Network Technologies... now that my NDA has run out...

the only company where a manager actually threatened physical violence to employees to motivate additional effort...

(He thought it was was funny...)

I've only had one start-up out of many that actually produced usable cash from a "piece-of-the-action".

So I refuse such "deals" anymore... pay my fee or go away.

...Jim Thompson

No, he did what I did: took responsibility for his own life. That is, of course, a reactionary conservative approach to living.

Oh come on, does Jim sound like he hates himself? Admit it: you're mad at him because he *doesn't*.

John

Zetex has some current mirrors; don't know if they're comparable.

Great amp; low voltage noise and fast. I use them after current shunts.

Gaack! Charge injection! Latchup!

John

That's a very reasonable price for many applications.

Why do they have to be programmed on board? Can't you get a

Now *that* is a good digital catch-all.

I have a somewhat idiosyncratic list, due to my concentration on electrooptical instruments:

LM329 Buried-Zener voltage reference. Very very quiet. LMC6034 quad CMOS op amp--the 324 of high impedance circuitry. TL011 TO-92 current mirror--discontinued years ago. I still cry sometimes. LT1028 low noise precision op amp--great for low-resistance sensors, e.g. InAs photodiodes CD4052 dual 1->4 analog mux. Great for flying-capacitor circuits. MAX900 quad comparator. Well-behaved, fast, and has a latch in its input circuitry, so you can drive it from its own output--like AC hysteresis but doesn't put crap back out the input SA614 FM IF strip--by cascoding the RSSI output you can get a very quick logarithmic detector for $2. Very useful in optical sensors. LF356 fast-disappearing JFET op amp. Its very low input capacitance (2 pF) is great for preserving phase margin in low-light photodiode amps at lowish speed. The decompensated LF157 is even better. OPA657 Newer JFET amp, more money, faster, otherwise similar. PA95 +-450V, 100 mA op amp. Great for piezos, medium-speed electro-optical modulators, and electrostatic deflection.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Sloman, As usual speaketh thru his asshole. My embodiment followed Gilbert's work by several years and simply added some interface circuitry, and Barrie was referenced and credited copiously.

A "synchronous demodulator" and an analog multiplier look similar, but aren't the same. Barrie Gilbert's work depends on the logarithmic characteristics of BIPOLAR devices.

Please cite an MOS embodiment that works like Gilbert's description.

...Jim Thompson

Sheeeesh! I only hate leftist weenies and liberal sissies ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Possibly. I've lost track of all the things I've designed over the past 47 years.

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

"Analog

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guy

"Jones/Gilbert"

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Jones,

incorrect

gatherings, the

I don't know how well known the Jones patent was - my Ph.D. thesis cites E.A. Faulkner and D.W. Harding's version of the current steering mixer, referring to their paper in J.Sci.Instrum. vol. 43, from page 97 (1966).

Brookdeal Electronics used this mixer in their lock-in amplifiers and claim to have patented it and a bunch of variations - see E.A.Faulkner and J.B. Grimbleby in Electronic Engineering vol. 39 from page 565 (1967). Brookdeal got bought out by EG&G in 1972, which might suggest that their patents were invalid, but in 1972 they sold my boss their newly developed photon counter (against my advice) which didn't officially hit the market until 1974, so I'd suspect that the problems with the photon counter development were what wrecked them.

Gives a short and contentless sketch of the Brookdeal/EG&G/Princeton Applied Research story.

------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

The subtlety is the distinction between "mixer" and "multiplier".

So historical correctness would call the switching mixer "Jones" and the linear multiplier "Gilbert".

Personally I have to admit I've never heard before the term "Gilbert mixer", only "Gilbert multiplier".

Then there's patent 3,491,301, Integrated Harmonic Mixer, an entirely different way to look at the non-linearity of a differential pair ;-)

...Jim Thompson