Err, I resemble that statement. Our department has a two-course series:

ECEN 5837 - Mixed-Signal IC Design
3 credit hours
Catalog Description: (1) Design of core analog circuits in mixed analog
and digital systems, including data converters and sampled-data
circuitry, and (2) system level IC design methodologies and CAD based
circuit design and layout techniques in mixed analog and digital IC's.
Prerequisite: ECEN 5827, Analog IC Design
Textbook:
€ Allen and Holberg, CMOS Analog Circuit Design, Oxford, 2002.
Course objectives: This course is the second in a two-course series
(the first course is ECEN 5827) on integrated circuit design, which
together provide a complete set of fundamental concepts and skills for
the growing number of students who wish to pursue a career in the
semiconductory industry. Graduate students who wish to specialize in
research projects related to IC design and power electronics will be
required to take both courses in the sequence.
Topics:
1. Fully-differential op-amsp, simulation and layout
2. Comparators
3. Switched capacitor circuits
4. Nyquist rate DAC
5. Nyquist rate ADC
6. Over-sampling converters

To be sure, they're graduate-level courses, primarily because most data
acquisition systems are either designed into custom ICs, as the courses
above, or, just as common, engineers these days use "black box"
solutions -- slap together a commercial sample-and-hold, a commercial
ADC and output 'em into a circular buffer.

These days at the undergraduate level our kids get courses that teach
them how to design systems that *use* the black boxes: Circuits I, II,
and III, "Computers as Components," Embedded Systems, and, the topic
most often ignored to the peril of the EE, Digital Signal Processing:
what to do with all that digital data streaming off at MHz or even,
these days, GHz rates.

In the capstone lab they even learn how to solder and wire-wrap. But,
as I tell them, even after they graduate they still won't be able to
fix their dad's stereo amp. :-)

Oh, right, this is the wreck. I better say 73 and get back to the
workshop where I'm fighting with a piece of zebrawood.




In article , Lew Hodgett
wrote:

"Puckdropper" wrote:

Analog world? That's like 2^128 precision, isn't it?

Try to find designers of analog inputs for high speed digital data
acquisition systems sometime.

Hasn't been taught at the collegiate level for probably 25-30 years.

Lew