The basics of decoupling capacitors
Two decades ago, to build a portable music player, you had to clobber together several hundred electronic components. Today, you can accomplish the same with a single chip and a dozen passives. Heck, you might even get Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for free. One of the few discrete components that survive and thrive in this reality is the humble decoupling capacitor. It's not just that the device is hard to manufacture on…