I wrote an editorial a couple of weeks ago about data sheets. My main premise was that I was seeing less and less difference between the front page of data sheets and the press release that was being used to announce the product. I had lots of reactions from both the manufacturers and the users of products -- the design customers of those manufacturers.

Vendor reactions were strange. Few tried to justify the practice, and all those that contacted me made no denial that this convergence had taken place. One media person actually admitted that a staffer was employed just to write press releases using the first page of the data sheet -- a formula approach which probably explains the quantity of press releases from that company. That actually does the vendor little favor in the world of publishing; there are only so many products that can be handled by an editor, and giving each release equal weight makes nonsense of market facts.

But with the plethora of marketing terminology being used on the front page of the data sheets, does that mean that the product marketing people are actually putting that information together? Seems to be so -- some of the silicon design engineers who responded made it quite clear that they had no ownership of the first page, and didn't want it. One described it as clandestine advertising; his company, he said, publishes the first page in the product folder on line. "Instead of an advertisement inside a framed box the first page takes the user to the next stage."

One comment from a media relations person was that there was a need to have something at product launch, and that product marketing could put together a product "brief" quicker than engineering could supply the data sheet; often the data sheet gets added to the product brief -- which remains as the first page.

Product design engineers didn't react the same way to the editorial. Instead I got an overload of real-case weirdnesses, exaggerations and lies that had been found in manufacturers' data sheets. Some were hilarious, some were sobering.

One reader showed me a manufacturer's specification of dynamic range at over 180 dB; with test methods available to measure that there are people who are missing their calling! Or how about the operational amplifier with differential gain quoted at 0.0001%; how do they do that? Put 1000+ amplifiers in series and assume linear and equal effects? Or an input current measured down to 0.001 fA. Recruiters from the test and measurement world need to line up outside these vendors' offices to find, and hire, these people.

Or how about the vendor who regularly has data sheets that are only "preliminary" even five years after a product release. Yes, that was five years, not months. Or the vendor who seems to measure spuriae numbers at frequencies that have the strangest relationships with sampling, Nyquist and frequencies of interest -- this not just once but time and time again. The same vendor has been seen to use spectrum analyzer displays that are so clean they make you want to use a naughty "F" word. Yes, filter!

And how we all love those specifications that are "guaranteed by design." Why are they nearly always things that cannot be tested until you have a final layout? Or, why do we find efficiencies quoted at strange loads with graphs for those variables hidden away?

What about those manufacturers who are consistently able to provide nearly complete data sheets before they ever have sample silicon. Do they have such an incredible trust in the design process? Or are they psychic? On the other hand there are manufacturers who cannot seem to put together a data sheet even after they are shipping product. How did whoever is supposedly using the parts get a handle on the product in the first place?

One designer told me that he doesn't even look at the first page of the data sheet -- he gets right into the meat. But he also said that even then there was stuff he couldn't find. Another designer wrote that there always seemed to be some spec he couldn't find for every product he looked at.

Are we ready to declare conspiracy yet?

So in these days of merger madness where company X purchases (sorry, "acquires") "an industry leader in . . ." I suggest we vote about which company we should throw off our industry island first, and second, and third. Instead of Reality TV let's play Reality Vendors.

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