In a real sense, any builder of hardware is at the mercy of the digital
circuit providers. Processors may not function as fast as they claim, there
may be undocumented "bugs". Digital gurus probably never heard of ham
radio, and may not know how to build something to multi task in a real time
environment of radio. It is a miracle that our radios work as well as they
do, in the digital implementations coming down the pike.
I heard a story last night from one of the staff of a software defined radio
company. They had bet the bank on a particular sound card. Then, after
some of the radios shipped to users who bought the suggested card, it was
found that using that sound card, it took one second to switch from transmit
to receive! To their credit, they bought back all the sound cards from
users that wanted to work break in.
It is likely the later models of SDR will NOT rely on general purpose
computers and sound cards, but internalize the processors and computers
optimized to the radio task.
Sometimes you cannot do all the testing to find every quirk of a digital
circuit before the next generation chips come out. If you test too much,
and you are late to market with your model, the other companies who might
bury development costs in other income areas of their companies might best
you in the market.
Radio manufacturers are no longer designing all the radio. They are using
components that are in themselves complete systems of sometimes questionable
specifications. Even the digital gurus may not realize all that could
happen with their chip in multi tasking or RF environments.
Stuart
K5KVH
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