#129 – An Interview with Brett Fox and Dr Jeroen Fonderie – Device Doubling Decretum

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Welcome  Brett Fox, CEO and Dr Jeroen Fonderie, VP of Engineering from the (relatively) new,  yet quickly growing analog company, Touchstone Semiconductor!

• After leaving Micrel, Brett was an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR).
• Touchstone was officially formed in 2010 with Brett, Joeren and Adolfo Garcia.
• Invested in by Gill Cogan of Opus Capital and Pierre Lamond of Khosla Venturers. $12 million starting captial (which isn’t much for an IC company!). Gill was an original investor in Maxim, Pierre was a co-founder of National and was involved in funding LT. Wowsa!
• They use TSMC, among other foundries. They have worked with Rick Cassidy, the North America head of TSMC, which helps facilitate a startup relationship.
• The foundries provide the designer Process Design Kits (PDKs) which are then used with Cadence toolsets.
• Surprisingly, people have asked for original designs, in addition to part crosses.
• Part crosses (and the basis of starting the company) was to provide alternate sources for harder to get Maxim parts.
• When hiring, they hope the designers will have experience taping out a chip, usually requiring many years of experience.
• While no one will ever replace Jim Williams, Touchstone has a full apps team (and they’re hiring more!) working on new notes.
• The name “Touchstone” was chosen after consulting a thesaurus for the word “Maxim”!
• They seek patents that can be used offensively or defensively, at the circuit level.
• Touchstone has to wait for technologies to enter the foundry before they can begin designing for them. There will be a new design center working on developing Graphene, as reported by EE Times Europe.
• Chris gets bad news that two executives from a chip company don’t think a chip printer is feasible. Ouch.
• Packaging keeps getting smaller, the Touchstone Demo Board program should help getting up and running quickly.
• Touchstone does a die bank, which helps hedge against high demand at a low cost.
• Working remotely is difficult. Monolithic systems has tried this, with designers in Asia and management in the US.

You can follow Touchstone Semiconductor on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. Thanks to Brett and Jeroen for stopping by The Amp Hour to talk shop!