Tekmos' Blog

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.

Along with the move to our new facilities, Tekmos is getting a new logo.

So how did this happen? 

Our current logo is just our name in the common Ariel font.  We stepped out of the box when we added a maroon underline.  It worked, but it was pretty bland. 

The act of moving into a new building means that we have to pay for a sign.  Our artist suggested that it was a good time for a new logo, so I turned him loose.  What I got back was our name in all caps, a more distinctive font, and a stylized chip.

Many companies pay staggering amounts of money for a graphic symbol that is to represent their company.  AT&T has a stylized globe.  Mercedes has their three point star.  McDonalds has its golden arches.  And Tekmos now has a chip.  And I love it. 

Try to count how many times a week you hear that we need to improve the planet. I dare you. For many, the message seems to appear so often, that the impact has morphed into just another day to day annoyance. It has become background noise, or worse, a phrase that provokes disdain. To make matters worse, the message is often conveyed with a sense of guilt. This is probably to get your attention, but does it work? I doubt it. Over time, the constant bombardment makes most numb, irritated or simply immune to the idea all together. Sure, people will nod in agreement. Of course we need to save the planet, protect the environment and not disrupt nature’s balances. But who has the time? And besides, the problem is too big to do anything about anyway. At least, that is what a lot of people think.

At Tekmos, we decided that talk is cheap. Slogans on a website are great, but do they really get a result? Can you see the result? Can you measure it? We didn’t think so. We decided to go beyond the rhetoric. At Tekmos, we decided to roll up our sleeves, take control of what areas we do impact, and make a difference.

That is why we are proud to announce that we have achieved a new Quality Certification. The ISO 14001:2004. Tekmos has created an environmental management system that identifies, measures and continually strives to improve the environment we impact. We did this not just for ourselves, but also for the community we live in, and for everyone we do business with.

“Let’s make our world a better place.” Sure, it is a slogan. But isn’t it nice to know that there are companies that don’t just say it. They do it.

Bob Abrams and I spent a week in Japan last month.  The purpose of the trip was two-fold.  First, we had scheduled visits with current customer to review project status.  We also visited multiple prospective customers as part of our overall Japanese development strategy.  From a business point of view, the trip was quite successful.

We can summarize a business trip as being a plane trip, a hotel, a customer visit, back to the hotel, and then back to the plane.  And after a while, all business trips can seem the same.  I had decided a while ago to try to incorporate a little tourism into each trip, and this trip was no exception.  After all, Japan is an interesting country, and it would be a shame to see nothing more than the inside of a hotel.

On this trip, Bob and I were able to do two tourist things.

Being old, I like to see things that are older than I am.  So on a side trip to Nagoya, we visited the castle.  Originally built in 1612, it has been restored, and is an interesting look into Japan’s past.  While having a military aspect, is was more of a palace for the Tokugawa family.  The castle is topped off by two golden dolphins (Kinshachi), which is a tradition dating back to 1334.  Bob and I also had a tea ceremony before we returned to Tokyo.

Bob isn’t as old as I, and wanted to see more modern things.  So on the last day of our visit, we spent the afternoon looking at ham radio electronics, and then at other consumer electronics in Electronic Town (Akihabara) in Tokyo.  I think we were both impressed with the modern toilets on display.

The guts of most durable products today contain a lot of electronics. The external package, whether an iPhone, a TV, or even a washing machine, is usually just the outermost package of multiple layers of packaging. In this article, we will look at innermost package type, the packaging that protects the IC (Integrated Circuit, sometimes called a computer chip.)

Today, silicon chips are made with a very large number of transistors arranged to make digital logic. The transistors are very small, allowing hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of transistors, to be made on a thumbnail-sized piece of silicon. A major problem is how to connect signal lines and how to protect the IC from damage. Special electronic packages have been developed to accomplish these tasks.

Advances in chip processing techniques have allowed for larger chips with smaller transistors. As this trend toward higher levels of integration (the inclusion of more circuitry onto a piece of silicon) continues, the number of signal lines has also increased. The package size has grown to accommodate the larger number of signal lines.

The demand for the packages with low pin-count has declined significantly. As the volume falls, the economy of scale goes away. The volume decrease causes the unit cost to increase, putting additional downward pressure on its usage. Then another factor comes into play. The tools to produce any given package type are expensive. A plastic package requires not only a mold and a small piece of metal called a lead frame, it also requires tooling for finishing. As these expensive tools wear out, a choice must be made whether to replace them. The manufacturer must decide if possible future revenue justifies the expenditure for the replacement tooling. Often, it is not practical to continue making some package types.

What do you do if you have a product that has a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) designed for a certain package type? If your PCB has a footprint that exactly matches the placement of connections on a particular package type, how do you proceed if nobody makes a package that fits that footprint? One costly approach is to design a new printed circuit board with a footprint for a similar device in a package that is available. The cost to design the new PCB, debug and test it, and update the documentation can be prohibitive. If the PCB was designed a long time ago, the designers may have moved on leaving incomplete documentation. Often manufacturing does not have a budget for design work. Solutions are even more costly when a new design requires a lot of testing such as for FDA approval.