Embedded industry maven and prolific writer, Jack Ganssle, joins us on The Amp Hour this week.

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• 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.