Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all of our customers, distributors and loyal followers of Tekmos. We would like to take this opportunity to extend our gratitude to everyone for making 2013 a successful year.

Our newsletter this month will do a year in review, share some insight from the "Desk of the President" and introduce a member of Tekmos' staff. As always we will share Tekmos' "news highlights" of company activities and sales, including the launch of new Tekmos products.

Lynn Reed, President

Business is Great

2013 is almost over, and we have had a good year. At a minimum, our sales have doubled this year, and we have a good chance to triple sales for next year.

Double and triple digit growths are worthy, but they bring with them new challenges to address that we here at Tekmos enjoy taking on. You can handle a little growth by working more efficiently and by just working a little harder. Tripling our growth means addressing the bigger picture.

Tekmos' solution is to change the definition of some jobs, and to delegate into a new level of management. The process of identifying our growth opportunities means concentrating on our products, services, customers, channels and geographic areas that generate the largest proportion of revenue and profits.

An evaluation of the overall performance of Tekmos is ongoing and involves measuring and benchmarking profitability, rate of revenue growth and our reputation with our customers. This year we successfully entered new markets, created new products that appeal to that new customer base and as always, Tekmos provides an outstanding level of customer service. We will continue on that path for 2014.

We are going to make a cautious bet on growth. We will grow, and be a leader in our semiconductor market as we have already demonstrated with our high temperature ASICs and Microprocessors for extreme environments.

Rick Holman

Rick Holman, Engineer

How long have you been at Tekmos?

I have been working at Tekmos off and on since 1998.  I occasionally like to explore new opportunities, but I keep coming back to Tekmos for the challenges of the design work here.

What are your responsibilities here at Tekmos?

My responsibilities are in all aspects of digital design of ASIC devices.  This includes writing specifications, simulation, static timing analysis, emulation with FPGAs, writing test benches, hardware test and validation.  As a member of a small group of engineers, I get to work on a lot of different tasks. 

What are your favorite tasks or projects to work on here at Tekmos?

My favorite task would probably be FPGA emulation.  I can make quick changes to the designs for fast in-system checkout before going to fabrication.

What Project are you working on now?

Currently I am upgrading an x86 device with new peripheral components for a medical device manufacturer. 

Can you offer any suggestions to Tekmos clients to make their experience more efficient and successful?

Although we simulate our designs before fabrication, it is not always possible to ascertain how a component is going to be used in system. Validation of the RTL design in the clients system using FPGAs makes for a smoother transition to a working ASIC device. 

Please tell us about your work and educational background.

I have worked in many different areas of electronic engineering including flight control systems, communications, computer imaging and graphics. 

I graduated from the University of Texas, Arlington with a BSEE, with some graduate work at USC. 

Back to the Future

Now that 2013 is almost over, it is time to review our New Year's Resolutions that were so bravely released last January.

Product Development and Sales

We will bring out the user programmable versions of our 68XX family. We have the ROM and ROMless versions, and now we will add flash. This will include the 68HC05B and C, and the 68HC11D, E, and K families.

We created the parts and are working on sampling and production.

We will expand our high temperature offerings by incorporating ceramic packaging.

We are offering our TK68HC811E2 in a ceramic 48 pin DIP.

We will work on improving NVM performance at 175ºC.

We have developed the hardware and software to do a lot of interesting testing on the NVM memories.

We will expand our Japanese sales.

We have booked 3 ASICs in Japan, and we will continue to push our Japanese sales program.

Manufacturing

We will develop an alternative for the PLCC 52 package.

We have a 52 pin adapter card in development. We are also doing 132 and 256 pin adapters which are further along than the 52 pin Adapter.

We will add a wafer probe capability.

We have a probe machine and working on the bandwidth to bring it on line.

We will add a lead scan capability.

We obtained a lead scanner.

We will add a high temperature test capability.

We are now testing parts at 150ºC and working to the next step of testing them at 175ºC.

Quality

We will complete the AEC-Q100 product qualification studies on our 68XX families.

We have done this for our 0.35u processor and working to complete it for the 0.6u processors as well.

We will study oxide integrity at 175ºC.

This is in progress.

We will set-up an ongoing reliability monitor.

We have put the reliability monitor in most of our 68XX microcontrollers. We haven't got the parts into the oven yet. We have also determined how to use the monitor to measure metal migration. This is an improvement because our initial effort did not work.

Thank you for reading Tekmos Talks and helping us celebrate 20 plus years.

Sincerely,

Lynn Reed, President

Welcome to Tekmos Talks November. The past couple months have been filled with travel to meet with customers and prospective new ones. This month's newsletter will talk about travels and we will introduce a member of Tekmos' staff. As always we will share Tekmos' "news highlights" of company activities and sales, including the launch of new Tekmos products.

Lynn Reed, President

Developing Programmers

Many of the microcontrollers that Tekmos makes were originally OTP parts that contained EPROM. The EPROM process is not available in our fabs, so we replace the EPROM with Flash memories. This is totally transparent in the user application, and has the added advantage that we can reprogram them if necessary.

The one difference in using a Flash memory is that Flash requires a different programming algorithm. And since the old EPROM algorithm uses high voltage, any attempt to program our parts with the old algorithms will destroy them.

Some programming companies support some of our parts. But the increasing widespread use of ISP (In-System Programming) has greatly reduced the demand for programmers, and that has reduced the amount of support we can get from the programming companies for our products.

As a service, we pre-program parts for some of our customers. We include it in the production final test, where it fits easily into our manufacturing flow. But this doesn’t work for everyone, including military customers with secret code.

So we have decided to support our programmable devices with “engineering” programmers. These are not really set up for a production environment. Instead they are a small PC board with a USB connector, a socket, and a few chips between them. We will have to create one for each of the programmable devices we make. And that is about 9 boards.

