[sdiy] TI to buy NatSemi!!!!!

[David Schwan]

RF is still the domain of breadboarding, really???

I used to work for a very hardcore RFIC company (actually several, through mergers), 10 years in the RFIC world, 900MHz - 22GHz, none of these people breadboard anything. At those frequencies breadboarding is 1000% useless. We relied on very heavy duty simulation tools to design circuits, and very good device models. Parasitic extraction tools were essential. I have one patent related to parasitic issues in an RF PA at 5.8GHz.



On Apr 5, 2011, at 4:21 PM, Neil Johnson wrote:

> David,
> 
>>> Why should they? Just for those clumsy MELF resistors? All
>>> others have numbers on them or no marking at all.
>> 
>> Breadboard much with those, Ingo?
> 
> In the real world, outside of the cosy slow-paced realm of DIY,
> breadboarding went out years ago.  It is far cheaper to go straight to
> PCB and debug there, not least because the majority of the components
> you'll be using are SMT.  RFis about the only domain where traditional
> breadboarding still takes place, although that has its own weird rules
> of construction and may still use SMT devices, stuck down to copper
> ground planes with wires sticking out at odd angles.
> 
> Other than home DIY projects the last time I breadboarded a
> non-trivial circuit (i.e.,  beyond push buttons, LED blinky-lights and
> connectors :-) was around 1993.
> 
> Cheers,
> Neil
> -- 
> http://www.njohnson.co.uk
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