Jeff Bier’s Impulse Response―Are DSP Engineers Becoming Extinct?

Lately, it seems that DSP engineers are becoming scarce.  Is this phenomenon limited to my local neighborhood?  I don’t know.  But whether it’s a local or a global phenomenon, I find it worrisome.  DSP engineers have been critical to innovation in the electronics industry, and will continue to be critical for many years.  If there aren’t many DSP engineers around, innovation will suffer.

To understand why, let’s start with the question: “What is a DSP engineer?”  But before we tackle that question, let’s start with a definition of DSP itself.  These days, “DSP” is often used to mean “digital signal processor” – i.e., a specialized microprocessor designed to efficiently execute digital signal processing tasks.  But, of course, there’s another meaning that’s more relevant to this discussion: “DSP” also stands for “digital signal processing.”

This distinction is important because digital signal processors (often called “DSPs”) have become less visible than they once were; today they’re often hidden inside of complex SoCs, alongside many other kinds of processing elements.  In addition, DSPs have become less central to DSP than they once were: these days digital signal processing applications are often implemented on CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs and ASSPs.  So if we consider “DSP engineer” to mean “an engineer who specializes in digital signal processors,” we’re limiting ourselves to a small niche.  But I believe that’s the wrong way to go.

Instead, I think we should consider “DSP engineer” to mean “an engineer who specializes in digital signal processing.”  One possible explanation for the apparent decline in the DSP engineer population is that some DSP fields have become quite sophisticated and specialized.  So, for example, a DSP engineer specializing in video compression may identify less as a “DSP engineer” and more as a “video compression engineer.”  Similarly, the thousands of DSP engineers employed in wireless communications may identify primarily with wireless applications rather than with DSP generally.

These days, digital signal processing has become so commonplace that it’s easy to forget just how important it is, in so many different ways, to so many categories of electronic products.  Modern motor control, hearing aids, computer vision and noise reduction – to name just a few – wouldn’t be possible without DSP.  But while DSP engineers are certainly important to mature DSP fields, I would argue that they’re even more important in giving birth to new DSP applications that haven’t even been thought of yet.

In BDTI’s DSP engineering services business, some of our most interesting projects are those initiated by clients that have identified a problem they need to solve, but don’t yet know how to solve it.  The solutions to these problems often come from a combination of work in the algorithm realm (undergirded by a strong dose of fundamental theory) and in the implementation domain (figuring out how to create a practical embodiment of a suitable algorithm that fits the cost, power, flexibility, and time-to-market constraints of the application.)  I believe that solving such problems is key to innovation throughout the electronics industry—and that DSP engineers are the essential resource needed to do so.

Sure, some DSP engineers are more focused on algorithms, others on implementation.  But most DSP engineers are able to move back and forth between the realm of algorithms and the world of implementation, and – more importantly – to reconcile the often-conflicting objectives and constraints of these two domains.  Without DSP engineers’ creativity, insights and obsession with optimization, entire industries like digital wireless wouldn’t exist today.  We need DSP engineers’ continued efforts to enable tomorrow’s innovations and new industries.

Are DSP engineers becoming scarce in your neighborhood?  If so, what are the implications?  I’d love to hear from you.  Write to me at editor@InsideDSP.com or leave a comment on this page.