We chose to have a common interface to the PC. Rather than invent one, we chose to use the existing ISP protocol, but with a few more commands to turn the programmer on and off. This reduces the programming tasks at the PC end.

Demands Of Our Global Automotive Customers Produce New Challenges And Opportunities For Tekmos Innovations That We Meet Every Day

The board consists of a USB to UART chip that is connected to a micro, which goes to the socket. Within the micro, the code that talks to the PC is a constant, and the only thing that varies is the interface to individual processors. And that varies a lot, since each programmable device has a different interface.

Our most popular processor has an ISP interface, so the programmer is just a 1 to 1 interface between the PC and the chip. In other micros, we put it into a test mode, the internal flash pins are brought out, and we program it just as we would a regular flash memory.

The 68XX micros pose a more difficult challenge. We put them into a bootstrap mode, and download a small program that allows us to read and write to any address. This program then allows us to write to and read from the control registers for the flash and for the internal EEPROM.

We are bringing up our first programmer for the TK68HC711D3 device. Once that is done, we will work on the others. These are slated for a 1st quarter introduction.

Tekmos ESD Approach

Do you remember seeing the three wise monkey statues, see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil? Did the idea in an odd way seem to make sense to you? While the origin of the proverb, perhaps Buddhist, perhaps Confucian, is a bit shrouded in mystery, our Western idea seems to have taken hold. If you refuse to acknowledge something, then how can it hurt you? The problem with this approach is that it surely sometimes can. In our business, there is an invisible force that lurks throughout a test floor. You can't see it, you can rarely feel it, but it can absolutely destroy our product. The culprit is called electrostatic discharge, or ESD. It is basically a type of contact electrification that takes place when certain materials come into contact with one another. It runs rampant in dry environments, or when any friction is involved. Most people understand it as static electricity. As a kid, (or perhaps even as a mischievous adult,) the action of rubbing your feet across a rug, then surprising a younger sibling or other unsuspecting prey with an electric touch to the ear lobe, always brought sinister delight. Static electricity is extraordinarily fun for kids, but it absolutely has no place in our company.

At Tekmos, we understand that semiconductors are particularly prone to damage, or even failure, sometime many months after contact with ESD. We have taken extra precautions to prevent ESD buildup, and prevent the possibility of it affecting our customer product needs. As part of our Quality system, we have an entire procedure dedicated to ESD control. Our test floor technicians and test operators wear antistatic lab jackets, heel straps and have daily checks on grounding wrist straps. They undergo ESD training with recertification every 12 months. Product is moved on grounded carts to grounded workstations, which are tested with a Surface Resistivity Meter once a quarter. This is four times the standard requirement even by military standards. We also control and monitor the temperature and humidity on our test floor, understanding that even the environment can be a part of ESD creation. From non-conductive floor wax, to antistatic garments, heel straps and wrist straps, daily and quarterly checks with continual education and testing, we do the extra effort necessary to keep from creating the invisible enemy of ESD, and protect our customer's product. We at Tekmos have our eyes open when it comes to ESD. We have decided not to be the monkey, setting with its eyes closed.

Trip Report

I needed to visit a German customer to review and assist in the debugging of a process emulator in their system. It was a last minute decision which left me scrambling for affordable tickets. I also had to scramble for a passport, since I accidentally washed mine after my last trip to Japan. I wound up on Air Berlin, which was one of the more comfortable trans-Atlantic flights I have taken. It also required me to travel the last segment on a prop plane. That was the first prop plane I have been on in about 20 years. It was comforting to see that they still worked.

I stayed for a week in a small town in southeast Germany, and had a great time. The weather was perfect, and my hosts were gracious. Even though I spent most of my time at the customer's factory, I was able to do some sightseeing and shopping. And my hosts arraigned for me to go places that I would never have gotten to on my own.

In this town, everyone walked everywhere (or rode bicycles). I don't mind walking, but I wish I have brought something other than my dress shoes for walking. At the end of the trip, my feet were definitely sore.

When traveling internationally, I try to identify one item that is totally different than what you would find at home. For this trip, it was a street-side cigarette machine.

By the end of the week, all of the problems had been resolved, so I packed my bags with souvenirs for my family, and returned home.

Thank you for reading Tekmos Talks and helping us celebrate 20 plus years.

Sincerely,

Lynn Reed, President

Lynn Reed, President

Travels to Japan

Last month I took a trip to Japan to meet with some of our customers. We have started selling ASIC replacements in Japan. Many Japanese customers had purchased their ASICs from the major Japanese semiconductor vendors. And now, those same vendors have been End-Of-Life-ing their products. This creates the same sort of demand for replacements ASICs as we have seen elsewhere. And now that we have a partner in Solekia, it is a good time to increase our sales in Japan.

I have been to Japan once before, 25 years ago, on a trip to Osaka. I had ventured into their subways, and backed right out again for fear of getting terribly lost because I couldn't read the signs. The fear never left me, and now I was going to have to face it on this trip. Fortunately, I have my smart phone, with its' built in GPS. This allows me to know where I am, even if I can't read a station sign.

As is frequently the case, the fear is worse than the reality. While most station signs were in Japanese, there was always an English sign somewhere, and that was enough to get me to my destination. My hosts were also concerned that I might disappear before an important meeting, so they met me at the hotel each morning to insure that I did arrive where I was supposed to be, and at the correct time. I tried to go totally native, but I do admit to a strange longing every time I passed a McDonalds.

We visited two ASIC customers during my trip to Japan. One was located in Tokyo, while the other was perhaps 200 miles north of Tokyo. I rode the bullet train there at a speed of 150 mph, which was faster than I had been on a train before, with my old record being 100 mph in the UK. It was a nice trip, and I enjoyed looking out the window at the countryside.

