Highlights this week:⚡️ the three ages of fpga's, 🏭 world class manufacturing, and 🧪 conductive vs non-conductive via fill.
🔗 Last week’s most-clicked link: The DarkAero 1 is the coolest aircraft you’ve never heard of.
⚡️ Analog Interviews: ICYMI — Markell Baldwin, Partner at Drive Capital
Startup News 🚀💰:
- Backbone, the creator of an iPhone gaming controller raised $40 million in a Series A round led by Index Ventures.
- RightHand Robotics the logistics robotics company raised $66 million in a Series C led by Safar Partners.
- Beam, a shared micro-mobility operator raised $93 million in a Series B led by Affirma Capital.
- Stämm Biotech, a startup developing a desktop-sized bioreactor raised $17 million in a Series A round led by Varana.
Interesting Links 🔗:
- Great video walking through a fully integrated digital LDO voltage regulator based on event-driven control architecture. This allows for low latency and low power consumption, along with being able to shrink the off-chip output capacitor with a more digital approach.
- Highlights from the IPC 2233 design standard for flex and rigid-flex circuits. “For 3 layers or more IPC recommends, whenever possible, configuring the flex layers as independent pairs rather than laminating all the flex layers together into one stack. This configuration is referred to as an “air gap” construction due to the open space between flex layers.”
- A 1-bit vacuum tube computer running at just +24V and -12V, inspired by the Motorola MC14500 1-bit ICU chip.
- The three ages of FPGA's. “Since their introduction, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have grown in capacity by more than a factor of 10,000 and in performance by a factor of 100. Cost and energy per operation have both decreased by more than a factor of 1000.”
- World Class Manufacturing (WCM) is the philosophy of being the best, the fastest, and the lowest cost producer of a product or service. Here’s a great introduction.
- There are many theories of how lift is generated. Unfortunately, many of the theories found in encyclopedias, on web sites, and even in some textbooks are incorrect. NASA debunks these popular theories and provides insight on true causes of lift.
- Simple brief on the different types of via fills and their advantages (and disadvantages – especially when it comes to manufacturing. Like, choosing nonconductive over conductive via fill for manufacturability).
- Jean Yang, founder of Akita Software, wrote a strong article on “building for 99% developer”. “It matters to talk about the 99% Developers because these are the developers building the software that powers our lives — insurance, health care, retail, and banking, just to name a few. It’s not only small companies that can’t easily adopt the processes of modern, tech-first companies; it’s most companies that were not built around technology and that have decades of legacy software practices firmly in place.”
- UMC plans to build a new $5B advanced manufacturing facility next to its existing 300mm fab in Singapore. The first phase of this greenfield fab will have a monthly capacity of 30,000 wafers with production expected to commence in late 2024.
- Intel has chosen the east German city of Magdeburg as the site for a new multibillion-euro European chip factory.
One Interesting Picture 📸: IC Packaging 📦
