ICs are constantly evolving towards lower power consumption and higher integration, which greatly facilitates our R&D work, but also brings greater challenges. This requires us to pay close attention to the latest solution announcements from major manufacturers and may require spending more time reading materials. Otherwise, we might find that a circuit we painstakingly designed over a long period of time is still unstable, only to discover later that another manufacturer has already designed it; or we might have to spend a lot of time and energy searching for a chip that can perform the function.

Therefore, we will finally discuss some key points for chip selection in R&D. When selecting circuits, R&D personnel cannot only start from a performance perspective. In general, we need to consider three aspects:

First, we must first consider performance, because the most fundamental task of R&D personnel is to design stable and reliable circuits. This requires us to select chips whose performance meets the requirements.

We can examine chip performance from the following aspects:
1. Look at competitors' products: If competitors have successful case studies, then of course there is no problem, because no one would be foolish enough to use their own products to serve the promotion of distributors. 1. If a competitor (preferably a large one) uses this technology in their product, it's highly likely to be reliable. However, this isn't easy to achieve because you can't easily access a competitor's core technology, and you can't completely trust what promoters say.

2. Engineer Recommendations: In the past, when communication was extremely difficult, we could only rely on books to solve technical problems. Now, with the development of the internet, communication has become extremely convenient. Experts on various forums have plenty of successful experiences and are happy to help. Therefore, in this case, we should check if competitors have practical application experience, such as test results or forum requests (don't forget to thank them).

3. Buy a Sample to Try: This is the most direct way. You only know if it's good or bad after using it yourself. Buy a sample, make a board, test it, and you'll know everything.

Second: Cost-Effectiveness, that is, the balance between price and performance. Developing something is not easy, and with the current economic crisis, if the cost is too high, the leadership will say we don't consider the big picture and are incompetent. At best, we'll go from being popular to being unpopular; at worst, the economic crisis will force us to find our own way! Therefore, cost-effectiveness is crucial, and comparing prices from multiple suppliers is essential, as our industry is largely based on reselling among peers, and prices can vary drastically. So, if you find a good chip, don't cancel your order just because one supplier tells you it's ridiculously expensive (that would just increase our workload!).

My advice is to search online, as distributors specializing in specific chips often have an online advantage.

Thirdly, there's the issue of sourcing. If a chip is hard to find, you must consider what to do if you need it in bulk later. Large distributors won't handle small-batch purchases. For example, ADUM1401 chips generally have lead times, while the newly released ADUM1411 is widely available in the market. Of course, only those of us in this field know this, so communicating with technical support personnel is a good approach.

For information on related industry products, you can subscribe to the supplier's regular emails, or ask the supplier to help you find suitable chips. Another point I want to make is that a large portion of us work for companies that are not very large, so our demand for chips is not very high.