That area of Japan was near the reactors that were damaged in the Sendai earthquake, and some of the towns had erected public displays of the current Geiger counter readings. That was interesting, though the readings were just ambient on a sunny day.

I had an additional day of magazine interviews on our ASIC program. Fortunately, I had a good translator. I have tried to retranslate the articles back into English to see what I have been quoted as saying. Apparently it was not too bad, as we have already been getting sales leads from them.

The most difficult part of the trip was the time zones. It wasn’t that I had trouble adapting. That was easy. It was the phone calls I kept getting between 2 and 4 in the morning from the US from people who didn’t realize I was in Japan. It was hard to wake up and participate in a surprise conference call while not sounding like an idiot.

Overall, it was a good trip, and I am looking forward to my next trip to Japan.

Alison Hoenig

Alison Hoenig, Production Control Manager

What are your responsibilities here at Tekmos?

I function as both Sales and Purchasing with some Engineering Test coordination thrown in.  I manage the production of wafers into specific die lots that are built out for each customer’s part.  I oversee tracking the and expediting WIP until it arrives for test at Tekmos and coordinating Engineering Test/Bake and other processes which are identified on a Test Traveler and relayed to the test floor. I also monitor vendors that are utilized to test, probe, and leadscan and assemble certain parts until they return to Tekmos.  Additionally, I field questions from prospective as well as ongoing customers relative to future and existing products, pricing and inventory status. I manage anything involving Customer Service; quoting, processing and acknowledging orders, conveying status of orders and shipping info to customers.  I also administer programming, booking and pulling shipping docs for custom Engineering samples and coordinating details of overseas shipments.  In addition, cutting detailed vendor P.O.’s, Customer Packing Slips, Invoices and Commercial Invoices and setting up new customers in the Accounting System.

What are your favorite tasks or projects to work on here at Tekmos? 

I always enjoy working directly with the customers and distributors, but my favorite task is probably coordinating all details of an assembly build and seeing it through to parts being delivered to the customer.

Can you offer any suggestions to Tekmos clients to make their experience more efficient and successful? 

Be as detailed and specific as possible about your product and order inquiry and our new business team will be able to quote and sample you faster.

Alison came to Tekmos 2 ½ years ago. She has a Certificate in Digital Electronics and started as an Engineering Technician years ago.  She has 17+ years’ experience in the Tech Industry including Government Contract Administration, Engineering, OEM Sales & Marketing, and Engineering Document Control.

Thank you for reading Tekmos Talks and helping us celebrate 20 plus years.

Sincerely,

Lynn Reed, President

Lynn Reed, President

Medical Devices Extended

A large amount of our business is replacing obsolete processors in medical devices. We are happy for the business, but one can ask why so many medical customers want older processors.

When a part goes EOL (end-of-life), existing customers are allowed to make a final purchase that is to cover their needs for the remaining life of their product. This lifetime is determined by the anticipated date for the introduction of the next generation product. However, there have been two developments that have extended the demand of the original products, and that has led to the demand for the mature products that we are seeing.

The first development has been the increase in regulatory coverage for medical parts. It now takes much longer to qualify a new medical device, and that means that the older device remains in production for a longer period, often for years longer. The longer lifetime increases the demand for the component parts beyond that which was originally purchased in the original EOL purchase, and that is where Tekmos comes in.

The second development is also related to increased regulatory oversight. Medical devices frequently require a specialized operator training and qualification. This is expensive and time consuming. So when it becomes time to buy another medical device, customers may prefer to buy more of an older device than to face requalification on the newer device. This also increases the demand for the older products.

Where can you get older parts? Customers have two choices. The gray market may be a solution.

Unfortunately, many of these parts are counterfeit. Even if they are the correct device type, they are frequently used parts that are re-marked as new parts. We have seen x-rays of a lot of 80C186EB devices that identified 3 different lead frames and two different die, which would never occur in a legitimate manufacturing lot. Another consideration with parts from the gray market is that many processors with EEPROM have a maximum number of write cycles. With a used part, there is no way of knowing how many write cycles are left, which is a serious reliability problem. And reliability problems are the last think a medical customer needs.

Fortunately, medical regulations allow for the inclusion of a second sourced part, and that allows our customers to use Tekmos parts in place of the original parts. This is why we design our parts to be exact replacements for the original parts.

Carol Reed, Office Manager

Carol Reed, Office Manager

Carole came to Tekmos 3 years ago to serve as Office Manager. She says, "If it's not engineering or manufacturing, it's me." She wears many hats at Tekmos from the "go to" person for Accounts Payable/Receivable, Inventory, Payroll, Reports, and Human Resources. Her job is to make sure that office operations are running smoothly in the highly charged atmosphere of a fabless manufacturer of semiconductors.

Carole has a BA in Psychology and Economics from Framingham State College in Massachusetts and a Masters in Economics from the University of Georgia.

Carole's communication with customers is often via email as Tekmos is an international company working to provide specialized microchips for automotive, military, industrial, medical and telecommunication applications to the U.S., UK, Canada, South America, Germany, Japan and points in between. She has been known to be one of the voices on the other end of the Tekmos telephone line when business is hectic, which it often is, to offer assistance with customer inquiries and concerns. If you have questions about your Tekmos invoice or payment, Carole is happy to assist you.

Thank you for reading Tekmos Talks and helping us celebrate 20 plus years.

Sincerely,

Lynn Reed, President

Lynn Reed, President

Temporary Plessey Semiconductor Fab Closure

One of our foundries, Plessey Semiconductor was going to be closing their fab for a 6 month period for construction. This warranted a trip to England to determine exactly what was happening.

