Guide to doing an Electronics degree in UK

[rstofer]

Thanks, this certainly seems to confirm that VHDL software and integrated cct software, isnt cheap enough for someone to buy for home use, so that they can assess and evaluate themselves  learning it up for a job or career.

I don't know where you are getting this idea.  Xilinx Vivado (and even the older ISE) are free.  So are similar toolchains from Lattice and Altera.  It's true that you may not get as much free IP with the home version but, these days, Xilinx is giving away quite a bit.  You can use the MicroBlaze core and many of the peripherals for free where, earlier, with ISE, these weren't available to the hobbyist.  Just the DDR core is a blessing.

[rstofer]

Well , we are trying to increase the uptake of electronics as a college subject throughout the Western World.

Are we? Why are we doing that? Electronics jobs in the UK have completely collapsed, but they aren't exactly growing fast in the rest of the western world either. Most new jobs are in India and China, and they are doing reasonably well at expanding the number of people studying electronics for the local job market.

I don't think Electrical Engineering is a high growth field in the US but it is about average at 7% over 10 years or a little over 21,000 new jobs.  I don't know how many universities (or colleges) turn out EEs but I don't think their entire graduating classes are going to find jobs at only 2000 openings per year.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/electrical-and-electronics-engineers.htm

Job growth is a little faster for Mechanical Engineers but it doesn't pay as much:

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/mechanical-engineers.htm

Software Developer is growing at 24% over 10 years and it pays better - a lot better.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm

Notice the growth of 300k jobs over 10 years.  I would go with the "law of large numbers" and figure I could easily be one in 300k.

I'm kind of a numbers guy and I would head for software.  More jobs, more growth, more money.

So, as a young person starting out in college, which major would you choose?  It sure as hell wouldn't be EE or ME when software doesn't require anywhere near the level of math and is pretty much dead simple (in comparison).

I don't know about ME but EE school is hard work.  And for what?  Instant unemployment and substandard wages?  I wouldn't do it again!

[ocset]

Don't you consider it immoral to encourage people to study for non-existent jobs? Studying electronics is fine, if you are doing it as a springboard to jobs which value things like control theory (e.g. finance), but the degree has limited value for getting a job in electronics, especially if you want to stay in the UK.

Thanks Coppice, i have answered your questions in previous threads, but am wary of recounting this info as it is deemed political..
...eg post #24 of this
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/many-uk-electronics-engineers-are-doing-nothing-at-work/msg1990076/#msg1990076

Thanks also for other comments on VHDL etc

That is true of absolutely every engineering topic, and many topics beyond that.

Thanks, well in my opinion, i reckon that anyone who has A levels in Physics and maths, and who wants to, could learn how to design a basic DCDC LED driver........however, with software , i am doubtful that "anyone" could do it.

As you know, DCDC LED drivers are ruled by the Laws of Physics.......which are all over the internet, and are made by Mother nature, not humans.......Software Law is governed by Humans...those who write the compilers and who design the language....that to me, adds a level of complexity over it...which makes it harder to learn than basic hardware, eg general SMPS design.

I think the reason that China has totally dominated  Power Supply design, and led driver design, is because its easier.....we dont yet see  too many Chinese VHDL consultancies, or C software consultancies,  offering their services to the West...but i think in time we will......it will take a bit more time, because its harder.

[coppice]

I think the reason that China has totally dominated  Power Supply design, and led driver design, is because its easier.....we dont yet see  too many Chinese VHDL consultancies, or C software consultancies,  offering their services to the West...but i think in time we will......it will take a bit more time, because its harder.

The reason China dominates in power supply design is because the big global power supply makers, like Delta, moved their production to Dong Guan. Then they gradually tested the waters with simple local designs, and  built up from there, until the simplest supplies up to the most complex digitally controlled ones were mostly engineered in China. After that the engineers could take their accumulated expertise to locally owned firms, and upgrade the design expertise there. A lot of people complain that as soon as engineers in China gain expertise in a new technology introduced to them by a foreign company they leave, start their own local firm, and make life hard for the foreign company. While this is true, its pretty much the same anywhere that it is reasonably easy to start your own firm. Even if you can't take patented ideas with you, you can take an awful lot of what you have learned. If you couldn't, there would be no reason to pay a premium for experienced people.

