Hans Meinersen, technical director of EBV-Elektronik, has a clear opinion on analog: "The world may become more and more digital - but only because analog technology facilitates the digitisation of the electronics solutions surrounding us."
Every advancement of digital technology in performance, speed or feature set requires enhanced analog circuitry which supports it: higher clock rates, less power consumption, precise signal conditioning. One pertinent example of where analog goes a similarly breathtaking development pace is in packaging technology, like chip-scale or micro-SMD packages for components that are barely larger than a millimetre. Meinersen says, "If digital technology becomes ubiquitous, so becomes analog."
Eighteen out of 20 EBV suppliers design and manufacture analog components - from standard devices to very specific and complex circuitry - all of which complement EBV's high-tech analog offering to its tens of thousands of customers. Meinersen adds; "Analog components are more application-optimised than most digital parts, therefore you have to look very closely at parameters if one-to-one replacements are really possible. The broader our offering, the better are our chances to cover very specific requirements of customers down to a very detailed level."
Analog high interest areas
A sector that definitely receives the most attention nowadays is power management. Performance leaps in digital technology require power management solutions that keep power consumption and thermal effects under strict control. With National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, Fairchild and others EBV represents a clear leader in the power management market and deploys its application knowledge to customers in two ways: firstly through its local application force throughout Europe, and secondly, with dedicated analog specialists grouped in so-called know-how pools that share experience and application expertise.
Other promising fields, according to Meinersen, are: power conversion with highly integrated devices (where EBV engineers have already developed complete solutions like offline power supply or DC-DC converters); data conversion (here EBV benefits greatly from TI's acquisition of Burr-Brown and National Semiconductor's new products); imaging; signal conditioning (here Meinersen adds that EBV probably represents the largest portfolio of op-amps in the marketplace, including leading edge CMOS op-amps for handheld devices); the aggressively-growing field of sensors; and finally, the vast area of communication devices. In the latter, EBV covers all areas from data communication to telecom, and from wireless to RF applications.
This whole spectrum of analog technologies is supported naturally, by dedicated engineering groups (the know-how pools). This structure leads to a specific knowledge management project in EBV, based on a professional IT solution. But here comes the challenge, as Meinersen calls it; "Analog technology is one of the most difficult parts of electronics, and to find specialist engineers is a problem. However, analog design expertise and experience are very critical to the success of projects; there are no automatic programming or design tools that can relieve you from the task of understanding exactly the system implications of your customers."
To sell and to support analog components are in his opinion, two completely different items where customers may experience the difference between a distributor that just sells, and a specialist like EBV, which goes the extra mile in project work.
"In a time where analog experts are becoming rare animals, we want to ensure that analog expertise has a promising home within EBV," concludes Meinersen.
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