Plessey Semiconductor has two fab lines: a 6 inch and an 8 inch line. Both are independent, but they share the same building, and there is an overlap in support equipment. We started using this facility in 2004 when it was a part of X-Fab. X-Fab is a foundry, and at the time, this was their leading facility. Later, after X-Fab acquired 1st Silicon, this fab became redundant, and was sold to Plessey. Ironically, the fab was originally built by Plessey, though that corporate Plessey is not related to the current corporate Plessey.

While Plessey has continued to support foundry business, their main industry is an assortment of proprietary products, including high intensity LEDs. The LEDs are being manufactured in the 6 inch line. The 6 inch line was originally a CMOS line, and when it was converted into a GaN (Gallium Nitride) LED line, there were some equipment bottlenecks, particularly in the reactors necessary to produce GaN. So Plessey is shutting down the 6 inch line in order to upgrade it and to install several new GaN reactors.

This did not require shutting down the 8 inch fab. But since Plessey is primarily a standard product company, and since the 8 inch fab is not running at capacity, Plessey realized that if they ran at full capacity for 3 months, then they could put the 8 inch fab in "idle" mode while the 6 inch fab was shut down, and realize significant savings in utilities. And that is what they decided to do.

Obviously, this is not the optimum solution for foundry customers. In addition to requiring us to buy almost a year's worth of production, it also means that we cannot use this fab for the introduction of new products. And that is forcing us to develop a relationship with another foundry for our 0.35u parts.

One good piece of news from the trip was the understanding that there is no problem in resuming operation for the fab. We had originally been concerned that any construction delay might affect the restart date. Since the fabs are separate, then there is no risk of this happening.

From the Desk of Director of Operations, Jon Gehm

Comments on a Customer Audit, from the Tekmos perspective

There are many ways to view a quality audit. The most common would probably involve the gnashing of teeth and a howl of dismay. With the mournful sound, one might find various tactics utilized to try and hide any less than impressive information. There are the attempts to lead an auditor to "safe" zones within the company, or smothering the auditors with food and constant conversation to hopefully distract them from their mission. As a fallback, there is always the straight denial of a problem, or someone in management may simply point a finger at the person next to them when finally caught. Of course a surprised look is mandatory in these situations.

The problem with these and other similar tactics is that the core weaknesses are never truly fixed. The idea of continual improvement can only exist in an environment of honesty about a problem, coupled with a true curiosity as to the root cause and a desire to permanently correct it. A customer audit is perfect for this. These audit teams specialize in finding overlooked weakness in a system. They continually visit multiple companies in the same type of business and are excellent resources to find the best system practice utilized. This information is available through them to you without your competition even knowing, and as an added bonus, this is all done at virtually no cost.

The customer audits, along with useful suggestions for your business, are also much more intensive than a regular certification audit. The customer team actually has skin in the game and a vested interest in your company being the best partner for them that they can find.

Don't run from, but run toward customer audit opportunities. They are the best low cost resource to help find, advice on and fix potential weakness in a system. And in the end, isn't that in the best interest of everyone anyway.

HiTen Conference

I attended the HiTen conference at Oxford. I was presenting a paper, and I wanted to see what others were presenting. The conference was good, and I came away with a number of ideas, including some that I think will improve our data retention for non-volatile EEPROM memories at high temperature.

The conference was at St. Catherine's College. The whole concept of colleges at Oxford is quite different than colleges at US universities. I think that the closest analogy is of a fraternity that also provides tutorials. We stayed in the dorms, and ate in the college dining room. The food was good and exquisitely prepared. Far better than what I remember from my college days.

The only down side was that it was quite warm in England, and many places there do not have air conditioning, including all of Oxford.

After the conference, I went down to visit with Plessey. They were having a sales meeting, and they allowed me to attend their evening meal, where we sat outside (no air conditioning) and discussed business and politics late into the night.

The next day, I met with their management, and left better understanding the reasons behind the upcoming shutdown. While not happy about it, I was pleased to learn that there should be no issue with their restarting their fab on schedule. It was a good and profitable trip.

Thank you for reading Tekmos Talks and helping us celebrate 20 plus years.

Sincerely,

Lynn Reed, President

Welcome to Tekmos Talks July. Last month was an incredibly busy month with next month promising the same. This month's newsletter will talk about the search for a new fab with a temporary fab closure, and about high temperature labels. We will also share Tekmos' "news highlights" of company activities along with revisiting New Year's resolutions, including the launch of new Tekmos products.

Lynn Reed, President

Temporary Plessey Semiconductor Fab Closure

One of our foundries, Plessey Semiconductor, is planning a major fab renovation, and their 200 mm, 0.35u manufacturing line will be down from October 2013 through May 2014.

This came as a surprise to us, particularly since we manufacture about 60% of our material there. We can divide the material into custom product and standard products. A custom product might be an ASIC or a microprocessor with a customer ROM.

We are building over a year's worth of inventory on our standard products. And if that turns out to not be enough, then we will tool it up at another foundry to provide more material.

Custom product is more challenging. We have been doing ASICs for over a decade, and many of those have minimal volumes. In most cases, our die inventory exceeds a year of demand, so there is no problem. We do have a few cases where we are in high volume production of a custom micro. In these cases, we will have to build up a year's worth of inventory to insure that we can meet demand. And what happens if the customer under forecasts and needs more? In that case, we will have to tool that product up at another fab.

The semiconductor industry is volatile. We sell the products we do because other semiconductor companies either discontinued them or went out of business. Our strength at Tekmos is the flexibility to adapt to these changing conditions and do what is necessary to assure a continued flow of product to our customers.

Tekmos News:

Lynn Reed will present his paper A 250 ASIC Technology at the High Temperature Electronics Network (HiTEN) July 8-10, 2013 St. Catherine's College Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom.

Revisiting Tekmos New Year's Resolutions:

Tekmos is bringing out the user programmable versions of our 68XX family. We have the ROM and ROMless versions, and have imnplemented flash. This will include the 68HC05B and C, and the 68HC11D, E, and K families.

