What is an Electrical Engineer?

The first thing that we need to do is define terms.

"Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline that deals with the study and application of electricity and electromagnetism. Its practitioners are called electrical engineers. Electrical engineering is a broad field that encompasses many subfields." (From Wikipedia.)

This is a good general description of an electrical engineer. The definition makes a point that electrical engineering is not one monolithic discipline but consists of several subfields. These include power, control systems, digital signal processing (DSP), analog and digital electronics, computers, biomedical, and radio frequency (RF) electronics.

The next step is to take a closer look at those subfields. Since this is my blog, I've chosen to take a look at the subfields or emphasis in electrical engineering that I am involved with.

Digital Electronics: "The branch of electronics dealing with information in binary form." (From Electroflash)

This is a short but concise definition. Along with digital I also have an emphasis in computers.

Computer Engineering: "A specialized discipline that combines electrical engineering and computer science. A computer engineer is an electrical engineer with a focus on digital logic systems, and less emphasis on radio frequency or power electronics. From a computer science perspective, a computer engineer is a software architect with a focus on the interaction between software programs and the underlying hardware components." (From Wikipedia)

Computer Engineering at some universities is a separate discipline; at others is an emphasis in electrical engineering. The definition given above for computer engineering details more specifically the types of activities that I was involved with while working to obtain my degree in electrical engineering. My focus was more on the interaction between software and the underlying hardware components along with my focus on digital logic systems.

I spent a lot of time dealing with lower level language such as assembly and in examining what exactly happens in machine language as instructions are executed. This provided me with a better understanding of what is occurring when executing higher level instructions in languages such as C/C++. Getting down to transistor level design is the most basic and most enjoyable part of what I do. I also work with large scale components such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and Complex Programmable Logic Devices (CPLDs). When it comes to design entry languages using either Very High Speed Integrated Circuit (VHSIC) Hardware Description Language (VHDL) or Verilog I prefer to use VHDL because I think that it works better for systems level design and in Register Transfer Level (RTL) modeling.

I also found fascinating the solid state physics involved in the creation of semiconductor devices. This is a topic that I would like to study more about in the future. It is truly amazing to me what is going on at the atomic level in these devices.

So this is where my head is at with this stuff. There is a lot of ambiguity as to what an electrical engineer is and does.

Once I was asked by a friend what I studied in college.

"Electrical Engineering," I replied.

"Oh, then you know how to wire houses and stuff."

"Yeah...and stuff."