A New Approach to Realize Electronic Functions: The Functional Approach

Abstract

This paper reviews some of the earlier ideas on the functional devices. There follows a discussion on the functional approach which brings out the need to apply this approach at three levels by conceiving (i) a device to perform the function of a circuit or a part of a circuit, (ii) a circuit configuration which performs the function of a few or all of the conventional circuit blocks in an instrument, and (iii) an instrument which replaces several of the instruments in a system. In the end a brief report on the execution of these ideas at the Devices Laboratory, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, is given.