Tekmos' Blog

Tekmos sells many micro controllers and Flash memories that are in PLCC packages. These mature packages are not being supported by modern handlers, and so we are fortunate to have acquired both a number of MCT handlers, and production kits for packages sizes ranging from 20-pin PLCC up to 84-pin PLCC packages.

While old, the handler is capable of both hot and cold operation, and can test parts at a 1800 uph rate. The handler has a clever mechanism that reverses the part orientation during test. Parts that are fed into the handler with pin 1 first, and leave the handler with pin 1 last. This allows a tube of continuity rejects to be easily retested.

We also use this handler in our programming operations. We pre-program about half of our micro controllers, and to do so, we use the combination of our production tester and the MCT handler.

The MCT handlers are just another capital investment Tekmos has made in order to continue to support mature products.

Tekmos has just doubled our test capacity, and this is the story behind it. Once you have chosen a brand of testers, there are strong incentives to keep on using that brand. The first is the cost of test hardware. Each part has a dedicated load board. While each hardware set is on the order of a thousand dollars, we do a lot of chips and over time we have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in test hardware that is dedicated to a specific tester. Another incentive is the software associated with the test programs. We have man-years of engineering time invested in the test programs which would be lost with a new tester brand.

That is why we were excited to learn that a major semiconductor foundry was closing their test facility, and selling six of the same brand of tester that we use. Used testers sell at a steep discount, and we got a good purchase price.

The main issue was that the testers were in China, and it was our responsibility to get them back to Texas. 

The first step was to hire a Chinese packing company. Each tester and each manipulator was put in a hermetic bag, and then packed in a custom shipping crate. Then, all 12 crates were packed in a 40 foot shipping container. We then made arrangements to have the container shipped from Shanghai to Houston.

We knew the name of the ship, and as a result, were able to track it's movements across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal, and on to Houston. The tracking detail was accurate enough that we could see it wait as the locks filled on the canal.

On October 30th, Austin experienced a very heavy rainfall. In our area, we estimate that 15 inches fell in a 3 hour period. Tekmos is located on a small hill, so we survived without any damage other than a small roof leak.

Behind Tekmos is Carson Creek, which did flood. The waters reached our parking lot, but were still 4 feet below our floor. There is a hiking trail that runs along the creek, and has several nice foot bridges that cross the creek. That did not survive. The creek also flooded two of the three roads we use to access Tekmos, and also shut down both highways 71 and 183, which are major roads next to Tekmos.

One watershed over is Onion Creek. Onion Creek is a much larger creek, and had the worst flooding. At one point, the flow rate was measured at 120K CFS. For comparison, Niagara Falls was running at 84K CFS the same day.

This is a picture of Carson Creek just going over the roadway of the road behind Tekmos.

And here is another picture looking upstream.

Last month, Tekmos both exhibited and presented a paper (HiTEN White Paper link)  at the 2015 HiTen conference in Cambridge, England.  Travel and especially international travel is a grueling experience.  So we try to have a fun activity scheduled in our plans.  And since the conference was only three days long, all of us took an extra two days of vacation to take advantage of the trip and see more sights.

When we arrived in Cambridge on Sunday, we walked over to the downtown area, and engaged in punting.  Punting is using a 10 foot pole to push a flat bottomed boat up and down the river Cam.  None of us had ever punted before, so we hired a professional punter to punt us up and down the river, and give a narrative of what we were seeing.  Most of the older colleges in Cambridge are located along the river, and it is a very nice and scenic trip.

Being engineers, we had to try our hands at punting.  We were successful, if you define success as not falling out of the boat.  Many of the other boaters were quite inebriated, and would occasionally fall out of their boats. 

Later on, we all drifted back to London, and did some of the standard tourist activities, took a river cruise and went up the London Eye, visited the museums, and looked at the Rosetta stone.  And being engineers, we had to visit Greenwich and stand on the Prime Meridian.  After all, who but an engineer would travel 6000 miles to stand on a line that someone arbitrarily drew on the ground?

Many companies are finding great and creative ways to be involved with their customers. In the rapidly changing electronics industry, targeting customers who use electronic components in any specialized field, communicating with the right targeted customers can be challenging. Taking the same approach used in the mass advertising of consumer products would be a colossal waste of time and money since such a small percentage of the audience would have any interest in the product or, in many cases, even understand what the products are.

Freescale semiconductor has taken an approach that seems to work quite well. In late June, I attended the Freescale Technical Forum in Austin. (Conveniently located in Tekmos’ home town, Austin.) I do not have the official count of attendees but it was huge, taking over multiple ballrooms on multiple floors of the JW Marriot Hotel. According to my count, there were 269 sessions on many, many topics. Several sessions were hands on and their rosters were filled to capacity. I do not intend to give a review of the conference here. That can be found in other sources. I expect one or both keynote presentations will be available on the web. Additionally, there was a large room set up with many displays of products that contain Freescale components. An ideal place to make contact with technical people from a wide range of companies. There was a large truck outside that was set up to display many IoT products. The conference also highlighted many of Freescale’s partners. The combination of Freescale Semiconductor with NXP creates the fourth largest semiconductor company in the world. It should be noted here that Tekmos is a partner with Freescale. We developed many replacement processors and controllers that Freescale made up until the fab was wiped out by Fukushima Tsunami.

The main point of this article is to comment on what a good conference Freescale Semiconductor put on and how this type of forum can help the entire industry. I should also mention that this is the tenth year of the Freescale Technical Forum. I encourage our readers to seek out information from other sources about the content of the conference especially the technical. The technical content is outside the focus of the article, but I do encourage the reader to look into the new products announced at the conference.

The Tuesday keynote speaker was Gregg Lowe, the CEO of Freescale. Much of the emphasis was on IoT in automobiles. Again, seek out a web version of the presentation. Freescale processors and sensors are very compatible this aspect of the IoT. One of the human interest stories was a dramatization of how Freescale’s partner, Cadillac, using technology from Freescale, created a system that sets off an alarm if the driver falls asleep. This alarm likely saved the life of a Freescale employee’s grandfather.

The Wednesday keynote speaker was Steve Wozniak. Always good to hear his opinions expressed with a fair amount of wit. I expect this wide ranging talk to show up on the internet too.