dnlcnwy
Puritan Board Freshman
Hi. L notice that most of the education information here is theological in nature. That is great, but most of us need secular vocational information as well so I thought I would post a few thoughts on current trends on electronic and computer engineering careers. The first general trend I would note is that much of the innovative requirements for software engineering have been supplanted by the formation of vast repositories of free existing art that a developer can draw upon for his or her solution. This development began in the 90's and was enabled by high speed internet and cheap mass storage. What happened is that developers started uploading their solutions to their latest assignment to public repositories for use and improvement by other developers. This greatly augmented software reuse and also resulted in superior product, as multiple developers reviewed and improved the solution. The most prominent example of a successful project that employed this approach is the linux operating system. The upside of this development is superior software. The downside is that much of the fun has gone out of developing. The first thing a developer does now after he or she has bounded the problem is to try to find someone else's solution now rather than jump right in to the process of development, which to the old school developer is where the fun is. Put succinctly, software development now is less like tinkering and more like accounting.
I can't speak much to analog electronic engineering, that's not my forte. I can say that silicon based solutions to digital engineering have just about reached their zenith. It might be possible to continue to make the transistors smaller, but they can't clock them any faster due to heat issues. Outsiders are worried that the American chip fabs are falling behind their oversees competitors because they are not putting any more research into silicon based innovation. This is probably not the case. What I believe the American fabs have concluded is that the industry has reached the point of diminishing returns on this technology and that they nee to invest in a new approach to continue to improve upon their product. This is where it gets exciting. Many of you are aware that it is now possible to make diamonds in the lab using chemical vapor deposition techniques. What you may not now is these diamonds have a nearly perfect crystal structure and as such can be used as semiconductors. This is a VERY active area of research in industry and academia. The scientists are encountering some problems with doping the diamond crystal, diamond is a harder crystal than silicon and tends to fragment under direct bombardment of dopants rather than just absord them, but good science thrives on a challenge, and once this problem is solved a whole new vista of technologies will open up.
Diamond is a tough crystal. It can tolerate heats much greater than silicon and can thus be clocked at theoretical speeds of near 100 Ghz. It also conducts electricity better and than silicon once it has been doped. It can sustain greater voltage differences across it pn junction (don't worry if you don't know what that means), which means it can be used in high power applications. Once this technology is exploited It will require new research into printed circuit board technology, solder technology, and wave guide technology. What it will enable will be some of the holy grails of the tech world, real time voice processing, robots that are smart enough to relieve us of most of our menial labor, and maybe artificial intelligence. We will no longer be playing a the margins of our capabilities, we will be opening up whole new rooms. Boys and girls, engineering will be fun again. About the only technology that I am aware of that his similar potential is high temperature superconductors, which I know less about but to my knowledge appears to be a technology much more in the theoretical stage.
What is the upshot of all this? There will be lots of careers that people can really enjoy coming out of this. If you are in your early teens the time to start watching this and asking potential schools about it is now. I do not mean to imply that silicon will be completely supplanted by diamond. Just look around, there are lots of neat things that silicon can do. If you are of the type that prefers a known, stable workaday career then silicon based tech might be your bag. But if new and cutting edge is what you like, then consider yourself informed of what is coming next.
I can't speak much to analog electronic engineering, that's not my forte. I can say that silicon based solutions to digital engineering have just about reached their zenith. It might be possible to continue to make the transistors smaller, but they can't clock them any faster due to heat issues. Outsiders are worried that the American chip fabs are falling behind their oversees competitors because they are not putting any more research into silicon based innovation. This is probably not the case. What I believe the American fabs have concluded is that the industry has reached the point of diminishing returns on this technology and that they nee to invest in a new approach to continue to improve upon their product. This is where it gets exciting. Many of you are aware that it is now possible to make diamonds in the lab using chemical vapor deposition techniques. What you may not now is these diamonds have a nearly perfect crystal structure and as such can be used as semiconductors. This is a VERY active area of research in industry and academia. The scientists are encountering some problems with doping the diamond crystal, diamond is a harder crystal than silicon and tends to fragment under direct bombardment of dopants rather than just absord them, but good science thrives on a challenge, and once this problem is solved a whole new vista of technologies will open up.
Diamond is a tough crystal. It can tolerate heats much greater than silicon and can thus be clocked at theoretical speeds of near 100 Ghz. It also conducts electricity better and than silicon once it has been doped. It can sustain greater voltage differences across it pn junction (don't worry if you don't know what that means), which means it can be used in high power applications. Once this technology is exploited It will require new research into printed circuit board technology, solder technology, and wave guide technology. What it will enable will be some of the holy grails of the tech world, real time voice processing, robots that are smart enough to relieve us of most of our menial labor, and maybe artificial intelligence. We will no longer be playing a the margins of our capabilities, we will be opening up whole new rooms. Boys and girls, engineering will be fun again. About the only technology that I am aware of that his similar potential is high temperature superconductors, which I know less about but to my knowledge appears to be a technology much more in the theoretical stage.
What is the upshot of all this? There will be lots of careers that people can really enjoy coming out of this. If you are in your early teens the time to start watching this and asking potential schools about it is now. I do not mean to imply that silicon will be completely supplanted by diamond. Just look around, there are lots of neat things that silicon can do. If you are of the type that prefers a known, stable workaday career then silicon based tech might be your bag. But if new and cutting edge is what you like, then consider yourself informed of what is coming next.
Last edited:
