Analog startup goes old school, gets funding

6/23/2011 1:00 AM EDT

It will be very interesting to see how this model works out. I would say the chances are good if the second sources are really drop in and compatible with the original. Assuming the costs are comparable to make chips, then lower margins would be necessary to make inroads against the established analog giants. Aside from that, Touchstone would have to build a high quality customer service and support team to service major analog customers. All this takes time, and the original sources are not necessarily going to sit still and watch their market erode. The analog market is projected to have growth over the next few years, and maybe they catch enough of that to bootstrap into being a major player over time. After all, their model did work for others in the past.

6/23/2011 7:55 AM EDT

This just shows that analog's demise and its incorporation into SoCs is slightly exaggerated. Finding less expensive one-for-one replacements for run-of-the-mill analog devices is a good thing, but it might be a hard act to put together for the needed customer support services as kdboyce remarks. Distributor Future Electronics might be the real winner.

6/23/2011 12:57 PM EDT

No doubt, the experts are running this new venture and they might be well aware about the risks involved. But I can't avoid doubting on the strategy of starting with the one-to-one replacements for the analog ICs produced by the analog giants. Can they generate their working capital this way? I agree with Kdboyce & Nic_Mokhoff, they have a great challenge to establish reliable products and quality service in order to be able to compete with their well-established competitors.

6/23/2011 2:35 PM EDT

With the passing of Jim and bob in these few weeks, I personal think, this is the end of an Analog chapter, a new chapter will begin.

It is no longer three decades ago, when Opamp related stuffs was hot. It is also no longer two decades ago, when PMIC started with NS simple switcher and Linear's LT1070 series. This is is a much sophisticated Analog era with China and Taiwan fill with lots of veterans from Linear, Maxim, and NS ex "graduate" starts up companies.

It will be interesting to see how Brett play this game within the next two years. and hope that he success.

For me, like it or not, Analog has enter the era of Smart Analog. and the place Smart Analog play will be taking eating away or improve some function or subsystem of the embedded system centric design solution. where the pure digital embedded system cannot do or doing not well. Analog thus have a chance to expand and evolve beyond the passed function centric into a system centric solution arena adapting to the embedded system centric world.


With the Era of Bob Widler, Bob Peace fades away.Time for the next chapter of Analog surface. and new fresh blood and innovation is needed to lead this in coming game. Analog designers in the valley needs to be upgrade so that it is always atleast two level beyond the China and Taiwan designer interm of quality and effectiveness.

We needs a new direction in Analog..

Hendrik Santo

6/23/2011 7:27 PM EDT

Being a pin-pin and functional replacement is not easy, especially for analog component which basically is hard to have everything being made the same, unless you just copy everything. BTW, I also hope this model to be success.

6/24/2011 1:35 AM EDT

The electronic component market is mostly dependent on the matured products and most of the manufacturers stop their maturing products at some extent, if a start-up player like touch tone will look towards finding and catering this unlooked potential it will surely get entered in the race in the longer span.

6/24/2011 4:04 AM EDT

There is always a great need for analog and mixed signal application specific IC's. China is doing this in to their products. If this also can be done in TouchStone there is an extra marketing space they will create.

6/24/2011 6:33 AM EDT

This is mostly grist for the media mill.
Making parts that are footprint compatible is actually a VERY obvious strategy, in the commodity market. Just look at Single-gate logic, that's a new area, and has been following the obvious strategy.
As they mention, smaller, newer die cost more to initially release, but they can usually out-perform older footprints.
Where those teensy new processes can struggle, is in places like ESD tolerance, and I see that's not mentioned at all....

6/24/2011 12:20 PM EDT

I can see the point of their strategy because we have several parts disappearing from production and we find there is not a replacement. There are also segments of the analog market where the choices are very limited. The typical analog market to target these days is power management, because that is where the growth is.

It is hard to go fabless in the analog world because a big company can’t switch fabs without causing production problems. Some companies say they manufacture the wafers then package the parts when needed.

I have heard that VCs don’t like semi companies any more and only a few have gotten money. Did these guys have some special value proposition other that replacement parts? One value proposition of old processes is cheap wafers and low cost.

6/24/2011 1:51 PM EDT

These guys will likely do well in an environment where these products are needed. Automotive, Mil-Aero, and Medical spaces can not tolerate loss of supply. That said, it never appealed to me to bottom fish either.

6/24/2011 4:57 PM EDT

It's hard to imagine that a business model based on cloning Maxim chips in TSMC18 and selling them for less money can be successful. Obviously there's more to this story, otherwise it's even harder to imagine a VC putting $12M into this idea.

6/26/2011 6:50 PM EDT

There's some irony here, I seem to recall that Maxim got its start by second-sourcing the most popular op amps and ADCs from Analog Devices.

6/26/2011 9:46 PM EDT

Correction to my previous comment: a reader reminds me that Maxim started by second-sourcing Intersil parts first, then ADI parts, since the Maxim founders were Intersil alums.

6/27/2011 6:25 PM EDT

Some interesting comments here. However, competing with the established analog leaders (be it NSM/TI, Maxim, LTC, or ADI) is not easy nowadays, ~30 years after the founding of LTC and Maxim. Everything has a time, as they say, and I am pretty convinced that our time today is not the time for this type of a venture, Pierre Lamond's judgement notwithstanding (Pierre was certainly wrong for example when funding Integration Associates, to name just one). One thing is for sure: this company will be very good news for patent lawyers and patent expert witnesses, because IF they ever become successful they will be tied up in patent litigation to no end.

7/1/2011 2:46 PM EDT

Analog requires more precision that digital, and a newer fab like TSMC could provide less variation on key parameters perhaps. And as die get larger eventually, low defectivity will pay off as well. Interesting experiment in any case.
As the Zen Master says, "We will see."

7/13/2011 7:34 PM EDT

There should be a space for taking designs one better, as higher voltage ratings and designs that function like the original but are not just knockoffs. A older comparator found in many designs is very sensitive to having its inputs out of range, blowing it up. A drop in replacement by a smart team could capture new business as well as MRO.
An older design teams less intent on always faster could create parts that do not require designers to go to links to filter out overfast response where it is not necessary or desired.