The Amp Hour #54 — Embedded Elchee Epexegesis
Embedded industry maven and prolific writer, Jack Ganssle, joins us on The Amp Hour this week.
- Dave called Chris a “young whippersnapper” (actually “young feller”, but the same sentiment) in writing about Jeri’s chip making.
- A former colleague of Jack’s maintained that spec’s for computers were driven by the porn industry and how much traffic they expected their servers to handle.
- Dave notes that the “big thing “a few years back was the soft processor promise (inside FPGAs) and now it has reversed.
- Jack mentions that he likes the Altera C-to-H functionality, but that it’s always going to be a tradeoff.
- Dave is working with the Actel (Microsemi) Igloo Nano. The same size as two 0603 decoupling caps! Tiny!
- Jack thinks the rash of mergers will continue based upon the costs involved in making chips.
- Jack also takes Dave’s side on the home-printed chip debate.
- Jack has a strong stance on work-life balance and tries to take 4 months off per year. Chris has been experiencing the opposite lately.
- The embedded systems conference in India only had 400 or so attendees but was a passionate bunch of people.
- When asked about the Maker Movement, Jack responded “Finally!”. Industry is taking notice too, Autodesk just bought Instructibles.
- Back in the day, Jack got his start building radios as a ham operator (N3ALO).
- Writing (technically or otherwise) is an important skill for modern engineers. Presenting in front of nerdy audiences is important too!
- People can hear/read more from Jack in his weekly column on Embedded.com or from his bi-weekly(ish) newsletter.
Thanks again to Jack for coming on the show! His industry insight is unparalleled and we hope to get to talk to him again soon!
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A classic episode gentlemen, and a great start to the second Amp Year! I hope Jack will be back on before too long, I suspect he will. To echo what Jack said, the quote I heard is “no man ever died wishing he had spend less time with his family”. Either way, they are wise words. Paying the mortgage is important, but human beings, whether family or close friends, are way more important than that.
P.S. I’ll have Dave’s beer if he doesn’t want it
Are you just making up names for the amp hour episode now? Im on to you Chris and Dave!
words*
Look ‘em up! Learn some vocab! To be honest though, that is a really fun part of making the show
As far as engineering enrollments go, I see them going down farther. Many universities in the US are considering raising per credit prices for engineering and science courses. Education in the US is becoming a racket designed to drain an optimal amount of future income off of graduates.
A great episode guys. Jack has a great voice I could listen to him and his anecdotes for hours. Awesome.
And you all seemed to have fun too. One of the best shows ever.
I’m having a bit of a problem fetching this episode for some reason. I use a well known podcast client on Android called Doggcatcher and it’s worked just fine with all your episodes in the past, but this one won’t download in it. It recognises the new episode okay because it comes up in the feed, but any attempt to download hangs at 0%. I tried downloading some older episodes and they still came down just fine.
I’m on holiday at the moment so I can’t really look into it anymore than that so I’m downloading it direct from your site instead. Might be worth you looking into it if you have 5 to make sure there’s no problem your end.
This just became one of my favorite episodes! I like the 4 month vacation idea.
If you haven’t yet, I would suggest watching the movie “3 Idiots”. It’s about three students getting their engineering degrees in India. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1187043/
I’m glad Autodesk ate Instructibles. I hate the way that site was run, now there’s a chance it will change for the better. A slim chance but better than nothing…
I don’t think Instructibles will change for the better. Autodesk will use it as a venue to sell Auto* products to gullible wanabe-makers. You know, those who think a cool website and a tool are substitutes for a good idea and skills.
I think we should plan to see more mergers of engineering and design businesses, fabs in the future as Lean is the new buzzword, being driven by the stockholders. Autodesk may or may not do wonders for Instructables, but they are the engineering industry’s standard and performance bar. I’ve noted among fellow engineers, not only is Autocad the *expected* format, using a recent (1-3 years) release is also an expected standard as well. I fully expect to see a merger between some of the major chip fabs in the near future.
Also, college and university tuitions are the next housing market bubble that’s about to burst as well. There’s not enough value for the fast rising cost, they are outrunning all other cost-per rates right now. Sadly, the company I work for is predicting a massive shortfall of engineers in the next 10-15 years across the industry.
Great show again guys. I enjoyed hearing Jack talk for the first time as opposed to only reading. Old farts rule when they know what they are talking. Thanks.
Jack is so interesting! Please ask him to come on the show more often!
You can de-tune audio with Autotune!
I agree we could use some exegesis to understand the titles.
I liked Ganssle’s comments.
Regarding engineer pay, not job function pays very well on the average. But the people at the top of every field, even unglamorous fields, all earn good money.
I used to agree with Chris when confronted with a 5000 pg datasheet and the need to design a board for it and get software running on it: Get a law degree. Then I saw the long documents lawyers use; and if you do decipher them, they’re about death and disease.
I agree with all of your on the need to save money. It’s not even get-lost money. You just need money to get things done. There’s no way to count on a stable client if you’re in the business of selling engineering services.
8 bit microprocessors still do porn easily , ascii porn that is
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