Talking of LT, does anyone know anything about this (post#643):
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/soft...ng-ltspice-beginner-advanced.html#post4786775
In the last 18 hours it seems that references to the new version have at least now started to appear on Linear's site.
The user notes included with LTspice XVII specifically mention that LTspiceIV is now no longer supported, which I assume that to mean no further updates.
Not to worry, I have it from the source. All else is total speculation, for all we know Intel will own all semiconductor manufacturing in 20yr.
I've worked at Intel and seen how they worship ReturnOnInvestment calculations. If a line of business doesn't come within 20% of the revenue-per-wafer of high end CPUs, Intel doesn't pursue it. This started with Gordon and Andy deciding to exit the DRAM business even though Intel was the early pioneer and dominant player, because its RPW was terrible. They dallied with telecom for a while; that's why Ian Young works there. But dumped it because of terrible RPW. They dallied with DSP and dumped it. Intel stuck with NOR flash (high RPW) and never pursued NAND flash (terrible cut-throat commodity business). After 1980 they've never participated in me-too commodity jellybean business, and I don't expect they'll ever change that. Even if Fairchild's discrete and analog businesses come up for sale at pennies on the dollar.
Whoa, very small world. His daughter (if we're talking the same guy at Intel, and I have a hard time not believing that) and I went to the same HS and are quite good friends. Good guy from all I've experienced.
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I said total speculation, any stupid guess is as good as any other right now.
Yep if your finished wafer cost is $800 (for a 200 mm wafer) and you have 5000 die sites per wafer, and if your (sort_yield * final_test_yield) is 60%, then each sellable die costs you $0.27 to make. Toss in another $0.50 for package, test, and shipping costs. If you can sell this finished integrated circuit for $38.50 then the profit margin is (1 - (0.77/38.5)) = 98%. Now all you have to do is sell ten million of these each year and your net profit is $377 million per year. Valued at a Price/Earnings ratio of 20 your company's market cap will be $7.5 billion. Seems like an obvious slam dunk -- everyone should do it.
edit- whoops, I forgot to mention the run rate. Ten million sellable parts per year requires 16.7 million die sites per year, which in turn requires 3333 wafers per year. 66.7 wafers per week. Four lots of 20 wafers/lot, per week. You start less than one new wafer lot per day (!) The fab is not all that busy.
edit- whoops, I forgot to mention the run rate. Ten million sellable parts per year requires 16.7 million die sites per year, which in turn requires 3333 wafers per year. 66.7 wafers per week. Four lots of 20 wafers/lot, per week. You start less than one new wafer lot per day (!) The fab is not all that busy.
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Right, whatever you say. Frankly this stuff is blah blah woff woff to me. I don't have to care anymore.
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I'm sure some here have seen this "Designing Analog Chips" book, the first 14 pages or so are a highly condensed yet informative early history of the semi industry as well as that of the transistor and integrated circuit - I found it fascinating:
Designing Analog Chips by Hans Camenzind
I'd really like to see something like a pert chart of what companies have bought/spun off what, and when. It has always seemed that who-makes-what has changed every year, and I'm too busy trying to keep up with who makes what part (in addition to parts going obsolete) to read the latest industry headlines.
Motorola's jelly bean parts became On Semi, which now owns the current incarnation of Fairchild (semiconductor - does its earlier "camera and instrument" division still exist?).
Motorola's microprocessor and DSP division was spun off as Freescale, but was recently bought by NXP, which was once the electronic parts part of Philips.
TI bought Burr-Brown, Luminary Micro, National, and surely many others I can't remember offhand or never knew about.
Then there's other (non-semiconductor maker) tech companies such as HP->Agilent->Keysight.
I worked for Schlumberger for a few years, a company well-known for buying and selling various tech divisions/companies, depending on how it sees its business needs. It even owned Heathkit for a while.
Designing Analog Chips by Hans Camenzind
I'd really like to see something like a pert chart of what companies have bought/spun off what, and when. It has always seemed that who-makes-what has changed every year, and I'm too busy trying to keep up with who makes what part (in addition to parts going obsolete) to read the latest industry headlines.
Motorola's jelly bean parts became On Semi, which now owns the current incarnation of Fairchild (semiconductor - does its earlier "camera and instrument" division still exist?).
Motorola's microprocessor and DSP division was spun off as Freescale, but was recently bought by NXP, which was once the electronic parts part of Philips.
TI bought Burr-Brown, Luminary Micro, National, and surely many others I can't remember offhand or never knew about.
Then there's other (non-semiconductor maker) tech companies such as HP->Agilent->Keysight.
I worked for Schlumberger for a few years, a company well-known for buying and selling various tech divisions/companies, depending on how it sees its business needs. It even owned Heathkit for a while.
In 1977 the TI building 3 miles south of Sugarland (i.e. Stafford), was furiously copying the MK4116 DRAM (5um NMOS) made by TI-spinoff Mostek. I worked at Stafford in 1978, on TI's own internally-designed TMS4164 DRAM. (3um NMOS). The chief designer, Lionel White, went on to fame and glory as the chip architect of TI's wildly successful micromirror display ICs, which are CMOS SRAM with MEMS on top. TI kept plugging away at MOS DRAMs for another few generations but eventually exited the business.
HP sold the LED/Opto business to a private equity firm for a song. that business, Avago, now owns Broadcom. HP made proprietary chips too.
Keysight is publicly traded under the symbol KEYS. Fwiw, Danaher spun out its discrete electronic T&M line which included Tektronix and Fluke.
TEK also made proprietary chips -- anyone who has fixed a 5xxx or 7xxx series scope winds up banging their head when one is missing!
From a tweet today by EEVblogger Dave Jones - I'm not the first to think of this, but this could really be updated and expanded on:
EFTON - Semiconductor companies renamed and sold - a chart.
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