Hello,

Have you ever watched 4 year olds play a game of soccer? Having spent a couple of decades as a technology marketer (I wore two hats - I remained an engineer, like I have been as an "editor"), mostly in semiconductors, there are those that focus on the big market of the week, and ignore everthing else and it's like those toddlers - they form a cloud of flesh around one thing when there's a huge field available to them. I was always of the opinion that if the cleats fit well....wear 'em. 

So, ignore the "AI this" and "AI that" and "datacenter blah blah" and focus on the device specs. I know some of you will have an application driving solenoids, fans, pumps, and all sorts of other higher current widgets.

How to dump the power out of the device package has always been an afterthought with some vendors. So, have a look at that "AI MOSFET" and throw it into your bag of tricks if you don't have a present use for it. No, you don't need to build an entire AI setup just because you picked out that MOSFET for, gasp, an automotive application.

James Morra has written up a small quiz for you on Lithium batteries, so have a looksee over your coffee at what you know - if you flub one or two (one of the questions is tricky so pay attention to every word) of them, each will have the correct answer and an explanation revealed so you end up learning something new vs grabbing a donut as comfort food because you got it wrong and nobody even resorted to mansplaining it to you.

Speaking of noise... think you can just hook a chunk of wire between your sensor and an op amp, pick some high value resistors to save power, and bolt on that whiz-bang 14 bit ADC to get accurate conversions? Think again - noise piles up from all kinds of sources and we've got a contributed article, via some TI connections I have (thanks!), that covers most of them, with lots of equations and subscripts that drove my managing editor nuts but they enable you to optimize for low noise. Not for end of day, fried-brain, reading and I'd note that Roger didn't miss a single sub/super -script when I proofed the published copy. For the ADC noise and subscripts fans, some more articles are pried out of the archives for you.

A short piece from our sister publication, Industry Week, on tariffs that WE pay, not the source country - it's no surprise that GM is guiding next quarter's numbers lower thanks to toddler economic policy on tariffs in Washington. Don't sit on your hands - rattle your Congresscritters' phones off the hook (can cellphones do that?) or send them a check for $10k to entice them to take back their tariff powers...they're apparently corruptible. Layoffs are no fun, kids.

enjoy,

-AndyT

ps one of the archive pieces is an ugly duckling, but the content is great so I've included it. I can't access their pages to doll their article up a bit, though I did some wizardry to glam the newsletter part of it up a bit.