If you are a consumer who uses electronic gadgets on a daily basis, there is a very high chance that you have never taken the time to disassemble one of them. This is something that you would have an expert do for you, as you may not be familiar with electronics at a deep level. Upon opening up the device, you would see a familiar green board with parts that seem randomly attached to one another. What you may not know is that this board is the “beating heart” of the device, from which it derives its basic function and its computing power. There is an entire industry dedicated to the efficient construction of these computer boards, which is known as analog circuit design.
How Are These Circuits Relevant to Technology?
Analog circuit design has been a hot topic in the electronics industry since they were first implemented in the early twentieth century during the development of computation. Since then, hundreds of engineers have worked—and billions of dollars have been spent—on optimizing these circuit boards with processors and connectors to generate the maximal amount of power while using the least amount of energy. Whenever a technology company discovers a special arrangement of the circuit’s design that gives their device an edge over their competition, it is kept top secret from the general public and is only accessible to the most trusted members in that company. Analog circuit design is one of the most difficult and laborious fields to become proficient at, which explains why engineers in this field are paid generous sums of money to come up with the best circuit designs to be used in electronic gadgets. There is an endless amount of testing and thinking involved in the creation of these circuits, and it can take a significant amount of time before a meaningful advance is made in the field.
Applications in the Twenty-First Century
To this date, there are still millions of integrated circuit combinations that have yet to be designed and tested. A single circuit board can hold millions of components that are connected to each other in millions of different ways. Once a particular design has been discovered, a company will attempt to file a patent on the design so that they have full control over its use and distribution. If a given design ends up outperforming existing designs, the company that owns it can generate a significant amount of money by selling and licensing the design to other electronics companies that will then use it for their own purposes. This technology is going to be in existence for a very long time, and will continue to be the backbone for major technology organizations that rely on them to power their devices. This includes devices such as smartphones, desktop computers, laptops, cameras, and televisions.