There are quite a few software and hardware design consultancies in China, but its a tough market in which to get paid. Its hard to formulate a business model that works well. You don't often see these people in the west, as they have no interest in addressing western markets. They like to stick to things they understand, which makes sense. Since most of their potential customers are in China, I doubt this will ever change.

[ocset]

Thanks  Coppice i agree with you, but the reason is because general hardware is simpler than general software.

I think the UK software market would be  of interest to China if they had sufficient number of software engineers in China...they dont yet, they soon will.
At the moment, they need all their Chinese software people for their internal Chinese market.

I used to work for a xenon flash place.....they got their offline 70w power supply designed and made in China....they then  tried to get their software written by the Chinese too.....but this just wasnt available at anything like an achievable price. -Even though it wasnt exactly a terribly demanding software spec....it was literally a simple device which flashed high power light into the skin to kill off hair growth...as you can imagine, the software spec wasnt terribly highly demanding....but the Chinese couldnt offer us anything for that.

I think its a sign that ultimately, general software is harder than general hardware.

[dmills]

I can teach a hardware guy to bash out simple software orders of magnitude more easily then I can teach a software guy how his computer REALLY works!

Now proper grown up software engineering and development is a whole other matter of course, but the simple stuff? Meh! It is just state machines all the way down

Really if you are going to design hardware in this day and age it is WELL worth picking up the rudiments of C on small processors, ideally also assembler (For one or two common parts, but once you know one or two a new one comes very, very easily), if you do not bother to learn this stuff you are really crimping your abilities (Even in power supply design).

Seriously there are LOTS of places in a hardware design where throwing a well chosen small micro, CPLD or FPGA at it makes the design simpler, cheaper and more reliable, refusing to at least consider these parts makes you a MUCH less useful design engineer.

It is worth noting that a pulsed light hair removal machine is probably classed as a medical device, so I can well see anyone with a bit of sense wanting nothing to do with it unless there was HUGE money in play to make the paperwork and liability worth it.

73 Dan.

[ocset]

I can teach a hardware guy to bash out simple software orders of magnitude more easily then I can teach a software guy how his computer REALLY works!

I must admit it amazes me when i meet software guys that can't undertsand basic hardware...because the software that they write is far more demanding than basic hardware knowledge.
Some people, are just "software genius's"....they love software, they want to spend their every waking hour doing it, and they are amazingly good at it.

Many of them have little interest in hardware because they know they can earn loads without having to dabble in hardware....just leave that to the hardware bods.

But i stand by the conviction that software is generally harder than basic SMPS design.

And im saying that as someone who has written hundreds of basic C programs for various test jigs for hardware testing.

[IanB]

Well , we are trying to increase the uptake of electronics as a college subject throughout the Western World.

We are? A dear departed uncle was an electronics engineer, spent his whole life in the field. When his son was asking for career advice, he said, "Don't go into engineering." I disagreed with him on that, since I have no problem with my career choice as an engineer. However, I think his point was that you could be better rewarded doing other things than being an engineer. In his view, engineers were (are) undervalued and under-compensated.

[IanB]

Treez, it's very difficult to respond to you when you so readily confuse "doing electronics" with "being an engineer".

There is a difference between using VHDL to design things, and understanding what VHDL is and how it works. Using VHDL to design things is a fine goal, and is after all what VHDL is meant for. However, an engineer should have the curiosity, the imagination and the initiative to go deeper than that, to really follow the steps in the chain between the VHDL that you write and the final realization in hardware, and how those steps link together. Being able to do that is one of the key things that will let you walk into a rewarding job somewhere, either working with large scale integration, or something completely different.

