The future of data acquisition and control

Large scale integration has in the past been dominated by digital circuits, largely because digital systems demand a much narrower range of circuit types and device performance for a given task. The resulting density and case of design and use makes them lower in cost. Many system problems remain, however, which cannot be solved entirely by digital means. The need for low cost, high performance measurement, data conversion, signal processing, communication, and control devices is growing with the pervasiveness of digital systems. The dollar volume of these devices may even exceed that of the digital LSI circuits as the central controllers mature and systems become more I/O intensive.