But it’s the combination of analog and digital electronics that will really reshape how we live and work, according to some analysts and futurists. This wave of the future is one where our devices and gadgets will be more capable of sensing and interacting with the world around them. They’ll combine the sheer processing power and speed of digital electronics with the sensory abilities of analog to interpret that gray area between black and white, between off and on—much like a human does.

In this issue, we take a look at an evolving area of electronics design known as analog/mixed-signal (AMS), which combines analog and digital circuits on one chip. It’s a growing segment of the semiconductor industry that is helping to drive innovation and growth in some of the world’s hottest markets, including wireless communications and computing, and in industries where real-world phenomena such as temperature, motion, pressure, light and sound play a key role such as industrial process control, security, medical devices and automotive manufacturing.

Analog and digital circuits have shared space on semiconductors for years but their potential has been limited in large part due to the complexity and cost associated with designing the analog portion of the chips. Software tools for digital chips arrived in the 1980s, but tools for analog designs lagged far behind. In fact, until recently, the analog portion of chips was designed by hand. While the analog parts of a typical chip may occupy only 20 percent of the silicon area, they can account for 80 percent of the design cost, according to Chuck Brandt, Vice President, Chief Technology Officer at the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse (PDG).

Digital and analog circuits each have their strengths and weaknesses. Digital provides high-speed processing power with a high degree of accuracy. It’s either on or off, black or white—there is nothing in between. Therein lies a limitation of digital that analog can fill. Decision-making isn’t always based on absolute rules that can be reduced to binary code; sometimes it’s subjective, requiring nuanced judgment. Analog works best in that gray area. Sensory input such as sights and sounds lose some of their richness when they are converted to 0s and 1s—ask any musician. Analog works better there too. But analog has had its own limiting factors, namely one of size: as an analog circuit increases in size and complexity, so too does the ‘noise’ factor which can corrupt its integrity.

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