Evolution of Various Fields from Electronics

 Evolution of Various Fields from Electronics: A Point of View

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Electronics has been one of the fastest-growing engineering fields in the last couple of decades. If we look around, we see electronics in many forms such as a laptop, mobile, automatic vehicles, MP3 players, remote-controlled devices etc. Electronics is nearly involved in every field of engineering, science and technology. This was made possible when electronic engineers first invented an electronic component from semiconductor materials, i.e., Transistor. The invention of the transistor truly reshaped the field of electronics. The size of the first transistor was in the order of a few millimetres. From a manufacturing point of view, a new field is born in electronics which is later called microelectronics, nanoelectronics and optoelectronics. In these fields, electronic engineers work on the processes which are helping to implement smaller and smaller transistor every day. Nowadays, we have achieved a transistor size of ~10nm and reduced. If we now consider the functions of these miracle components, every electronic engineer knows that it is used as an amplifier and a switch. Here our electronics is divided into two fields i.e., analogue electronics and digital electronics.

As far as analogue electronics is concerned, it is very important because our physical world is merely analogue (continuous) in nature. Natural signals are almost weak signals such as ECG, EEG etc. (Bio-medical engineering), Sensors of any type measuring physical parameters (Automation and Control Engineering), Signal transmission degraded need amplification (Communication Engineering). So, one can say that all these fields are derived from electronic engineering.

On the other hand, digital electronics is used to process the data and store the result in memory for future use. Digital electronics is used to implement Boolean algebra and is used in various fields and applications. When we fabricate all components on a single chip (aka Integrated Chip or IC), it performs some specific purpose/function. Micro-to-nano engineering started developing these ICs from small-scale integration to large, very large, ultra-large, and now extremely large-scale integration chips. The chip which revolutionized the world is known as a microprocessor. A microprocessor is a computing device that performs any number of operations very fast. Now nearly every electronic device contains a microprocessor to perform its functions. From the architecture point of view, a new field is born (Digital System Design) which is used to develop different hardware architectures to obtain fast and computationally efficient processors. Starting from 4-bit processors, now we have 64-bit processors and growing. After the great success of microprocessor devices, application-specific programmable microprocessors were made. These are known as microcontrollers which create the field of Embedded System Design, Sensor Networks and the Internet of Things. As these processors work on the basic principles of fetch-decode-execute, we need to develop different programming languages and compilers. Hence, a new field is born which is Computer Systems and Software Engineering. Now, this field helps many other fields to provide state-of-the-art tools and software which help us in computing and many other applications.

The processors' design requires great care in the development processes. To check whether the design is perfect and has no issues, we normally use simulations which have many issues depending on the application and field. For emulation of such devices, another field of programmable devices is created which is now known as FPGA-based System Design. FPGA is a prototyping integrated circuit that is programmed using hardware description languages to implement any function as hardware.

Dr Abdul Rafay Khatri

Digital System Design Group.

Department of Electronic Engineering,

QUEST Nawabshah.