• We have expanded our high temperature offerings by incorporating ceramic packaging.
• We are improving NVM performance at 175ºC.
• We are expanding our Japanese sales.

Tekmos Product Development:

We have started work on the TK68HC805P18, TK68HC811E2 and TK80C186EC.

We will tape out new product TK68HC11EA.

We are sampling 2 new parts: TK68HC711E9 and TK68HC711E20.

We have sampled our largest ASIC yet, using a gate array with 1/2 million gates.

Tekmos new product. This is a user programmable version of a previous part. We have production quantities available.

• TK68HC711D3

High Temperature Labels

About half of our micro shipments are user programmable. Unfortunately, our different technology means that for the most part, we are not supported by commercial programmers. And so if the customer is not using something like ISP (In System Programming), then we have to program and label the parts for them.

We can easily program the parts on our automated testers. Indeed, for larger customers, we include the programming as part of the final test.

The difficult part is in the labels. We have to have a label and ink that will survive the RoHS surface mount temperature profile of about 250C and the subsequent board cleanings. And the inexpensive Avery labels won't stand up in that environment.

It turns out that you can buy Kevlar labels that will stand up, and this is what we use. We also use our barcode printer with the plastic film ink. The only problem with this is that when we load the labels into the printer, it will waste about two feet of them as it goes through the alignment cycle. Since that is about $10 worth of labels, this causes me pain, especially since I have to change the labels out when we are done to switch back to regular bar codes.

Eventually, we will replace this with a laser writer. We have one that we bought at auction, but it is in storage now since we are very short on floor space in our manufacturing area.

For more information on: Tekmos packaging and labels...

Thank you for reading Tekmos Talks and helping us celebrate 20 plus years.

Sincerely,

Lynn Reed, President

Welcome to the June edition of Tekmos Talks 2013. Last month was an incredibly busy month with our biggest order yet. This month's newsletter will talk about how customers find us and the process we take from introduction to shipment. We will also share Tekmos' "news highlights" of company activities including the launch of new Tekmos products.

Lynn Reed, President

Finding Tekmos

Tekmos provides replacements for obsolete ASICs and microcontrollers. Our customers are those who manufacture systems that have a long lifetime, and are frequently under regulatory control or have technical reasons for not replacing their design. As a result, they really need our product. The job of our sales team is to find them.

But finding them is tough. Most sales forces call on the design teams, since that is where components are designed in. However, since obsolescence tends to hit the manufacturing side, opportunities are frequently missed by the normal sales channels. If we can't find them, then we have to make it easier for the customer to find us, and that means advertising.

Twenty years ago, advertising was much simpler. There were a number of free trade magazines that were delivered to key individuals. All you had to do was to create a clever ad, and wait for the customer to call you. That was then, and now the internet has killed the magazines. Perhaps a fifth of our incoming calls are from the magazines themselves, begging us to accept a free subscription.

Nowadays, advertising is being listed by a search engine. I just did a search for obsolete ASIC, and out of 8.2M hits, we were number 32. Not bad, considering a number of hits were for ASIC tennis shoes.

Search engine advertising is a two prong effort. The main activity is through web content, the more, the better. And that is the main reason we have this newsletter and our blogs. The second prong involves the purchase of ads that are linked to key words.

Generally, key words are not expensive, and we can usually get top ad placement. But there are two downsides.

Does this work? It does for us.

A month ago, a major manufacturer had run out of a specific microcontroller. Their product was controlled by the FDA, and they faced a serious shortfall in sales if they were unable to locate additional microcontrollers. They had tried the surplus market, but had only found counterfeits, and they could not take that risk.

Then they found us using the internet. Their first level of checking was to examine our web site, and we passed. Their second step was to make a day trip to Texas from Europe (!) to see if we were real, and we passed that test too. We negotiated a contract, and we are now designing a new variant of one of our micros that will be out this fall.

It makes writing this newsletter totally worthwhile.

Tekmos Quality Control

To better improve Tekmos Quality Control and Production we are pleased to introduce and welcome new Tekmos Team Members:

Rick Holman, Senior Design Engineer, will be working in microcontrollers.

Lucas Abel, Summer Intern, will be working in manufacturing.

Vishnu Reddy, Summer Intern, will be working in manufacturing.

Allen Reed, Summer Intern, will be working in engineering area.

Tekmos News:

We reached our highest volume order in Tekmos history for the 100,000 piece single order for TK68HC05J1A microcontroller, making May a busy month.

Lynn Reed's paper on High Temperature ASIC's has been accepted for presentation at the High Temperature Electronics Network (HiTEN) July 8-10, 2013 at St. Catherine's College Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom.

Tekmos Product Development:

We have booked the development of TK68HC805P18.

We will tape out new product TK68HC11EA.

We are sampling 2 new parts: TK68HC711E9 and TK68HC711E20.

Thank you for reading Tekmos Talks and helping us celebrate 20 plus years.

Sincerely,

Lynn Reed, President

Welcome to Tekmos Talks May. This month's newsletter will talk about FPGA Conversions and will share Tekmos' "news highlights" of company activities including the launch of new Tekmos products.

Lynn Reed, President

FPGA Conversions

An FPGA Conversion consists of creating an ASIC from the same design files that were used to make an FPGA.  Customers do this to either replace an FPGA that has been discontinued, or as a cost reduction for a product that has increased in volume.  The main tradeoff in an FPGA conversion is the expense of the NRE against a lower unit cost.  This number breaks even with a volume of about 1000 units.  For obsolete FPGAs, the cost of the NRE has to be contrasted against the other options of a system redesign or the availability of parts on the gray market.