[dmills]

And besides UNDERSTANDING what the tools are doing is just so plain cool (And WILL make you a much better designer).

I love what the open source guys are doing with synth and P&R for the Lattice (and now 7 series!) FPGAs. Documenting FPGA bitstreams by fuzzing the inputs to the tools and seeing how the bitstreams change, how cool is that! Crazy shit, but it has worked so far for a surprisingly large proportion of the fabric.

Software to a standard to allow one to write simple control systems is **Easy** compared to hardware (The maths can get as gnarly as ever, but that does not change much if doing it analogue), software at large scale is possibly the most complex thing humans do, but that is not usually what is needed.

A few pages of code to control a power converter (Based on some TI app note) or scan some switches or something? Any hardware engineer should be able to bash that out on demand, it is just not that tough.

Same thing goes for the software crowd, understanding the costs of cache misses, (Not to say the latencies involved in sending for data over the PCIe bus, and maybe even things like power sidechannel issues if security is your thing) will make a better programmer, the two fields are intertwined if you ever with to play at being more then a hack at either one. 

Treez, your contention that all software is magic is not borne out in my experience (Some software, yea, but mostly it is just engineering).

73 Dan.

[ocset]

Thanks, i must admit ive worked in over 35 different electronics depts. Ive worked with a lot of embedded software guys doing C for micro's. Ive even written several software specs for software guys doing C for micros.
But i have never met, or even heard about a single engineer doing VHDL in any of the places where i have worked.
There must have been some at Alcatel but i never  heard about them, but heard about lots of "C for micro's guys".

Getting a handle on what VHDL is, and how a student new to electronics should approach it, is quite opaque.

I havent the time to learn VHDL, but realise that there is a need to give a basic description of it for newcomers to the trade.

As far as i know, VHDL is for writing software that runs very fast, or for software (if i may call it that)  that needs to be written in a way that must be very reliable.........or its for making logic function devices by burning it into a fpga, which save you the money of having a chip fabbed. I've no idea if i'm right here.

reez, your contention that all software is magic is not borne out in my experience (Some software, yea, but mostly it is just engineering).

Thanks, i think in most UK co's, there's no work time given to someone who "might" well  be able to engineer it.....funds are only forthcoming if an engineer has already done the job umpteen times before and can give a virtual exact hour-count of how long the job will take.

[tggzzz]

As far as i know, VHDL is for writing software that runs very fast, or for software (if i may call it that)  that needs to be written in a way that must be very reliable.........or its for making logic function devices by burning it into a fpga, which save you the money of having a chip fabbed. I've no idea if i'm right here.

That's not even wrong.

It would take too long to try to duplicate expositions elsewhere, and I doubt I would succeed in getting the concepts across.

Suffice it to say that VHDL/Verilog is to C/Java as hardware is to software.

[IanB]

As far as i know, VHDL is for writing software that runs very fast, or for software (if i may call it that)  that needs to be written in a way that must be very reliable

No, not this all. The clue to VHDL is in the name: Hardware Description Language. It is an abstract description of the functions that you want a piece of hardware to perform. It is a description in the sense that it is not executable code. It is rather, a specification for something to be made.

The tools that process VHDL read the description, go through various internal processing steps, and output a raw hardware description for the chosen platform.

Now, you could of course emulate the hardware in software, in which case the VHDL could be processed by a software emulator (making it, in a sense, "software"). But this is not really the goal.

[dmills]

Software tells a predefined chip what to DO, a HDL tells a chip what to BE!

It is not a subtle difference, and is why the software mindset tends to map very, very poorly to writing HDL for all that both involve typing things into text editors.

FPGAs for example have not really got any inherent notion of sequence, if you want sequence you pipeline or use a state machine, which is very different to software where you typically have a 'mostly sequential plus stack' model when you dig down far enough.

Simulation is actually a BIG part of the workflow, HDL engineers invented TDD years before the software crowd, the testbench is very much the majority of the code for most projects.

