In article <53731687$0$1461$5b6aafb4@news.zen.co.uk>,
noospam@noospam.com says...
>
> Paul <paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk> wrote
>
> >You would be amazed how many companies in Aviation and other industries
> >have large stocks of old wafers and packaged devices in nitogen filled
> >packaging and temperature controlled storage.
> >
> >Changes can be made but the effort to do so is VERY VERY expensive.
>
> Actually aviation is my "other" hobby so I know quite a lot about that
> bit.
>
> I think the main reason they don't change stuff is because there is so
> little interesting R&D work in that business (they run their cash cows
> for a decade or more if they can) that anybody with more than 2
> braincells leaves pretty quick, and they have no way to fix anything.
>
> :)
A decade in aviation is a flash in the pan.
A lot of aircraft take 5-10 years to develop, test, certify....... Then
have service lifetime (or product lifetime) of 20-30 years. then some
are still flying many decades later, doubt a lot of the newer ones will
be.
In one case a device was respun 2 times as ASIC due to process changes
before certification, aircraft is in service now, and they have recently
bought the last batch of their 'last time buy' to keep them going for 20
years. These are all now in special storage.
The design uses an EEPROM that want EOL something like 12 years ago
and they bought a last time buy of wafers for that. I believe they had
them packaged before that became a problem. The high temp ceramic
packaging is oddball to say the least, and the crystal is in some 64 pin
CLCC.
When any new batch of wafers were made for ASIC in question, a tested
sample batch was sent to do at least 100 hours aircraft flight time
before the wafers could be probed, packaged, tested...
So for one aircraft there is a lot of devices in storage to last 20
years of production.
Aviation, Transport have long life cycles and you dont upgrade unless
you have to.
Medical can be longer still, once had call about a medical scanner back
in 2002. I asked how old was the scanner, their reply was -
"The earliest record we can find is when it moved to the NEW
building in 1968"
--
Paul Carpenter | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/> PC Services
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/pi/> Raspberry Pi Add-ons
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/fonts/> Timing Diagram Font
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/> For those web sites you hate
Reply by John-Smith●May 14, 20142014-05-14
Paul <paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk> wrote
>You would be amazed how many companies in Aviation and other industries
>have large stocks of old wafers and packaged devices in nitogen filled
>packaging and temperature controlled storage.
>
>Changes can be made but the effort to do so is VERY VERY expensive.
Actually aviation is my "other" hobby so I know quite a lot about that
bit.
I think the main reason they don't change stuff is because there is so
little interesting R&D work in that business (they run their cash cows
for a decade or more if they can) that anybody with more than 2
braincells leaves pretty quick, and they have no way to fix anything.
:)
Reply by Paul●May 14, 20142014-05-14
In article <lbb5n950lusnl7ii3eft5f3jgpikm5i6s8@4ax.com>, krw@attt.bizz
says...
>
> On Tue, 13 May 2014 19:59:18 +0100, Paul
> <paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >In article <lktmh6$sj6$1@reader1.panix.com>, invalid@invalid.invalid
> >says...
> >>
> >> On 2014-05-13, Olaf Kaluza <olaf@criseis.ruhr.de> wrote:
> >> > Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > >How sad for your customers that you never add features to or improve
> >> > >the performance of your products.
> >> >
> >> > Nope, our customers are very lucky because we can print SIL2, Atex and
> >> > EX(i) on our product. They dont care so much about improved
> >> > performance, they enjoy the quality and reliability.
> >>
> >> It must be nice to work in such a static industry where nothing ever
> >> changes. Our customers' needs seem to change over the years.
> >
> >In some industries it can be a pain because you cannot change it for 30
> >years or mroe.
>
> You can't change anything in your product line? You must not use many
> semiconductor components (certainly no LSI).
On Tue, 13 May 2014 19:59:18 +0100, Paul
<paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <lktmh6$sj6$1@reader1.panix.com>, invalid@invalid.invalid
>says...
>>
>> On 2014-05-13, Olaf Kaluza <olaf@criseis.ruhr.de> wrote:
>> > Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> >
>> > >How sad for your customers that you never add features to or improve
>> > >the performance of your products.
>> >
>> > Nope, our customers are very lucky because we can print SIL2, Atex and
>> > EX(i) on our product. They dont care so much about improved
>> > performance, they enjoy the quality and reliability.
>>
>> It must be nice to work in such a static industry where nothing ever
>> changes. Our customers' needs seem to change over the years.
>
>In some industries it can be a pain because you cannot change it for 30
>years or mroe.
You can't change anything in your product line? You must not use many
semiconductor components (certainly no LSI).
Reply by John-Smith●May 13, 20142014-05-13
Paul <paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk> wrote
>In article <lktmh6$sj6$1@reader1.panix.com>, invalid@invalid.invalid
>says...
>>
>> On 2014-05-13, Olaf Kaluza <olaf@criseis.ruhr.de> wrote:
>> > Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> >
>> > >How sad for your customers that you never add features to or improve
>> > >the performance of your products.
