Until recently, experienced analog engineers could expect to spend years – decades even – building the deep experience required to design circuits that convert the signals of our real world to the digital world and back again.
“It took me 20 years of on-the-job training to figure out all the stuff I know,” said Art Kay, an applications manager in Precision Analog who generated the idea for our TI Precision Labs (TIPL) training curriculum. “With TI Precision Labs, we’re trying to compact those 20 years into one year.”
TIPL is the electronics industry’s first comprehensive online classroom for analog engineers. It combines more than 40 video courses with applied lab exercises to develop the analog-design expertise of engineers ranging from recent college graduates to those with long experience. The videos are available through both the TIPL and TI training portals. TIPL offers in-person training for those who want it.
“In school, we learn about theory and various equations, but we don’t really use them in a practical way,” said Errol Leon, an application rotation engineer who joined TI after graduating from college in mid-2015. “TI Precision Labs provides clear, concise instruction. I can watch one of the videos and learn almost everything I need to know to design a specific circuit.”
Converting our analog world
We live in an analog world. The sounds we hear, the sights we see and temperatures we feel in our everyday lives are analog. But we also have digital aspects to our lives. We listen to digital music through headphones. Our cars come equipped with computers that measure exhaust temperature, emissions and overall efficiency. Heart monitors pick up tiny electrical signals from our bodies.
But analog signals like those can’t be put directly into a computer. They first have to be converted to digital combinations of ones and zeros. And once you’re ready to listen to your latest digital-music download, those signals have to be converted back to the real, analog world so you can hear the songs through your headphones.
Those signals – depending on whether they’re entering or leaving digital formats – pass through analog-to-digital or digital-to-analog converters. Sometimes those signals are so small that they have to be boosted so that they can be picked up and used effectively. That’s the job of amplifiers.
The designs for analog circuits along that signal chain are complex and depend on nuances that can take years to learn. TIPL was created to shorten that learning curve significantly.
One-stop shop
Art had an idea several years ago to consolidate our analog-design resources and training material, help analog engineers solve real-world design challenges, and build the analog expertise of engineers around the world. The result was TIPL.
The curriculum, which is free with a myTI account, features short videos on precision operational amplifier (op amp) topics such as noise, bandwidth and input/output swing. Engineers can pick and choose courses based on their needs and interests. Each video comes with a presentation, workbook and lab manual that can be downloaded. An available Op Amp Evaluation Module lets engineers complete demonstrations along with the trainer. While the current curriculum focuses on precision op amps, planning is under way for TIPL courses on precision data converters.
“Our goal was to make TI Precision Labs a comprehensive, one-stop-shop resource for analog knowledge,” Art said. “It can take years to learn the material that we developed for this curriculum. Much of what I learned through my career was passed down from engineer to engineer, but it is hard to find or is nonexistent in technical literature. We wanted to create a deep resource that would use practical calculations, simulations, real-world measurements and hands-on experiments to fill this knowledge gap.”
Strong experiential training
When new employees or interns join our Precision Amplifiers marketing team, one of their first assignments is to go through the TIPL curriculum and learn as much as possible about analog design.
“These people come in with a deer-in-the-headlights look, go through the TI Precision Labs training and come out able to ramp up in their new jobs really fast,” said Dwight Byrd, marketing manager for the group. “TI Precision Labs provides strong experiential training. It creates a stickiness that helps people apply what they learn in very practical ways.”