Regards, Dan.

[ocset]

Thanks, those are great descriptions.
 I have met a number of out of work "Masters degree in Automation"  type engineers from Poland in UK.
One used to bring his "Siemens logo" in  and play with it in break times.
I was  surprised they all cant get jobs in their field.
I suspect there arent many jobs in VHDL/FPGA.

[coppice]

I suspect there arent many jobs in VHDL/FPGA.

Are you sure you've ever actually worked in an electronics company? VHDL and Verilog are core skills needed to get any kind of job in chip design. Do you think those are small employment opportunities?

[IanB]

Are you sure you've ever actually worked in an electronics company? VHDL and Verilog are core skills needed to get any kind of job in chip design. Do you think those are small employment opportunities?

No, I'm sure there's no market for large scale integrated chips these days. Consider all sorts of modern electronics like smart phones--they are all designed using discrete components. There are very few chips inside them   

[ocset]

I must admit that ive always thought that in Electronics, there are  “lesser” guys  like myself  who use Chips like Opamps, comparators, 3 input OR gates, Microcontrollers, PWM controllers, FET drivers. Temperature monitors, current monitors etc etc etc…………………….and then there are  the real genius’s who actually design and fabricate these  chips.
I confess I don’t know what an FPGA would do in a mobile phone. I thought mobile phones were made of standard ICs like I mentioned previously, and then microcprocessors, and also some RF/Microwave components and some power conversion type components.
I can appreciate that some of  the microwave components in a mobile phone  would be integrated into some RFIC's , which might be custom made for the phone, but i  imagine that this sort of work is for PhD types.

Treez, your contention that all software is magic is not borne out in my experience (Some software, yea, but mostly it is just engineering).

Thanks, well, not "all" software, but even finding a software engineer in UK who can handle DALI comms libraries and thus write C software to make a dimmable led lamp is hard in UK...these engineers are very hard to find, and are expensive......its not possible to hire a cheaper engineer to do it from China........this asserts my opinion that general SMPS design is much easier than general  embedded C software design.....because China can do virtually any power supply...and cheaply....Ask for a  Chinese software engineer to write your DALI dimmable code (say), and it wont be affordable, because this is harder work.

[tggzzz]

I must admit that ive always thought that in Electronics, there are  “lesser” guys  like myself  who use Chips like Opamps, comparators, 3 input OR gates, Microcontrollers, PWM controllers, FET drivers. Temperature monitors, current monitors etc etc etc…………………….and then there are  the real genius’s who actually design and fabricate these  chips.

That's a strange viewpoint.

Given the abominable behaviour of some ICs, clearly some aren't geniuses. Given the way that some engineers use their skill and imagination when using standard ICs, clearly some of them are "geniuses".

For the latter, have a look at your copy of TAoE 3, the "masterclasses" examples. You do have a copy, don't you?

I confess I don’t know what an FPGA would do in a mobile phone. I thought mobile phones were made of standard ICs like I mentioned previously, and then microcprocessors, and also some RF/Microwave components and some power conversion type components.

Sigh. If you read the electronics newsfeeds, you would realise that usually the "big" ICs in phones consist of a ARM core plus whatever logic the phone company wants to have in there. In other words, they are "standard" to one company. They could well be implemented as Zync FPGAs, except the cost and power consumption would be prohibitive in a phone.

I can appreciate that some of  the microwave components in a mobile phone  would be integrated into some RFIC's , which might be custom made for the phone, but i  imagine that this sort of work is for PhD types.

What on earth makes you think a "PhD" is a suitable discriminant/characterisation?

[Wilksey]

Andrew, I presume you have told people here that the article you posted a link to is in fact yours?
Hint: You might want to take the Wix default template stuff out of the bottom of the page.

I am going to guess that you have done some work with SMPS and not a lot else?  VHDL / Verilog is NOT software, it is a hardware description language, and whilst you could learn chip design and make an ASIC from an FPGA, it'd cost you an arm, kidney and bollock to do so, so as a lone engineer it is not attainable...yet.

