Other notable stats
Which phase of the design took the longest (Figure 13)? Testing and debugging is the winner.

Analog components vendors beware! When it comes to brand loyalty, you may be out of luck. According to the study, almost two-thirds (63%) of the respondents claim to have no brand loyalty when it comes to choosing their analog components (Figure 14).

Is this accurate? Not according to Planet Analog Editor Bill Schweber. "Frankly, these results contradict what I have heard from both engineers and vendors (who are admittedly biased). In my experience, designers usually look at the top two or three analog-part vendors in a category, especially ones that they have dealt with and have good parts that meet specs (max and min, not just typical) and support them with application notes, demo boards, reference designs, and even live applications engineers. They are hesitant to switch vendors and even product families from a vendor, if they have had good experience."

While a good number of designers are taking advantage of programmable logic, another characteristic I've discussed a lot lately, the number of those that employ an embedded processor within their programmable logic is far too low, just 36%, with half saying they use a hard care and half using a soft core (Figure 15). Thankfully, the number of embedded processors is on the rise, albeit slowly.

Special thanks to Jack Ganssle for helping me analyze some of this data.

Richard Nass is editor in chief of Embedded Systems Design magazine. You may reach him at rnass@cmp.com.

Resources:

Go to www.embedded.com/columns/survey to find surveys from previous years.