The benefit of experience
Those looking at the electronics industry will sometimes divide it into two parts – analogue and digital. While digital is considered by many to be a young man's technology, analogue – and you could reasonably include rf alongside it – is seen to be the province of those with more than a few miles 'on the clock'.
There's good reasons for this. Analogue design – particularly analogue chip design – is a craft learned from experience. And the more experience, the better.
Exar's recent acquisition of Cadeka highlights this. Cadeka's core design team has been together since the formation of Comlinear in the mid 1980s, despite the company being passed to new owners several times. Between them, these relatively few engineers have pushed the boundaries of analogue design and performance.
Get as excited as you like about digital, but it won't do very much without the high performance analogue components which surround it.
