[sdiy] IC Prototyping was: SSM2040

[Eric Brombaugh]

Cool - DEI is in a little industrial park about 3 miles from my house! 
Looks like they mostly do replacement devices for obsolete military & 
space qualified parts - there's a fairly good business in that in this 
area due to a lot of old fabs that are available cheap and those gov't 
customers are willing to pay well to keep their ancient product lines 
rolling.

Correct me if I'm wrong - weren't the CEM chips all done on a quick-turn 
analog array? Those parts would probably translate to the DEI process 
pretty easily. The big issue there would be either getting the rights to 
the circuits, or the effort of recreating them from scratch. I believe 
that's basically what DSI did for their Evolver & Prophet 8 voice chips.

Eric

Barry Klein wrote:
> Wow, Googling this stuff is getting interesting:
> http://www.deiaz.com/docs/BR-MW-01700-00-B.pdf
> 
> Barry
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Manley [mailto:dlmanley at sonic.net] 
> Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 3:00 PM
> Cc: Barry Klein; synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> Subject: Re: [sdiy] IC Prototyping was: SSM2040
> 
> Another option is a semi-custom approach such as the one offered by 
> Array Design.  This is a company run by Hans Camenzind, who is probably 
> better known as the designer of the 555 timer.  His idea is to predefine 
> a family of die with varying numbers of transistors, resistors, etc. 
> The design is then customized with metalization (similar to a Gate 
> Array).  This should greatly reduce the cost and time to manufacture a 
> part (assuming the family is at all active).  It wouldn't give you a 
> exact clone, but it could enable making some interesting devices.
> 
> http://www.arraydesign.com/
> 
> The reference manual for the family is here:
> 
> http://www.arraydesign.com/700series.html
> 
> 
> Hans is in his mid-70's at this point, so I wonder if this company is 
> still an option.  I don't know if there are any other companies offering 
> similar services.
> 
> If you've never seen a book on designing analog ICs there is a free 
> download by Hans here:
> 
> http://www.designinganalogchips.com/
> 
> Lots of good reference material on IC current mirrors, voltage 
> references, diff amps, opamps, OTAs, etc.  Also some interesting 
> historical information.
> 
> -Dave
> 
> 
>>> Barry Klein wrote:
>>>> take a read of this discussion:
>>>> http://www.edn.com/blog/1700000170/post/1850011785.html
>>>> Read the last two paragraphs.  How is it going to be inexpensive
>>>> to make
>>>> your own IC?  How would any of us, even if we had 10K$ even proceed?
>>>> I suppose there is some university teaching this stuff but it is
>>>> not common
>>>> knowledge otherwise.  Are they hinting it will be?
>>>>> From discussion:
>>>>> AFAIK, nobody has produced a pin compatible 2040 or 3320 clone.
>>>> I believe that's correct, but there's nothing stopping anyone from
>>>> doing so if they felt it was worth the effort.
> 
> 
> 
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