Re: Ever heard of Potato Semiconductor?

On Sat, 5 Jul 2008 22:03:55 -0700 (PDT), Al Borowski
<al.borowski@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi all,

Whilst looking for some high speed logic, I encounted a company called
Potato Semiconductor (http://www.potatosemi.com/2007/index.html). They
have some rather fast logic chips (1GHz or so). Has anyone used any of
their parts?

Two things about their website stand out:

1) If you try to buy online, you are taken to an Ebay store. Fair
enough, I guess. Saves having to reinvent the wheel.

2) If you click "About us" you get the following text:

"Why called Potatosemi as Brand?

We are the IC design house making chips. Potato chips are the most
popular chips in the world. They are high volume, low price & taste
good. All of the people like to eat them. All of the people are happy
with them. This is exactly our goals. We will like to make our chips
as popular as potato chips, as high volume as potato chips, as low
price as potato chips. All of the computers & electronics devices like
our chips' taste. All of the people like to use them because they are
easy to use & all of the people are happy with potato chips. "

This is great. I wish more companies websites were like this.


Cheers,

Al

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
1.1 GHz? Their datasheets are very poorly specified, but their
definition of "risetime" is nonstandard, something like 25-75%.

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



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