The Amp Hour

Dave talks with Steve Sanghi, the CEO of Microchip Corporation for 31 years! Check out his new book, Up and to the Right. How Microchip was built into one of the biggest and most pofitable chip companies in the world. The early microcontrollers, ROM, EPROM, EEPROM, FLASH Semiconductor Fab's and locations How the US Government CHIPS act is a golden handcuffs trap US/China rhetoric What really happened durign the covid supply chain crisis How 90% of medical devices use Microchip parts Lead times Respect for the chip manufacturers and supply chains Just-In-Time becomes Just-In-Case How the Toyota production system works and how it had to change The impacts of a potential war in Taiwan How does it make sense to make thousands of part variants? The secret to making part varients Why Microchip chose MIPS vs ARM Atmel didn't make any money! Pricing discipline How buying Atmel almost didn't happen, and how Dialog Semiconductor goofed it Draconian NDA terms Atmel was bloated RISC-V plans Customer Driven Obsolescence Foundry vs In-House limitations Open Source FPGA tools? Third party tool support Why not offer free optimised compilers? It's all about black swan events, down cycles, pointy haired bosses, and how All your Cost Bases Beyong To Me Hobbyist vs professionals How Microchip is the largest aerospace chip maker in the world. Nothing leaves earth without a Microchip part in it. Radiation hardended parts Market value profitability Will Microchip ever get acquired Strained US vs China relations

Scott Williams from Xentronics in Melbourne Australia joins Dave to discuss the consulting design engineering business.

Kathy Joseph from the Kathy Loves Physics Youtube channel joins Dave to talk about the history of electricity and her new book The Lightning Tamers.

AVX Fellow and 40 year capacitor industry legend Ron Demcko joins Dave to discuss film capacitor failures and capacitor technology. This episode is best viewed in video format on the Amp Hour Youtube channel, as Ron and Dave discuss slides and photos in this video discussion for an EEVblog video on why a film capacitor failed. But we are sure you'll still find the audio podcast version very enjoyable and educational.

The Altium stories flow as Ben Jordan discusses working at Altium with Dave! Ben was a long time Altium employee and PCB and product specialist and still makes Altium tutorial videos on Youtube. He has also worked for Autodesk on Fusion 360. Ben now has his own consulting company Jordan DSP and co-hosts a regular live Youtube show with Bil Herd