Ampleon and Flip Electronics: Ensuring the continued supply of Ampleon’s Legacy LDMOS product line
Once a Design Engineer designs a device into a product, especially a device that is deemed to be the heartbeat of an application, reluctance to change is understandable. There are costs associated with evaluating any replacements based on initial review, actual design time, qualification and product introduction. The costs can be significant for a complex device such as a microprocessor in an aerospace application where each of thousands of lines of code have to be evaluated to validate the device. Where the complexity of a device is a trademark of expensive qualification costs, what about something like a RF Amplifier?
RF products not only have the distinction of potentially being a heartbeat product, there is often “black magic” involved with the interaction of other devices on the board and the function of the device in the application. Where it may not be the most complex of products, designers are often times reluctant to change out one of these devices as they would with a microprocessor due to timing, voltage drop, parasitic interactions, gain values, crosstalk attenuation etc. There are often no true drop-in replacement for a RF product and designing in a replacement will have an impact with time, additional costs and qualification.
In the world of RF, once a designer becomes comfortable with a device and how it acts, not only is there a reluctance to change, it becomes the go to device for future design applications. The adage of if “something works and it isn’t broken then don’t fix it” certainly applies.
RF Designers that use Ampleon’s Legacy LDMOS product line can not only rest easier with the knowledge that costly obsolescence can be avoided, but that existing and new designs will be supported 20+ years with Flip Electronics long term support.