Background and
I began my career, in the early 80s, working in the cockpit display arena. Back in those days, PAL20s, 10K ECL, Fast Logic, 256Kbit VDRAMs, RAMDACs, VME bus, TI99XX, Motorola 68000 processors, and 50 Mhz clock speeds were at the leading edge. The concepts of concurrent processing had yet to be realized. Further, DSPs had yet to make their debut. Compared with today, modulation schemes were infantile. Multi-mode Fiber transport exceeding 100 Mbits/s, advanced process engineering manufacturing, object-oriented programming paradigm, paved the way for technologies such as advanced CMOS, 100K ECL, HDL, CPLDs and FPGAs, dynamic range covering 12-bits, etc. We know the rest and where technology is today.
Probably the greatest advances since the early 80s to date has been realizing the concept of concurrent processing via the push of object-oriented programming paradigm, modulation schemes with multi-path mitigation, Gigabit optical transport, high density and speed FPGAs, etc. Although reduced process geometries and acceptance of more abstract conceptual thinking facilitated this “leap,” the principal employment and application of basic engineering development principles still apply-and in fact they must be applied, or non-recurring engineering (NRE) will “dubiously,” recur.
The passion for engineering product development is realized through synergy of innovation with employment and application of the basic underlying engineering principles.
Much of today’s corporate management is manipulated by time to market constraints imposed by share holders—whether real or not. Often this causes new and good product development to take a back seat. Corporate technical staff is often too busy sustaining products, or they don’t have the knowledge base. Most companies would rather attempt to upgrade software, even if their product is at the extreme limit of its capabilities.
Using a consultant, such as myself, should allow the company to get an un-biased assessment, which will hopefully solve their short term development problem. I have a strong passion for good engineering development and can service your company’s short or even long term needs.
Greg Lenihan