Ever heard of Potato Semiconductor?

No, I hadn't heard of them, and I real all the usual mags. They look a little strange. The technology is "patented" but they cite no numbers and a quick patent search turns up nothing.

How can a simple inverter have a 0.8 ns rise/fall time and be good for

They spec their max frequencies with 2 pF loads, so one of their parts won't drive even one of their own parts at the promoted speeds; what good is that?

One might almost suspect them of rebranding other parts. There are lots of other peoples' parts with typical performance like this, some better.

One problem with running CMOS at high speeds is power consumption. They don't mention this in any usable form.

Their English is atrocious.

John

Fabless...

Potato Semiconductor Corporation is a private fabless IC design house which locates in San Jose, California.

In and Out via CMOS, probably CML or PECL inside...

By applying our powerful industry-leading technology in IO interface, logic cells & special design rule, we can design most of existing chips with higher frequency, higher performance, higher reliability, and less noise.

Taiwan

...Jim Thompson

The site has been registered since 2004. The owner's address is in San Jose, CA. He has an Asian surname.

As Larkin said, the guy plays fast and loose with specs.

Why ecl inside? CMOS logic can already get down to sub-100 ps logic functions "inside", as is common in fpga's and high-end processors. The speed problem is i/o.

I've seen no patents assigned to Potato, or to their guru, Richard Kao.

Design center is in San Jose. Fab is said to be by TSMC. They may be real, but the specs are dicey.

John

Pico-second speeds in CMOS are power hogs... my usual design cross-over point is around 250-300MHz.

In a WiFi repeater chip I come from 5GHz down to 250MHz in CML, then CMOS.

...Jim Thompson

-- snip --

Yes, but you went to school back when "circuit design" meant "circuit design", not "simulating things you don't understand on software you don't understand using a process you don't understand."

Yep. I was educated 1958-1962 BC (before computers ;-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

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A wee bit scary to buy semiconductors from a company with a corporate head office and design center that looks like this:

But if Mr. Kao's designs are good...

Interesting that their other site language is simplified (Mainland, not HK or Taiwan) Chinese, and that they also have a .cn site. I wouldn't have thought there was that much marked on the mainland for this kind of stuff.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Are you sure it wasn't "Before Curmudgeons"? ;-)

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Sporadic E is the Earth's aluminum foil beanie for the 'global warming' sheep.

I'm certified ;-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

Due to excessive spam, gmail, googlegroups, UAR, AIOE are blocked!

FPGAs manage a million gates at 600 MHz or so. Some of the cmos LVDS parts run at a couple of GHz. It deosn't seem like simple gates and flops would be a power problem in cmos.

John

The core is probably running on 1.2V or 1.8V. That's just ducky when you have a multi-voltage process available to you. I've had occasional projects that do that.

BTW: 600MHz is just a little over an octave above 250MHz ;-)

...Jim Thompson

=A0 =A0 =A0 ...Jim Thompson

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0= =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0| Must have been a crap university - the University of Melbourne in Australia had a computer on-site from 1956

I used to take my punched cards over to CSIRAC in the Physics Department in 1963. CSIRAC wasn't running then, and the punched cards were taken from there to the university's IBM 7040/44 which was located at the IBM office downtown at that time. The following year the 7040/44 got shifted up to the university, and I eventually qualified to operate it - I did most of my number crunching for my Ph.D. project hands-on between 2.00am and 6.00am on that machine. The electronic engineers kept the 11.00pm to 2.00am slot more or less permantently booked.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I suppose that, for some people, being offensive is more important than being right.

John

Yes, but only for ten years, till you are promoted to "Annoying Curmudgeons". :(

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Thompson

Actually, I was exaggerating. The first IBM all-transistor mainframe was in place at MIT before 1960, the year I took summer courses in FAP and Fortran... and there was a tube version before that.

I also used a DEC PDP-8 to compose my thesis.

...Jim Thompson

=A0 =A0 =A0 ...Jim Thompson

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0|

IIRR Jim claims to have gone to MIT, and MIT would have had a computer back then - maybe even more than one. If he managed to be unaware of this, it would suggest that he has been out of touch with reality for quite some time now.

Pointing this out may be offensive - but Jim seems to go out of his way to be offensive about me, so I can't see why you are getting upset about that.

You also claim that I've posted something that isn't true, which - since I can't find any error of fact in my post - I do find offensive. I'd be grateful if you would do me the courtesy of identifying this error of fact. Or apologising if if you can't.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

You, who make consistent, deliberate efforts to be pompous and ill-mannered, want an apology? What a jerk.

And MIT is not, and was not, a "crap university." The MIT RadLab invented modern electronics.

John

Hey, I had a PDP-8 (my *own* PDP-8) when I was still an undergrad at Tulane. 4K of 12-bit core and an ASR-33. I did control system simulations for the turbine control systems on steamships, among other amusements.

The PDP-8 was a horrible logic design, full of RC's and delay lines and terrible stuff. The first PDP-11 wasn't a lot better; only the later machines approached a proper disciplined, synchronous logic design.

Tulane had a 704, or maybe it was a 7094, as the main campus computer. All tubes, but hardware floating-point!

But nobody that I knew did circuit simulation in those days.

John