>> >
>> > Nope, our customers are very lucky because we can print SIL2, Atex and
>> > EX(i) on our product. They dont care so much about improved
>> > performance, they enjoy the quality and reliability.
>>
>> It must be nice to work in such a static industry where nothing ever
>> changes. Our customers' needs seem to change over the years.
>
>In some industries it can be a pain because you cannot change it for 30
>years or mroe.
If your product sells for reasonable money (say $200 or more) the
ability to update the firmware in the field is a vital safeguard
against a major bug, which would otherwise result in a huge recall,
loads of warranty claims, and if you are selling to any big-company
customer/reseller or through a big distributor, they will bend you
over a barrel and shaft you and make you absolutely pay for the
mistake in blood.
That could trash your business totally if you are a small company.
We sell to a US based $20BN company, for example, and they are packed
with the usual corporate brown-nosers and political climbers, and the
best way to crawl up their internal ladder is to scalp one of the
company's suppliers. So we need to be very very careful.
A USB interface is handy for firmware upgrades - even if it is
disabled in all normal operating contexts.
If the product has say wifi then it can download the update all by
itself (obviously after the customer has consented and performed some
enabling actions) and that's even better, because it further reduces
the % of returns if you have made some mistake. It could make a
difference between the reseller shafting you by returning his entire
stock to you (at *your* expense, all the way from say the USA back to
Europe) just to make a point, and accepting that the in the field
upgrade is a reasonable solution.
I am in a business where our best selling product has 1995 firmware
and nobody has yet found a bug, but you can never be sure :)
The ST 32-bit ARM micros are pretty amazing. I have just found they do
a little 6mm x 6mm one, with 16k of code space and 4k of RAM, for
$1.50. If it wasn't for the higher power consumption, few would bother
using the little Atmel or PIC devices. One can span a huge product
range with the same device family and crucially the same development
tools and same expertise. We still use the AT90S1200 (last time buy
was a few years ago but we still have stock) and the last 1 or 2
replacements like the 2313 have already been discontinued (Atmel seem
to move on quite quickly these days, sadly, and yes I saw they do ARM
processors too) but they are about $1 (10k).
I am looking at the $10 32F with 1MB FLASH.
Reply by Paul●May 13, 20142014-05-13
In article <lktmh6$sj6$1@reader1.panix.com>, invalid@invalid.invalid
says...
>
> On 2014-05-13, Olaf Kaluza <olaf@criseis.ruhr.de> wrote:
> > Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> >
> > >How sad for your customers that you never add features to or improve
> > >the performance of your products.
> >
> > Nope, our customers are very lucky because we can print SIL2, Atex and
> > EX(i) on our product. They dont care so much about improved
> > performance, they enjoy the quality and reliability.
>
> It must be nice to work in such a static industry where nothing ever
> changes. Our customers' needs seem to change over the years.
On 2014-05-13, Olaf Kaluza <olaf@criseis.ruhr.de> wrote:
> Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
> >How sad for your customers that you never add features to or improve
> >the performance of your products.
>
> Nope, our customers are very lucky because we can print SIL2, Atex and
> EX(i) on our product. They dont care so much about improved
> performance, they enjoy the quality and reliability.
It must be nice to work in such a static industry where nothing ever
changes. Our customers' needs seem to change over the years.
--
Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I am deeply CONCERNED
at and I want something GOOD
gmail.com for BREAKFAST!
Reply by ●May 13, 20142014-05-13
On Tue, 13 May 2014 08:18:49 +0200, pippo2@disney.com (Jack) wrote:
>Olaf Kaluza <olaf@criseis.ruhr.de> wrote:
>
>> That depends on the application. A good application from a good
>> company never need to flash in the field because it is well tested and
>> without errors. :-)
>
>until the customer decides that he wants a new (very urgent) feature...
Or until you decide that there's money to be made selling the new
feature to existing customers.
Reply by Mike Perkins●May 13, 20142014-05-13
On 13/05/2014 16:19, Olaf Kaluza wrote:
> Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
> >How sad for your customers that you never add features to or improve
> >the performance of your products.
>
> Nope, our customers are very lucky because we can print SIL2, Atex and
> EX(i) on our product. They dont care so much about improved
> performance, they enjoy the quality and reliability.
From a customer's perspective, do those printed acronyms exclude the
possibility of a bug?
The alternative, of course, is to have items updated by return to
manufacturer. But the idea of being able to update software in any
product via say a USB port is very attractive, to both the manufacturer
and the customer.
--
Mike Perkins
Video Solutions Ltd
www.videosolutions.ltd.uk
Reply by Olaf Kaluza●May 13, 20142014-05-13
Grant Edwards <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>How sad for your customers that you never add features to or improve
>the performance of your products.
Nope, our customers are very lucky because we can print SIL2, Atex and
EX(i) on our product. They dont care so much about improved
performance, they enjoy the quality and reliability.
Olaf