I have a HND in software engineering, and self taught electronics engineer, which I do as a primary job, software engineering comes in a close 2nd as 99% of my stuff is uC driven and I write boiler plate code to prove the HW is working, as well as writing desktop, mobile and web apps (the joys of "IoT")

I wouldn't expect a software engineer to know about polarity of power supplies or where to plug things and certainly not what something does or how it works, if they do, then great, if not then you can't expect otherwise just because you perceive hardware as easier, they perceive software as easier as it is what they do!

It's like a plumber telling an electrician that plumbing is easier than electrics, sure it is for a plumber, not for an electrician though.

There are still a good few electronics jobs around in the UK, it just depends what you want to do, if you want to learn how to use an FPGA then there are a few tutorials around to help you get started.

There are no "lesser" EE's there are different skillsets, with electronics, same as software, you never stop learning, there is always a new industry to apply your knowledge to, something you never thought would need EE or SE skills are suddenly relevant to you.

If you have never designed a power supply then you wouldn't be expected to design one that works first time or works 100% as intended, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. if you've never designed with a uC, you may well forget about the reset line needed to be pulled high or low, or the programming header etc.

Most FPGA vendors will supply a toolchain for some of their parts for free, some now even offer free tools for mid range FPGAs which you can do a fair bit with.
You can get a FPGA dev kit just as easily as you can get a uC dev kit these days, one of the most common hobbyist uses for an FPGA / CPLD is to emulate older console / computer hardware, like proprietary chipsets used in older machines, and then chuck in a 6502 / Z80 /68000 core for good measure and you suddenly have an SoC, or a major part of it.

The most difficult thing these days I find is knowing what to use and which particular device to use, there are so bloody many to choose from!

[ocset]

For the latter, have a look at your copy of TAoE 3, the "masterclasses" examples. You do have a copy, don't you?

Guilty confession...no, i used to borrow that from the library.
I bought the alternative book by Theodore Bogart.
These days, the only books i ever buy, due to expense,  are by Christophe Basso or  Ray Ridley

[bd139]

There’s a PDF floating around. Google for it.

[tggzzz]

For the latter, have a look at your copy of TAoE 3, the "masterclasses" examples. You do have a copy, don't you?

Guilty confession...no, i used to borrow that from the library.
I bought the alternative book by Theodore Bogart.
These days, the only books i ever buy, due to expense,  are by Christophe Basso or  Ray Ridley

You are crippling yourself by your inaction, feeling it, and blaming external factors.

It shows in several areas; the result isn't pretty.

[ocset]

Thanks, i am not sure that the concensus is against the fact that the Chinese "dont" give software consultancy as much as they do SMPS design because Software consultancy is harder , generally.
It does appear to be because SMPS is easier than software in gerneral.
ie, thats why the Chinese dont yet do software  for the West on any significant scale like they do smps design.

[dmills]

It is not easier in a engineering sense, but it easier to specify in a more or less standard way, and that makes a HUGE difference when your pool of engineers are often not English speaking or reading.

Software canonically goes to India rather then China for two reasons:

1: TIMEZONE, taking a phone call from India is significantly less annoying then taking one from China, and given the difficulty in fully specifying software there will very likely be phone calls.

2: India has an education system that for engineering makes sure the students learn English, which given how difficult it is to specify even a trivial software system is a big win when it comes to outsourcing the 'typing' from a western company.

The reason power converters are so easy to subcontract is because they are a no brainer to specify. I mean for most uses I can throw together a couple of pages of A4 that will completely specify the electrical behaviour of a power supply that I want designed, with another page or two of A3 showing where I want it to fit, and providing it meets that spec I really don't care about the details.
You try doing this for even noddy software sometime, often quicker just to bash the code out yourself if the contractor does not have knowledge of the problem you are actually trying to solve. 

Regards, Dan.