[2] When Sedra and Smith first introduced the current conveyor in 1968,[1] it was not clear what the benefits of the concept would be.
The idea of the op-amp had been well known since the 1940s, and integrated circuit manufacturers were better able to capitalise on this widespread knowledge within the electronics industry.
[2] Since the early 2000s, implementations of the current conveyor concept, especially within larger VLSI projects such as mobile phones, have proved worthwhile.
[3] Current conveyors can provide better gain-bandwidth products than comparable op-amps, under both small and large signal conditions.
In instrumentation amplifiers, their gain does not depend on matching pairs of external components, only on the absolute value of a single circuit element.