Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[CombJelly]

"I hear some folks made it all the way from bio to EE-type careers,"

Ouch, that hurts. My BS is in Marine Science, my specialty areas were coelenterates and penaeids. If you ever want to delve into lifecycles of invertebrates or sea anemones of the Gulf Coast, I'm your man...

Or what about petrology. Want to discuss sediment formation and their characteristics?

Software and hardware have amazing simularities. After all, it is all Boolean algebra. Especially now, once you've mastered any procedural language, Verilog has few secrets...

If you insist on a more object-oriented approach, then VHDL. If you need a higher level than that, then most tools can still accomodate you, albeit at a performance and area penalty. But given that a 400k gate equivalent Xilinx chip can be bought (in large quantities, but still) for under $7, this isn't a big of an obstacle as it once was. Read the book. Get a Xilinx development board and WebPack and go to town. If nothing else, you will have a perspective that is much lacking with too many software people. I'll never forget when a recent CS asked me what registers were...