Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorI was really talking about cores and interfacing, rather than building the IPs yourself. Most data transfer now is via PCIe, Ethernet etc so companies are more interested in experience with these rather than DSP, as I think a lot of more tradition Firmware DSP work is moving to CPUs (image processing for example) as CPUs get faster. I have worked in industry that was traditionally all custom hardware solutions 10 years ago (custom build PCBs with FPGA and Arm CPU) where now it is mostly software solutions with some FPGA accelerator cards (rack mounted/cloud based PCs with PCIe accellerator cards).
I was really point out that 10-20 years ago, where "dsp techniques" would be writing efficient multipliers, dividers etc, these are all available as customisable IP cores and logic is plentiful, so saving a handful of registers is not as important as it once was - where now the importance is in the system design and knowing how to plumb IP cores together. Employers rather you understand the system and write re-useable, readable code than obfuscated "clever" code. re: simulation - most engineers still write testbenches, but having a working knowledge of some open source or industry standard approaches should always be a plus when going for a job (hence all of the things I mention). OP: In addition, reading up on writing timing specs and how to apply them is also very important in the business today.
