RE: MISC reflections

["John Griessen" <john_g@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Vic,

I know what you mean about the high ante required for silicon 
printing jobs...I've just been working as a contractor to Atmel
and taped out some designs that combine a computer and radio 
on one chip to do a remote key entry system, (RKE), that 
probably will be in Volkswagens in three years.  I don't 
even know the price if I was to hire Atmel to process my 
own chip!  it's just not in reach.

Something to watch is Ball semiconductor, (ballsemi.com), 
who are focusing on the sensor market they say, and promise 
to make silicon photolithography on
1mm spheres.  That boggles.  lenses to focus on a sphere 
surface are weird!  Point-wise laser printing of 
photoresist on spheres is more imaginable to me, yet 
they are working on lens systems.  
They seem to be planning on sections that are relatively square,
with low res connections between where the mirror/lens system 
is distorted.

I like Mike Simon's idea of a low cost Forth test bed for 
FPGA's, and am thinking about getting that with the adapter 
for XC4000 Xilnx 5V FPGAs to make a chip programmer as 
a contract job for a company that has some of that 
market already for PICs and related micros.

Know any good transistor arrays?  FET's 8 or more per 
package?  (can't find any 16 volt FPGA's).  Know of any 
16 volt FPGA's?  If such existed, a power processr
could be encoded in an FPGA so as to connect and measure 
5V, 12V, gnd at any of 40 pins to make a chip programmer 
that would be very inexpensive and universal...

Back to work on test chips for Atmel's 
processor/eeprom/flash/radio ASIC work, and a little 
delving into a chip programmer pin driver circuit.

John G

> -----Original Message-----

> Too bad that implementation is such an expensive game;  I have one
> CPU design that I did while a teenager, that I still think would kick
> ass!
> 
> 
> cheers   - vic
> 
>