Unlike digital chips that can only differentiate between on and off signals, analog chips process gradations. In practical terms, digital chips are the best at manipulating or storing data bits as ones or zeros, but analog chips can read and process waveforms such as speech, music and video. Hence analog chips create a bridge to the digital world of storage and manipulation.

Digital cameras, cell phones, Internet telephony, and downloading or uploading Internet audio, video or image files all involve analog technology. The typed word hello is simple for a digital chip to understand, but only analog chips can understand the spoken word. By now most of us know that DVD and CD-ROM storage is digital. So how does this analog information get placed on digital media? Isn't this a contradiction?

The answer is that analog chips are used as translators to bridge the gaps into and out of the digital world. Analog chips convert waveforms into digital data, then reassemble the data back into waveforms in order to see or listen to it. The digital format provides the pristine storehouse.

When recording music to CD-ROM, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) sample the waveform at a discretionary rate. The higher the rate, the more accurate the reading. CD quality is a rate of 44,100 times per second.

Each rate sampling is logged as a discrete value, with one of 65,536 gradations possible within the value. This continuous record provides an extremely accurate measurement of the waveform in a numerical format. The numerical data gets translated to digital bits, which are recorded by a laser beam on to the CD or DVD surface in the form of pits and lands.

To play back the music or movie, a laser reads the pits and lands to a digital-to-analog converter (DAC), which reconstitutes the analog waveform from the digital blueprint. The waveform is amplified and sent through the speakers. ADCs and DACs, or coder-decoders, are known as codecs for short. Analog chips understand the language of codecs.

Analog chips are vital in many areas, including the automobile industry. Used as sensors, analog chips can detect a rise in motor temperature, faithfully report the health of the battery, and provide accurate data on other systems. In an effort to further unite the digital and analog worlds, many chips manufactured today are a hybrid of digital and analog chips. And while the digital world gets most of the media attention, the analog world incorporates the human environment of waveforms and shades of gray into our electronic frontier.