Re: Who Needs Programmers When You Need Hardware Designers?
Totally agree. Running machine control hardware, but with a flashy GUI and machine vision etc. usually requires a P.C AND a motion controller / PLC (maybe with FPGA in) to deal with the hard real time processing (100uS servo loop processing etc.). But even when shown the hardware, most softies cannot grasp the concept that code is being executed asynchronously and in parallel on both the P.C and the PLC, sometimes using the same inputs. Quite often there is a choice on where to run a given algorithm, and quite often the wrong decision is made because there is no appreciation of the 'best' or 'fastest' hardware to execute the algorithm you are trying to code. Much more needs to be done in these days of OpenCL and even 'just' multi cored processors to educate, it's a massive untapped resource.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