Tekmos asks several questions before doing an FPGA conversion.  How big is the design?  How fast is it?  How much RAM does it contain?  How many pins does the design use? What type of package is required?  Does it contain someone else's IP?  Are there simulations? There are reasons behind these questions.

How big is the design?

This question may also be phrased as "What is the utilization?"  Both questions yield the design size.  The design size determines the size of the ASIC necessary to implement it, and that determines the cost.  The size also roughly corresponds with the amount of engineering work that we will have to do during the conversion.  And that has an impact on the NRE charges.

How fast is it?

This is our way of determining the process technology that I will need to implement the ASIC in.  FPGAs have been technology drivers, and are always pushing the wafer fabrication limits.  Fortunately, an ASIC can be 2 to 3 generations behind an FPGA, and still provide the same performance.  This is because a gate is inherently faster than the CLBs used inside of the FPGA for logic functions.  Also, many customers do not use the FPGA anywhere near its speed capability.  If we can use an older technology, we may substantially reduce both the NRE and unit price.

How much RAM does it contain?

Starting in the 1990s, the FPGA manufacturers began including large amounts of RAM in their designs.  This makes it difficult to replace an FPGA with an older technology ASIC.  And using the same technology increases the NRE costs, which in turn increases the minimum break-even volume.  Of course, even if an FPGA contains 8 MB of RAM doesn’t mean that the design is using it.  By knowing the RAM size, we can determine that a less expensive technology can be used.

How many pins does the design use?

Many FPGAs come in a high pinout package.  Frequently, ASICs are pad-limited.  This means that the area of the ASIC is determined by the pitch of the bonding pads along the side; in this case, the cost is proportional to the square of the number of pads.  If the customer is using fewer pads, we can use a smaller ASIC.

The test cost may be affected by the pin count.  Inexpensive testers are generally limited to about 256 pins.  The test costs increase for the 256 to 512 pin range, and they become very expensive above 512 pins.

Using fewer pins can also allow for the use of less expensive packages.

What type of package is required?     

Many FPGAs come in a BGA package.  These packages are usually not open-tooled, and thus require an additional NRE to create the substrate.  This affects the NRE.

Does the design contain someone else's IP? 

There are cases where the customer does not own their own design.  For example, if your design uses an FPGA with a built-in PowerPC processor, then we can’t make the ASIC until a license for the PowerPC is acquired.  Even if the license is available, the expense of the license may make the project uneconomical.

Are there simulations?

We need logic simulations to do a successful FPGA conversion.  We cannot use SCAN, because while SCAN will verify that every gate is functional, it will not help to determine if the design will still work in the ASIC technology.  FPGAs use CLBs, and ASICs use gates.  So while an inverter and a NOR gate have the same CLB speed in an FPGA, their speeds are quite different in an ASIC.  We need the simulations to exercise the design, and prove that the FPGA design still works as an ASIC. 

We will frequently use our simulations to verify on our tester that the FPGA design matches the proposed ASIC.  This is a good way to catch the occasional case where the design files don’t match the production version of the code used to program the FPGA.

Implementation

For most FPGAs, it takes about 4 weeks to convert the design, and another 8 weeks to manufacture prototypes.  Production can begin about 2 weeks after prototype acceptance.

Tekmos Quality Control

To better improve Tekmos Quality Control we have implemented a re-design of how Tekmos parts are shipped around the world.

• We have a new method of strapping trays together.
• The new inner boxes are designed to exactly fit our trays.
• New outer boxes that are easily identifiable with the Tekmos logo, fit our inner boxes exactly.

We can ship your design efficiently anywhere in the world you require. Tekmos is always looking for ways to improve customer satisfaction.

Tekmos News:

We reached our highest volume order in Tekmos history for the 100,000 piece single order for TK68HC05J1A microcontroller, making May a busy month.

Lynn Reed's paper on High Temperature ASIC's has been accepted for presentation at the High Temperature Electronics Network (HiTEN) July 8-10, 2013 at St. Catherine's College Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom.

Tekmos Product Development:

We have taped out the new product TK68HC11EA and are making prototypes.

We are sampling 2 new parts: TK68HC711E9 and TK68HC711E20.

We are also proud to announce tape out on our largest ASIC yet, using a gate array with 1/2 million gates.

Tekmos new product. This is a user programmable version of a previous part. We have production quantities available.

• TK68HC711D3

Thank you for reading Tekmos Talks and helping us celebrate 20 plus years.

Sincerely,

Lynn Reed, President

Lynn Reed, President

High Temperature Testing

We recently had a requirement to test some parts at 150ºC. In order to do that, we use a temperature forcing probe. This is a washing machine size box with an arm that holds a test chamber. The machine can force hot and cold air into the test chamber, and allow us to raise the temperature to any desired value. It is not fast, and can take a minute to reach the final temperature, but it works.

One problem is that the bottom of the temperature chamber is open, and so if we don't do anything, we will also raise our tester to 150ºC. Testers are finicky, and would prefer to be at 25ºC. In order to prevent problems, we need a thermal insulator to put around the part. They sell a rubber sheet that is pretty good, but rather expensive. And we needed a solution that day. So we went over to Bed, Bath and Beyond, and bought silicon cooking mats. These were trimmed to the desired size, and augmented with a lower layer of insulator, and this worked fine.

We have a future requirement for testing parts at 175C. In this case, we are beginning to exceed the temperature range of our probe, and so we will build an extension cable, and test parts directly in one of our ovens. The silicon mats won't be good for us, but the Bed Bath and Beyond oven mitts will definitely be useful.

Protecting Your IP

Circuits built out of standard products are inherently insecure, because anyone can purchase the components. There are protection bits for software but these can be overcome, particularly for the common processors.

