Tekmos Begins Military Level Reliability
By Lynn Reed

Tekmos has introduced a new and exciting development in our production. With the start of several government contracts we have been given the opportunity to expand our product reliability and dive...

New Ways to Reverse Engineering a Chip
By Lynn Reed

Tekmos frequently finds itself creating a new chip to replace one that has been discontinued. Traditionally, we studied the data sheet and measured the chip performance on our tester, and then designed..

Explaining NRE
By Lynn Reed

To make an ASIC, you have to pay a non-recurring engineering cost (NRE). We’re going to talk about what makes up an NRE.  A significant portion of the NRE is made up of the mask...

Deprocessing a Die
By Lynn Reed

As part of the netlist extraction process, we take an original die, and cut it apart one layer at a time. Each layer of the die is imaged with a scanning electron microscope. Then the image..

Reverse Engineering
By Lynn Reed

Last month I discussed the process where we can de-process a chip, photographing each layer as we went along. Then the photographs are combined into a single image. Then the transistors and.....

Low Cost Methods For Including Flash in Designs
By Lynn Reed

Including flash on an ASIC die involves tradeoffs. While flash is available in most processes, you need to be using a process of 90nm to 65 nm to start obtaining reasonable flash densities...

Enterprise Resource Planning
By Lynn Reed

Over the summer we rolled out an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. The aim of this system is to automate many of the day to day tasks we deal with at a company level and...

An Increase in Tape and Reel Capacity
By Lynn Reed

As a fabless semiconductor company, Tekmos outsources wafer fabrication and device assembly. The decision to outsource testing is more complicated. As a basic philosophy, Tekmos would prefer...

Inventory Management
By Lynn Reed

Inventory management is a large part of what keeps the manufacturing side running smoothly at Tekmos. Due to the high volume at which parts are manufactured and sold, we require...

High Temperature Flash Memories
By Lynn Reed

A challenge in high temperature electronics is the availability of flash memories. To address this, Tekmos is offering up-screened flash memories that are rated at 175C and 200C. More...