Sounds like a simple question, doesn't it? Manufacturer offers part, customer designs it into his circuit, purchasing department buys lots for production, parts get plugged into boards, finished products disappear to end users. The trouble for me, sometimes, is in the very first stage, "Manufacturer offers part."

Not every offer of product is real. That has seemed to be normal and accepted in the software/computer industry where vaporware has been popular since the early days; it has not been the norm with analog products and we may have been a little lax in taking notice of some subtle changes that have taken place in the business.

My erstwhile colleague Frank Goodenough, who I sorely miss, was an enthusiast for all that was analog. He could sit down in a manufacturer's conference room and make the most delightful noises as he realized the implications of the story or roadmap that was being laid out in front of us. He was much more of an implicit believer than I was; he would get wrapped up in the "perfect" op amp that was being described, or drool at the specifications of a dc-dc converter that sounded impossible to my ears.

Although I am more of a realist, at least in some ways, it is easy in today's world to be snowballed by the sheer quantity of information that is pushed in one's direction. But when you sit back and just look at a single section of the industry, of which analog is a specific, specialized, part, some coincidences stand out: A manufacturer offers a part that breaks a barrier; two days later there is a release from another manufacturer matching the announcement. Sometimes I have seen that happen from three or four manufacturers. Are those follow-on parts real?

It is true that coincidences can be real. The stage of various developments is something of which we are all aware and people do talk to one another about their work, despite employers' best wish that they did not. Conferences allow the exchange of information for the good of all and those papers sometimes make it clear where a particular company is taking itself. As processes develop, new things become possible and some projects are waiting to happen when the tools finally arrive. Market demands also make it fairly easy to predict that certain manufacturers will all be vying to be the first to market, and often announce rather similar, and totally real, products quite close to one another.

But there is vaporware out there and we are all exposed to it one way or another; I have no deliberate intention of confusing our readers and I have set up simple rules for coverage in Analog Avenue of any particular product:

• The part must be at least sampling to customers.
• The part must have a data sheet.
• The part must have a price.

The absence of any of these "features" means that the part will probably not be reviewed, and as reviews on Analog Avenue are extremely timely (a major advantage of Internet publishing) it would be unusual for a manufacturer to be able to redeem the situation. There are occasions when I will go along with not publishing a price, but the reasons have to be really good ("Allowing our salesmen maximum flexibility" doesn't cut it!) Also, a data sheet consists of more than just the front page.

More than 350 parts have already been reviewed on Analog Avenue; we're doing our best to look out for our design engineer readers by taking care that we believe those products are real.

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