One method of protecting IP that is extremely difficult to get around is including a custom component, such as an ASIC. The thief is faced with a choice of either reverse engineering the ASIC, or redesigning an equivalent system. Both approaches take time and money. If the requirements for time and money are high enough, then the thief will find alternative targets.

An ASIC can be reverse-engineered. We know, since we regularly reverse engineer obsolete processors. But it is difficult, and a time consuming process, typically taking a year or more to accomplish. Tekmos uses a gate array architecture in our ASICs, and that makes it more difficult to reverse engineer, since it lacks regular structures that assist in the reverse engineering effort.

If protecting a design is critical, we can take additional measures to protect it. First, we can combine the logic with additional, non-functional logic. Generally, the time to reverse engineer a design is related to the size of the design. Making the design larger increases the time to reverse engineer it.

As part of the data base preparation, we must add a fill pattern that raises the average metal density to 50%. Normally, this pattern is just rectangles. But we can make this pattern appear to be interconnected. And as before, the more interconnect, the harder it is to decode.

And finally, we can use invisible implants to disguise the true function of transistors. Thus, what appears to be a typical NAND gate might be an inverter instead, with one non-working input. Known as "gotchas", these can kill a copied design and take a long time to debug.

Working together, we can protect your design to the level you require.

Tekmos News:

Lynn Reed's paper on High Temperature ASIC's has been accepted for presentation at the High Temperature Electronics Network (HiTEN) July 8-10, 2013 at St. Catherine's College Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom.

As of March 1, 2013 Tekmos had an all time best record month for shipment of processors.

Tekmos Product Development:

We are sampling 2 new parts: TK68HC711E9 and TK68HC711E20

We are also proud to announce tape out on our largest ASIC yet, using a gate array with 1/2 million gates.

Thank you for reading Tekmos Talks and helping us celebrate 20 plus years.

Sincerely,

Lynn Reed, President

Welcome to Tekmos Talks March.

This month's newsletter will continue to elaborate on Tekmos' New Year Resolutions, talk about Tekmos' Giant white board, and "news highlights" of company activities including the launch of new Tekmos products.

Lynn Reed, President

Alternative Packages

One of the biggest challenges we face in the replacement of obsolete parts is replacing the obsolete packages. We can re-create designs and implement them in new technologies, but we don't have the same flexibility for the packages. And while newer packages are easily available, there may be engineering or regulatory reasons why we cannot change the existing PC board to accommodate a newer package.

If a given package is not offered by one of our main assembly vendors, we first search to see if anyone else in the world offers it. The initial step is to look at their web sites and see what they offer. This is harder than it seems. The web sites may not be in English, and they may not be updated. We have frequently inquired, only to find that a specific package is no longer offered. The contact information is also challenging. And a given vendor may not be interested in what is for them a very small piece of business.

The cost is frequently higher from smaller vendors. Many have optimized their business around military work, and that can result in an increase of $20 per part to cover the packaging alone.

Some packages are just not obtainable. In those cases, we have to build an adapter card. We have used adapter cards for 56-pin SDIPs, 84-pin PGAs, and 84- and 132-pin BQFPs.

Tekmos' Giant White Board

They say that everything is bigger in Texas. Well, that isn't just true for cattle ranches, six shooters and Big Tex at the Texas State Fair. The saying also includes the ideas, dreams and goals that guide our lives, and even direct our companies. In fact, in most offices there is actually a place where ideas and goals meet reality. It is usually a small thing, placed on a wall, or near a desk. Its importance is often, and sometimes even hastily, replaced by technology or a software generated spreadsheet. That often neglected area where ideas can find a home is the simple white board.

At Tekmos, we didn't want just any white board. Our ideas are just too big for that. We need a white board that can handle the Texas size job our customers expect and our designs achieve. We needed a giant, Texas size white board to even start to handle the job. I am proud to say that our management goals and customer needs now have a place to call home. A place where they can come together, take root, and be nurtured and grow from birth of idea to designed creation. Where they are brought to life in the manufacturing flow, and carefully watched to their final arrival at our customers waiting receiving dock. We now have that white board. If it isn't the biggest in Texas, it should be. It certainly contains the biggest ideas and solutions to be found, across this state or any other, and maybe even across the whole world. Come see it sometime.

From the Desk of Jon Gehm, Director of Operations

Tekmos Sales News:

Tekmos has shipped over 15,000 microcontrollers for a major medical products company in February.

Thank you for reading Tekmos Talks and helping us celebrate 20 plus years.

Sincerely,

Lynn Reed, President

Welcome to Tekmos Talks February. The theme for the month is red for Valentine's Day and Wear Red for Heart Awareness. In the spirit of that, note our "red flash" photo for this month's topic on flash memories.

This month's newsletter will elaborate on a couple of Tekmos' New Year Resolutions, and feature one of our manufacturing reps along with "news highlights" of company activities including the launch of 3 new Tekmos products.

Lynn Reed, President

Microcontrollers with Flash Memories

Many of the microcontrollers that Tekmos makes originally used OTP (one time programmable) EPROM for program storage. EPROM is an older and specialized process, and we have had technical issues in incorporating it on our devices. Instead, we have purchased 4 MB flash memories, and used a stacked die assembly technique to incorporate it on our designs. This is invisible to the user from an applications point of view.

This approach has many advantages, but it is not without issues.

The Regulator

Flash memories are 3.3 volt devices, and our microcontrollers are typically 5 volt devices. This requires us to include a voltage regulator in our design. This regulator must have a very fast response time, since the flash current goes from microamps to 50 mA within a microsecond. Our regulator does this, but at a price of about 175 microamps of standby current. We must also have internal level translators to go between the 3.3 volt flash and the 5 volt microcontroller.

