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Why is the 741 op amp still produced?

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SilverSolder:

--- Quote from: coppice on October 02, 2020, 09:47:27 am ---[...] How low can you expect demand to go, and still have the part listed as available?

--- End quote ---

At some point, it must make sense to do a "final production run" and put a couple of crates into a warehouse, to sell out of over the next e.g. 5-10 years before finally selling the last remnants to stockists of esoteric components.  That has to make a lot more sense than keeping an obsolete production line operating for a very small number of parts annually...

coppice:

--- Quote from: SilverSolder on October 02, 2020, 08:55:45 pm ---
--- Quote from: coppice on October 02, 2020, 09:47:27 am ---[...] How low can you expect demand to go, and still have the part listed as available?

--- End quote ---

At some point, it must make sense to do a "final production run" and put a couple of crates into a warehouse, to sell out of over the next e.g. 5-10 years before finally selling the last remnants to stockists of esoteric components.  That has to make a lot more sense than keeping an obsolete production line operating for a very small number of parts annually...

--- End quote ---
I bet you could start a business providing that end of life stuff as a service. Keep banks of dies in controlled conditions, and do packaging and test on demand. Maybe you could call it something like "Rochester Electronics".  :)

rsjsouza:

--- Quote from: NANDBlog on October 01, 2020, 10:36:58 pm ---
--- Quote from: rsjsouza on October 01, 2020, 05:19:25 pm ---Don't forget that evolution usually is also tied to potential revenue. The fact nobody ever refined a process to reach LTZ or LM levels may be due simply to a lack of interest or too narrow of a market to be tapped into. The number of different voltage references available when compared to 30 years ago is impressive, but they are all competing in a segment with more relaxed demands.

--- End quote ---
Not everything is about profit, or it shouldn't be. I have the feeling that humanity cannot get anything done anymore, because of the search of immediate profit. I've seen companies do nothing, and let engineers sit idle, rather than have them working on a project. They calculated, that the NRE cost of the project is to big, and that would eat up the profit. I guess these things only make sense if you have an MBA.

--- End quote ---

It depends on how you define profit. In the cold war era, profit was the gain over the ever present danger of the other side and money was not really a problem for these state of the art projects. Fast forward to today and the scenario changed a lot.

My own example is a cold war era Power Designs 5015A power supply that once belonged to General Dynamics. You would be very hard pressed to find a modern analog linear power supply with that level of build quality and finesse. Oh well... Modern times.

schmitt trigger:
Coppice;
Today I was wondering precisely about Rochester Electronics.
Wondering from where do the wafers come from.

I wondered if they had purchased obsolete fabs, shipped them to the Far East, and continued production of old parts.
But your assessment of Rochester packaging and testing NOS wafers makes much more sense.
Do you know this as a fact?

EDIT: searching the web, apparently Rochester is doing it both ways.

coppice:

--- Quote from: schmitt trigger on October 03, 2020, 03:18:54 am ---Coppice;
Today I was wondering precisely about Rochester Electronics.
Wondering from where do the wafers come from.

I wondered if they had purchased obsolete fabs, shipped them to the Far East, and continued production of old parts.
But your assessment of Rochester packaging and testing NOS wafers makes much more sense.
Do you know this as a fact?

EDIT: searching the web, apparently Rochester is doing it both ways.

--- End quote ---
Rochester's web site tells you the things they do. They work with the original vendors of a part in most cases. They take either wafers or completed parts from them, plus all the packaging and test documentation needed to complete the parts to their original spec. Assembly and test is a commercial enterprise these days. Even the biggest silicon vendors outsource much of their assembly and test to specialist A&T houses in Asia. Packages don't go obsolete very often, and testers don't change very fast. So, as long as the wafers area stored in optimal conditions, Rochester can get them assembled and tested as the would have been originally.

I am not aware of Rochester operating any fabs. I can't imagine how that would work. If you have a hit product and need more capacity there are usually only one or two other fabs that can run the same process, which you might be able to expand into. The older things get the less compatibility you see between fabs. You probably can't even put the masks into the lithography machine, unless you have just the right machine to match your masks. There is very little compatibility in the fab business.

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