Highlights this week: 🎤 an interview with FixturFab, 💰 Google's hw acquisition spree, and 🌎 the environmental footprint of IC fabrication.
🔗 Last week’s most-clicked link: Podcast on the history and business of Cadence Design Systems.
⚡️ Analog Interviews: Joe Selvik and Duncan Lowder from FixturFab
Startup News 🚀💰:
- Google is on an acquisition spree. 4 startups in the past 15 months: Synaptics ($35M), Dysonics, RevX Technologies, and TemPow ($17.4M).
- Diamond Age, a startup using 3D printing and robotics to make home construction significantly cheaper, raised a $50M series A led by Prime Movers Lab, along with Signia Venture Partners and seed investors Alpaca VC, Dolby Family Ventures, Timber Grove Ventures and Gaingels.
- Breadboard, a startup building a digitized supply chain for electronics manufacturers, raised a $1M pre-seed round from Bienville Capital.
- Zeta Surgical, a YC startup delivering precise surgical imaging guidance for non-invasive surgeries, raised a $5.2M seed round led by Innospark Ventures.
- Alice&Bob, a quantum computing startup, raised a $30M series A co-led by Elaia, Bpifrance, and Supernova Invest, with participation also from Breegato.
Interesting Links 🔗:
- Detailed dive into the environmental footprint of CMOS IC’s. Interestingly, the analysis shows a significant increase in electricity (x3.46), ultrapure water consumption (x2.3), and greenhouse gas emissions (x2.5) per wafer from the 28nm to the 2nm nodes.
- The famous Linear Technologies analog circuit designer, Bob Pease, was a pioneer in the analog IC world. Here’s a compilation of many of Pease’s application notes around troubleshooting analog IC’s.
- Digi-Key is a $3B+ electronic component distributor that, to our knowledge, is owned entirely by its original founder. DK operates in a rural town in Northwest Minnesota -- Thief River Falls -- and has such a large presence there that many of the local businesses and restaurants accept “Digi-Bucks” as a valid form of payment. Incredible.
- An interesting study analyzing the impact of the battery weight on the endurance time of a hovering eVTOL aircraft. Turns out, doubling the battery weight only yields a very expensive 9% endurance increase while increasing the power requirement by a factor of 185%.
- Last week, Nvidia lost proprietary information to a group of hackers. A cybercriminal gang called “Lapsus$” has leaked Nvidia passwords, schematics, drivers and firmware. They’re threatening to release more information unless cryptocurrency mining limiters on its gaming cards are removed and its GPU drivers are made open source. The hackers are now targeting other large companies, including Ubisoft.
- One of the best breakdowns of Tesla’s custom autopilot hardware and SoC. Camera data comes in through what is labeled as “Input” at a maximum rate of 2.5 billion pixels per second, which roughly equates to 21 Full HD 1080p screens at 60 frames per second. This a hell of a lot more data than the currently installed sensors create.
- Out of an overall global chip market of roughly $550 billion, Russia consumes roughly 0.1%, or about $500 million worth of semiconductors a year. But even though Russia doesn’t import a large quantity of chips relative to other countries, a disruption such as the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and others could have outsize impacts. Protocol analyzed 146,000 Russian customs records from 2017 through July of 2021. Infineon, an analog chipmaker based in Germany, exports the largest dollar value of loose chips to Russia.
- In 2017, the US government issued a comprehensive survey on the domestic PCB market. Some really interesting findings, like: the most difficult positions to hire/retain are CAM, Process Engineering, Plating Techs, and Drilling Techs. The biggest competitive advantages over China-based manufacturers seem to be lead time and quality.
One Interesting Picture 📸: trajectory 🧨