Programming

Our flash is not the same as the original EPROM. It requires 3.3 volts to program and it also requires a special algorithm to do the programming. Many of the original parts used from 13 to 18 volts to program the EPROM. If these voltages are applied to our part, it could be destroyed. Most 3rd party programmers do not support Tekmos. We just don't have the customer base to interest them. As a result, we wind up pre-programming the parts before they are shipped.

Extra Memory

The flash contains an abundance of memory. If we need a security bit, we will typically use a whole sector of 512K bits for it. For our 87C751 microcontroller, it originally came with 2K bytes. We have given it the full 64K memory space, and still have 448K bytes left over.

Oxide Reliability

Last year, Tekmos introduced many 68HC05 and 68HC11 microcontrollers. Most of these devices contained small amounts of EEPROM. EEPROM is a non-volatile memory (NVM) that requires a special process to make. And as with all NVMs, it is subject to two unique failure mechanisms that must be tested and verified.

The write and subsequent erase of a NVM stresses the oxide used to create the NVM. After repeated write / erase cycles, the oxide will fail. The minimum number of write / erase cycles is specified at 10,000 cycles at 85ºC. The actual number of cycles you can do before failure is heavily dependent on the temperature and on the fab processing. Checking the number of cycles is a destructive test, so it can only be done on a sample of parts. We use oxide testing as part of our ongoing reliability monitors.

We have customers that want to use our parts at 175ºC. This requires us to characterize the parts up to 200ºC. I should note that what appears to be a more than adequate number of cycles at 85ºC is greatly reduced at the elevated temperatures.

The second failure mechanism is data retention, or charge storage. We specify that a memory will remember for 10 years at 85ºC. We guarantee that by writing a pattern into the processors, and then baking the wafers at 260ºC for 24 hours. After the bake, we re-probe the wafers and insure that the pattern is still there. The main failure mechanism for data retention is traces of poly left on the wafer after the poly etch. These provide conductive paths that allow charge to be leaked from one bit to an adjacent bit.

We verify the data retention by running parts at extended temperatures for long periods of time. Like the oxide failures, the charge storage is a function of temperature, and so we evaluate it at higher temperatures.

These tests are incorporated into our ongoing reliability monitors for the Tekmos products.

Tekmos shipped another medical ASIC in January.

Tekmos Product Development:

Tekmos has introduced 3 new products in January. These are user programmable versions of previous parts. They are being sampled now, and we will have production quantities available in March.

• TK68HC711D3
• TK68HC711E9
• TK68HC711E20

Manufacturing Representative Highlight:

Marbach Elektronik GmbH of Germany is our featured manufacturing representative.

Regardless of the product or manufacturer, Marbach Elektronik's main focus is to solve the problems of our customers. We offer advice and assistance, tools and solutions to reduce development time. Last but not least "time to market" has become an important success factor. Our focus is based on the following products and their peripherals:

• Power LED solutions
• Energy efficiency / Power supply products
• Obsolescence / end-of-life management

Reliable delivery is one of our hallmarks. Your production supply is in good hands with us. From the choice of the appropriate product over storage and logistic solutions up to the discontinuation of the component - and beyond - we ensure your supply, together with our manufacturers.

Thank you for reading Tekmos Talks and helping us celebrate 20 plus years.

Sincerely,

Lynn Reed, President

Lynn Reed, President

"Jumping Through Hoops"

A normal gate array prototype cycle takes about 8 weeks. There is a week to make masks, 3 weeks for wafer processing, another 2 weeks for assembly, a week for test and bake, and a final week that taken by shipping between the various stages.

Sometimes, 8 weeks is too long, particularly if a customer faces a lines-down situation. In these cases, expedites can help to reduce the total cycle to under 3 weeks.

The first part of an expedite is to pay the wafer fab to turn the lot into a hot lot (or bullet lot). This will reduce the fab and mask time from 4 weeks to about 10 days.

Expediting the assembly is more complicated. Most overseas manufacturers are pretty efficient, and an expedite will reduce their cycle time from two weeks to about 1 week. This is dependent on their capacity at any given time.

Domestic assemblers are an option, but they must have the tooling for the specific package you need. With expedites, that can usually turn a package in 2 to 3 days. And there is an additional time savings to be had from the reduced shipping times.

Another option is to use a "glob-top" approach. This involves taking an existing package, cutting a hold in it, and removing the original die. The new die is put into the cavity and bonded. Then it is covered with plastic, resulting in a package that is physically identical to the original. There are potential reliability issues, so glob-tops are only for engineering prototypes. Either approach will deliver assembled parts in about 3 days.

Another 2 days can be saved by eliminating bake if the customer plans to either use a socket, or to hand solder the part on the board.

When all of this is taken together, expedites can reduce the cycle time down to a little over 2.5 weeks.

I should note that an expedite charge covers a best effort, and is not a guarantee of ultimate performance. Still, it had a very high probability of delivering parts in a third of the normal cycle time.

2013 New Year Resolutions

The New Year is the time for New Year's resolutions. One of the fun things about being president is that I get to make the New Year's resolutions for everyone else. And here they are:

• Bring out the user programmable versions of our 68XX family. We have the ROM and ROMless versions, and now we will add flash. This will include the 68HC05B and C, and the 68HC11D, E, and K families.
• Expand our high temperature offerings by incorporating ceramic packaging.
• Work on improving NVM performance at 175ºC.
• Bring out 0.18 micron ASICs.
• Expand our Japanese sales.

Quality New Year Resolutions

• Complete the AEC-Q100 product qualification studies on our 68XX families.
• Study oxide integrity at 175ºC.
• Set-up an ongoing reliability monitor.

Manufacturing New Year Resolutions

• Develop an alternative for the PLCC 52 package.
• Add a wafer probe capability.
• Add a lead scan capability.
• Add a high temperature test capability.

Thank you for reading Tekmos Talks and helping us celebrate 20 plus years.

Sincerely,

Lynn Reed, President