EEWebPULSE_2011_i0001.pdf

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PULSE

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Issue 1

July 5, 2011

In Memory of

Bob Pease

Analog Designer

1940 - 2011

Electrical Engineering Community

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Remembering Bob Pease

Memories of Bob Pease from his friends, colleagues, and associates.

Bob Pease

ANALOG DESIGNER

Tribute interview with Bob Pease - analog designer for National Semiconductor for 34 years.

Putting the R in RTL

BY RAY SALEMI

Coding registers in Verilog and VHDL - learn how to code the four basic styles of flip-flops.

Selecting Passive Components with

a Buck Converter

BY TAMARA SCHMITZ WITH INTERSIL

Make the right choice the first time. Choosing the right passive components can save

you a lot of time.

RTZ - Return to Zero Comic

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MEMORIES

Remembering

Bob Pease

Analog Designer, 1940-2011

Bob Pease was killed in a tragic car accident on June 18 after leaving a memorial for Jim Williams, a

colleague and fellow analog circuit designer. Bob devoted so much of his life to helping his fellow

engineer, and his untimely death deeply affected the electrical engineering community.

We had the privilege to speak with some of Bob’s friends, colleagues, and associates who kindly

took a moment to share their memories of Bob.

Wanda Garrett, National Semiconductor

“I first met Bob when I was interviewing for an application

engineer position about 28 years ago. I did not interview

with him, but when lunch time came around, I went to

eat with him and my hiring manager, Al Kelsch. Although

I had just met them both, I could tell right away that

these two individuals had very different styles. I could

tell that Bob was a rather rambunctious, outgoing guy,

and Al was a very straight-laced, conservative guy. For a

company to have these two completely different people

working together that seemed to get along so well, I

figured this would be a good place to come. So when

I was given the offer to join, I jumped at it because I

thought it was going to be good, and I was going to get

the chance to work with both Al and Bob.

detect when he was wrong. As an example, he and I did

a joint paper a number of years ago for a power supply

conference. The topic was related to the tools that

we offered to go along with our SIMPLE SWITCHER

regulators. I was talking about the tools, and he was

talking about the use of the tools and how to get good

results. He was emphasizing thinking, understanding

the design, and doing bench validation so that users

don’t get fooled by possible mistakes. More simply, he

would kind of make an assumption, and test it to see if

he was correct. But it was necessary for him to kind of

know the magnitude of the answer he was aiming for so

he could interpret whether he was looking at the right

answer or not.

When we went out, Bob was going to drive in his

Volkswagen. The first thing he did was open up the

door and clear out a spot in the back seat for Al to sit. I

piled into the front seat, and as we were getting ready

to leave, Bob said, “Hey, do you like to bake bread?”

And I said, “Sure.” So out from under his driver’s seat

he pulled the recipe for bread. I thought that was kind

of cool.”

He had another approach also, which was to be very

collaborative. If he was working on a problem, or he

had a design that he wanted to make sure was sound,

he would call together a bunch of people. This included

reviewers, friends, and anyone else that he figured

would have a helpful opinion. Sometimes he would

call a “beer check.” In other words, if someone found

an error, he or she earned a beer. If he was writing an

article, he would distribute it to a panel of reviewers,

and we would all get a chance to chime in and say what

we thought was right, wrong, good, or bad. His panel

probably had 30 or 40 reviewers for most of his columns

and books.”

“There were sort of two aspects of Bob’s style as a

designer. One aspect was that he emphasized first

thinking about the problem and figuring out what the

answer should kind of look like, so he could recognize

it when he saw it. This also allowed him the ability to

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MEMORIES

Continued: Wanda Garrett

“If Bob felt someone deserved his respect, he made his

respect evident. He didn’t just respect anyone because

of his or her job title, which probably annoyed some of

the supervisors. If he saw that a person was sensible,

that he or she could think and contribute, then that

person got his respect. What mattered to him was the

ability to think and analyze.”

was. That’s how Bob was; what looked like chaos to an

outsider was Bob’s own special form of organization.”

“We used to talk about SPICE and how we hated it,

because some engineers lived with SPICE. And he told

them, “Solder up the circuit and run it that way. That’s

the real way because SPICE is just an emulation. And

I used to tell Bob, “Tell them to solder their fingers

together.”

“One thing that most people might not know about Bob

is his interest in music. He really enjoyed a lot of obscure

music from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. He had a very nice,

high tenor singing voice; he really enjoyed singing.

One of the reasons he was so excited to move to San

Francisco was that he could sing in a large cathedral

there.

Paul Grohe, National Semiconducto r

“Back in 1990 I was going to the College of San Mateo,

and I was recruited to come and interview with Bob

for a job at National. I came into the interview kind of

reluctantly because I was actually sick that day. I came

in, went through the interview process, and talked to

Bob, who was very reassuring, telling me, “Don’t worry,

don’t worry.” Days later I came home and my mom

said, “This really strange guy stopped by to drop off

this letter. He was driving a Volkswagen that looked like

a dinosaur.” In the letter was an offer to work as Bob’s

technician. The fact that he was willing to personally

deliver the job offer meant a lot to me, and is a testament

to the type of person he was.”

He was also part of the singing club at National, and

one of the songs that he had a lot of fun with was kind

of a novelty song called “The Green-Eyed Dragon with

the Thirteen Tails.” He and I worked that one up and

that was one of his signature songs. He sang it while I

played the piano.”

“He used to stash a variety of signs under his driver’s

seat. This was so when he would see another driver

with, for example, a broken tail light, he would be

able to communicate the issue to that person using a

designated sign.”

“He had an office, a couple lab benches, and at one

point, before he retired, he had basically an entire

room because the mess was getting too large, and

encroaching on others’ benches. On his bench were

a Kepco power supply, a Tektronix 475 oscilloscope,

usually a Wavetek 176 function generator, and piles of

Fluke DMMs.”

Ken Baker, Analog Devices

“I had been corresponding with Bob in emails regarding

various applications before I met him. When I was finally

introduced to him, I shook his hand and said, “Bob, you

know I’ve been corresponding with you over the past

couple of years, and now that I’ve met you, I like you in

spite of yourself.” He threw back his head and started to

laugh. And he said, “You know Ken, I like you too.” And

we were friends from there on in whenever I would visit

the west coast to meet with him. “

“Bob would have many ideas for me. He would come

up with a concept, scribble out a circuit, and give it to

me to build. I would either do an air-wire circuit like he

would do, or I would actually do a neat one. I would

then tweak it, and he would come by while I was doing

the measurements. Bob couldn’t do this because, while

he was talking on the phone he couldn’t build circuits.

So I was doing his leg-work at the time.”

“Bob and I used to just go to lunch, chew the fat about

things in general like Analog Devices, National, his

trips, and of course his clunky old Volkswagen.”

“He was a master with a soldering iron. On the cover of

his troubleshooting book, there is a board with all of the

wires floating up in the air. It’s for the LM331 voltage-to-

“Bob had one of the desks like mine—piles of junk

all over the place! But he still knew where everything

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