This coming week, we’ll have our first chief executive on The Amp Hour. Fear not! Brett Fox, CEO of Touchstone Semiconductor, is a former engineer and still remains close to the technology. Dr Joeren Fonderie is the VP of Engineering and deals with the everyday activities of dreaming up new analog designs! Wow!
We’ll try and touch on the history of the company and of our two guests. Do you have other questions for them? Let us know in the comments below or on our subreddit!
For more about the company see the links below:
- About Touchstone Semiconductor
- The first product released, the TS1001.
- Brett Fox’s blog on EDN.
How much of an issue is waver size and the race to smaller dimensions for them? Intel / AMD seem to rely going to huge 30cm wavers to get more and more chips per waver to be profitable. What’s the next radiation source in the EUV range?
Will come the day when hardware engineers do design integrated circuits as much as boards? (crappy English, sorry).
What are the hot topics today in analog integrated circuits design?: power consumption, system integration.
Are there any plans in the works to write epic ap notes like Jim Williams used to? Reading about high performance circuits with low power consumption sounds like fun! If not, do think large 30+ page app notes have a place in today’s environment?
Good question! I’m looking forward to seeing one of those app notes.
Hello Dave, Chris.
My question will be for both, the CEO and the VP: Do you have any activity besides work related with electronics, i.e. do you apply engineering in your daily life like home projects (car restauration, domotics, RC hobby, etc). this can also involve if they are ‘makers’.
Thank you.
How do you feel the situation is for startups designing ICs these days? Or in other words: Is it a good time to be an IC design startup?
Any thoughts about how university education doesn’t/does prepare people interested in getting into IC design? I feel like it doesn’t deal with that corner of electrical engineering very effectively.
This is my question, it has to do with the future of the semiconductor industry:
What do you think about the future of graphene and carbon nanotube based semiconductors? Are they the cure for all evil or are they destined to fill a small niche?
OK, so is there really a dearth of US engineers that you have to go looking for engineers abroad? More generally, is the current “skills mismatch” that the press throws around a problem that companies have created for themselves with very unrealistic wish lists on their job postings?