Check out 1blue3brown’s excellent YouTube video lesson on quantum computing and Grover’s algorithm:
https://youtu.be/RQWpF2Gb-gU
Goes through qubits, state vectors and Grovers algorithm in a highly visual and intuitive fashion. Doesn’t discuss the underlying quantum mechanics in depth, but does mention and link out to resources for the interested viewer to delve deeper.
Sibling poster did a good job explaining how research relies on labs.
Agree that complex EE work can be expensive for individual and smaller companies, indeed :)
A comment on the application side:
> "[..] for wireless applications you can follow the recommendations of the IC vendor and the remainder of the work is RF-engineering"
Zoom out to the system level, and you cannot just rely on IC vendor recommendations, and this kind of engineering can still require access to $$ labs.
Similar to complex software systems: for example take a large scale distributed system made out of many individual frameworks and services. The system as a whole may now exhibit emergent behaviour, and have failure modes due to the complexity of the system.
Same happens in complex EE designs, your design might pack in multiple cutting edge RF radios such as mmWave, UWB, with bespoke power amplifier, detection and antenna designs. Add in EM from multiple clock domains, high power distribution circuits, digital noise from FPGAs/CPUs, and EM from nearby sources. You can easily have noise couple from sources causing unintended issues in other subsystems. The vendor may say "keep a way from sources of noise", but your application may still be to engineer a solution that fits in the design envelope of a modern smartphone. The system level design needs to be engineered for EMC and coexist/desense, and validated which takes a ton of lab simulation and measurement/characterization work.
Fabs are specific to the manufacturing of integrated circuits.
EE encompasses more than just manufacturing of ICs, for example research and applications in radio propagation and EM/wireless, signal integrity, antenna design, coexistence/desense, advanced power electronics, control systems, simulation/solvers, etc.
I used to work for a mapping & navigation company that offered a traffic API service. It worked by using anonymized cell phone data to predict traffic patterns. I once heard a story that during peak hour, every five minutes or so the jams on a highway would magically disappear then reappear. After some head scratching, turns out there is a train track inbetween the lanes of the highway full of high speed commuters that would cancel out the stationary car commuters.
Goes through qubits, state vectors and Grovers algorithm in a highly visual and intuitive fashion. Doesn’t discuss the underlying quantum mechanics in depth, but does mention and link out to resources for the interested viewer to delve deeper.