Chris apologizes for the poor audio quality on his end, it was a new setup (again) while the bench is being finished.
- What’s your favorite movie about engineering? Piggybacking on an article by Bill Schewber article from EEtimes.
- Bjork pulls apart a TV and tells us about it. WTF.
- “You shouldn’t let poets lie to you”
- Intel’s new fab is going down to 14nm! Holy hell!
- Why Arizona? Why not somewhere with water? Like Cleveland! (we promise, the water isn’t on fire anymore)
- NY wants to bring an engineering school and high tech to NYC? If cost was no issue, perhaps?
- Dave reviews another scope and we talk about system level design
- The battle rages on! An updated roadmap for printed electronics! Chris tells Dave to look for low cost fares to the US!
- You can print wax masks for chips now, perhaps another good step for etching.
- A new podcast exists for hackerspaces, and not just on iTunes as we said in the show.
- Another shout out and place to hang out, the Savage Circuits chat is on the 1st and 3rd Fridays of the month.
- None of these are as big as the Engadget TV show. How do they get so many people? Good for them!
- Dave talks about an article he read about a mathematician that predicts lottery tickets.
- Freescale going public again after having been private for less than 4 years. Are chip companies too big to fail?
A new Amp Hour initiative:
Chip companies should publish their most popular parts. This would allow smaller manufacturers to target chips they know aren’t going away any time soon. This would help on price and longevity of the part for the designer and would allow manufacturing efficiencies for the chip maker as more people gravitate towards these more popular parts. Think about it, chip companies!
Couple things …
Intel has a HUGE presence here in AZ already with probably a half dozen fabs (or more) already, thousands of employees, and a bunch of real estate. The new fab is going up on property they already own.
Also, the IRC channel that holds the Savage Circuit chat is always up (not just for the publicized events). Cool place to hang out.
I LOVE that Bjork video. Cities and poets. That’s some wonderful shit.
She tends to tread that thin line between genius and insanity, somtimes slipping into one or the other. Remember her being arrested at an airport for kicking off as she was about to board her flight. A definite candidate for a Dawin award.
It’s from the Sugarcubes concert video “Live Zabor”.
When you sit back and think about 14nm, it’s pretty incredible. But we’ve been designing circuits in 28nm since 2010 and the Intel fab for 14nm won’t be up until 2013. We’ll start 20nm designs in 2012. The DRC rules at 28nm is getting pretty funky though.
No doubt. Leakage out the wazoo if I remember correctly? Would love to see a post about the challenges moving forward on EB or your site.
Thanks for the mention of our Savage Circuits Chat!
We have scheduled chat’s on the 1st and 3rd Fridays of each month, but you can drop by anytime and you’ll often find people to chat with.
Totally agree about the best projects being down to really small teams. The ARM was designed by 2 people, 1 hardware and 1 software. Virtually no money, no resources, and the company was collapsing around their ears. The result was a multi billion dollar industry.
I love the idea of a part popularity indication. Right now the system I use is to call a rep and say, “I’m thinking of designing in your part, but I want to make sure it’s not going to go EoL.” They say, “Oh no way. This part has a very long life cycle. Definitely design it in.”
There should be a better system.
Charles,
I learned all about this from my girlfriend who works at a large unnamed theater lighting company in Middleton:
I used to rely on distributors to tell me what had the highest stock. Now you can go to sites like EEM (www.eem.com) and see what distributors have how much stock. If multiple distributors have large amounts of stock, that’s a good sign that the part will be available. You can also go check the lead time, etc. directly at the distributors.
The issue with using a part the Ford uses is that they may cancel the car that used the part and suddenly the usage goes to zero. It is better to use a part that has multiple customers so that the demand is more likely to remain high.
@ChrisGammell, the wax printing video is actually about pcb printing, not chips. Keep on dreaming…
Damn! Foiled again! I’ll try to correct in the next show.
and the circus will continue! 😛
I recommend Dave stops that bullshit about Atmel never made some money. Atmel’s net income in 2010 was $423.1 million, according to their February 8-K filing (full year revenues were $1.644 billion).
My data may indeed be out of date, and I think I indicated as such.
I agree about the water! I just interviewed for an engineering job in Arizona. The desert is beautiful, but it’s everywhere.
Talking about popular chip, what about a “chip of the week” section for The AmpHour?
Chris, if you are worried about Micro obsolescence, you should become more familiar with Microchip. As far as I know, they have yet to obsolete a single microcontroller.
Somehow Bjork talking about how a TV works is just as interesting as watching Dave review test equipment. Plus she’s a lot better looking. I hear she’s going to explain DSOs next.
Damn, I’m in trouble with all these good looking girls coming on the scene …
Bjork is a “singer/musican” to use the term loosely, not an electronics engineer. What struck me was the age of the TV. I was thinking, it must be her old TV, the one she replaced with a new LCD TV.
Re: popular parts
Here is an idea. Why not ask Digikey and Mouser to publish parts popularity? They have less skin in game then an individual manufacturer, and have a pretty good data set to work with 😉