Hoarded kit pays dividends for legacy IC designs

Carefully preserved data reading equipment built in the 1970s is allowing integrated circuit specialist Micro Circuit Engineering to win new business in the 21st century.

Carefully preserved data reading equipment built in the 1970s is allowing integrated circuit specialist Micro Circuit Engineering (MCE) to win new business in the 21st century.

While continuing to invest in the latest technology, MCE has over the years also stored and maintained some obsolete data readers previously used in integrated circuit design.

This old technology is now giving the company a competitive advantage in the replication of electronic components for existing 'long lifetime' systems which need to be maintained and supported.

Typical applications are military and industrial hardware which needs to be retained in service for many years.

Replacement components often cannot be obtained in such situations because the manufacturer no longer produces them.

MCE is then called on to produce new ASICs or customised FPGAs to match existing components MCE has kept in service several otherwise obsolete data readers - some originally built in the 1970s - so that it can gain access to original chip design information.

Data stored on tape, for example, can be read and transferred to modern design tools to enable a netlist to be generated.

In extreme cases, where no design data exists, it may be possible to reverse engineer the device by inspecting a known good die to extract a net list.

In many applications, where equipment is being upgraded as part of a refurbishment, MCE can add additional functionality to the original chip design, whilst maintaining the original package dimensions and footprint.

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