In 1993, Dr. Allen Grant (played by Sam Neill) developed a way to bring dinosaurs back to life using DNA strands from dinosaur blood preserved within prehistoric insects encased in amber. While the concept of reviving extinct species has intrigued scientists for decades, it remains an elusive goal.
However, a modern equivalent, the revival of obsolete integrated circuits, has been highly successful. Semiconductor companies, especially those that have been in business for decades or more, have had to periodically "prune" their product offerings to better manage their business. The added cost of maintaining a product with low or near-zero volume is quite high, and while most companies aim to provide their customers with lifetime availability, there have been many instances where additional demand has created a need for critical quantities of MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul). This has been particularly evident in military and aerospace applications.
Unlike its typical analog ASIC business, JVD has been called upon to assist customers needing small to medium quantities of obsolete (“extinguished”) semiconductors. In some cases, process information and mask sets can be obtained from the original production, and the necessary chips can be “resurrected” with minimal effort. Other times, the old tooling material no longer exists in the company archives, and the required parts must be redesigned from scratch, similar to a new ASIC design.
Copying and cloning an integrated circuit outside of a production line can be very difficult, especially with chips containing analog signals. A "genetically engineered" reproduction is likely to be embedded in an existing PCB surrounded by circuitry designed to complement the unique characteristics of the chip's original design, structure, and manufacturing process. Subtle differences in the original design can cause unwanted parasitic oscillations, noise, or worse, on an existing board.
JVD Engineers takes great care in analyzing the behavior of the original designs and incorporating even minor anomalies into the new version. Some of the devices that have been "resurrected" include full military-specification versions of the AD584 Precision Programmable Vref, the NE5534 Low-Noise High-Speed Op-Amp, the OP-07 Ultra-Low-Noise Op-Amp, the OP-97 Low-Power High-Precision Op-Amp, and many others.
