wow. it starting to look like USENET is getting pretty dead.

On Friday, January 5, 2018 at 9:35:21 AM UTC+13, Steve Pope wrote:
> Steve Underwood  <steveu@dis.org> wrote:
> 
> >On 01/04/2018 01:01 AM, Steve Pope wrote:
> 
> >> I'm sort-of retired, as are probably others, but I also think that DSP
> >> has become a less-appreciated niche than it once was.
> 
> >Interesting viewpoint. DSP isn't exactly going away. Quite the opposite. 
> >It continues its march deeper and deeper into systems, displacing more 
> >analogue elements of them.
> 
> Yes, and this is why I think it's become less of a niche.  A design
> group is more likely to already have DSP design talent.  This is 
> especially true if you look at it at the algorithm level.  You don't need
> a specific DSP expert anymore to design an FFT or a Viterbi decoder.
> (Or, so program managers now believe.)
> 
> Steve

even home hobbyists and amateurs are using FFTs. Processors are so fast you don't need to program them in assembler any more! Other areas are still in our domain though such as adaptive filters and algorithms and the hardware is a mystery to most so designing special interfacing , FPGAs etc remains in our grasp. However, LabView Rio and myRio is beginning to take over that area too for many applications - at least in prototype. You no longer need to know much about FPGAs to program them since you use the data flow language LabView. If you want an expensive yet quick solution that's the way to go