EEVblog 1435 - The World's Most EXPENSIVE Catalog IC ?

Dave goes hunting for the most expensive IC on Digikey and ends up finding a bunch of unusual stuff!

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#ElectronicsCreators #Digikey #MostExpensive

[footrotdog]

220° tolerance? It might actually survive my crappy soldering skills.

[bluekeybo]

As a Nasa JPL engineer, we used the QML Q and QML V parts all the time. And yeah they're very reliable and expensive parts, but how much is the Mars 2020 rover worth :) Don't forget that you're also using rad-hard parts a lot of the time for space applications, which increases the cost. There's no mechanic in space to help you out so you've only got one chance

[gusbert]

Rochester specialise in buying up obsolete stock, including bare chips and wafers, and package and test it themselves. They also buy up IC manufacturing masks so they can re-make the chips themselves. In this way, they can charge almost whatever they want for in-demand obsolete parts. I have direct experience in dealing with these guys, they are professional and reliable, but buying from them can COST YOUR SOUL!

[mikeselectricstuff]

7:45 warehouse staff almost certainly don't see the part value - delivery notes never have prices for the same reason.

[SeanBZA]

As well remember Sinclair Research was experimenting with wafer scale complete systems, where they wanted to fit all of the memory, support and processor circuitry, along with every single peripheral you can think of, onto a single 300mm wafer, with rows of wire bonds going across the top of the wafer to provide interconnections where needed, and another set of heavier bond wires to provide the power it needed.

The space grade comes with a serial number on the box, and each chip has been tested for 1000 hours at elevated temperature, plus has had the whole bake and shake done to each. You can trace it back to the actual region of the mine, where each individual shovel full of ore came out. Comes with a booklet of pages with all this attached, though probably there is a digital record now for this, supplied with each delivery.

[TheHuesSciTech]

Regarding the 30 GHz AND gate that was marked as "AND OR" -- the logic inputs and outputs appeared to be differential/complementary, which means you get "NOT" for free (just flip the wires). Since !(!x AND !y) == x OR y, it is indeed true that and AND gate and an OR gate look identical in differential/complementary logic.

[bassobalalaikka]

the 200-210C max temperature is needed in electronics that are located inside oilwell drill heads, the grinding of rock produces masses of heat and if electronics can take 200C instead of 125C you can drill faster or use less coolant and it becomes cheap to buy 10-100K telemetrics if you can run the drill faster and thus generate more holes per given time.

[stuner]

The flash memory is not for a single chip, you get at least one wafer (but they don't say how many chips you get...). That's probably meant for co-packaging together with another chip.

[mcconkeyb]

Hey Dave, at 1 of my previous jobs, I worked on a team that designed projectors using the micro mirror DLPs from TI. These devices are not that expensive when you buy them in volume (which is the only way TI sells them), so this must be someone with a couple of devices left over from a production run and is looking to get rich by selling this to someone who has more money than brains.
The most expensive part that I've ever touched was a 4 quadrant photodiode. This is used in spacecraft as the sensor that looks at a reference star and has output that is proportional to brightness offset from the center point. I was the technician who did the mechanical shock test to ensure that the device could survive the ride to space. Each device had to be signed by everyone who touched it. I can't remember the exact price, but it was in the 100's of thousands of dollars. I spent a couple of months testing a whole batch of these, obviously the batch size for these parts was not like the batch size for most parts, I think there was just slightly less than 200 of these devices. So I guess my signature is likely still floating around somewhere up there in the "final frontier". 🙂

[f-s-r]

11:43 Clicks on a $5000 part, opens datasheet that reads "Low cost" :D

[WizardTim]

You missed the most expensive price “Call for Price”.

Some of the most expensive keywords I’ve ever seen are “Radiation Hardened”, “Low Outgassing”, “Guaranteed Performance”, “Individually Fully Characterised”, “ASIC Replacement”, “Safety Critical”, “Qualified”, "NDA" and “Export Restricted”. God forbid you specify a part with all those keywords at once.

The most expensive part I’ve ever specified in a design is of course an FPGA, but a pathetically wimpy one in comparison. Whenever I consider any sort of specialised IC, I just think about how much of a pain the export restrictions and NDAs are going to be.

[rianderous]

imagine that you let the magic smoke escape of that 52 week lead time part and have to tell it to your probably the last day on your job...

[awxomexd]

I remember paying $3, 000 for a 1980's through whole PWM chip used on an old power supply design i was modifying for my previous employer.
The chip was out of production, but a local fab bought the die. basically had to pay for the price of the full wafer for 1 chip.

[MajorTomWorkshop]

Everyone who sells online knows what this really is. When you have a listing, say, with Ebay or Amazon or Aliexpress, or whatever online marketplace, whenever you're _temporarily_ out of stock, if you fail to ship, you get fined by the platform, but if you take the item down, you lose the valuable search engine indexing. So, what you do, is just set the price ridiculously high so that no-one orders it, but it's still there. On the other hand, if some weirdo _does_ order it, you just buy it from your competitor at whatever price and make a great sale. ;) Everyone does it, really. I thought it was obvious.

[michael.a.covington]

Working at Digi-Key and picking a $20, 000 part off the shelf must be an experience akin to working at a museum or historic site. "Don't drop those candlesticks, they're insured for 10, 000 pounds, " said the chaplain of Clare College, Cambridge, to me one day when I was helping tidy up their historic chapel after the last concert of the year.

Surely some of these are manufactured on demand to fulfill a contract made 30 years ago requiring the part to remain available for 30 years, or something like that, and they are rather hoping nobody orders them.

[echoecho]

I did this exact exercise years ago and the one I found was a ~US$270k chip designed to detect nuclear explosions from orbiting satellites. Surprised it was public and had datasheet available. IIRC it detected the xrays or emp emitted and used extremely precise timing with multiple satellites to triangulate where it was detonated. Went back later to find it but was gone, ITAR probably got to them.

[marco-S]

@14:10 around 15 years ago, i worked with such components. A lot of work involved.
Remove outer package.
Get IC out the inner package.
Tin the leads with a special setup.
Cut the corner pieces. (with a side cutter, or, depended of the size of the IC, a special cutter on a small special press.)
On a special press, bent and cut the leads.
Place it on a tray, so they can use it on a pic-and-place machine.

[ojuleko]

If Dave was more like other youtubers, the next video would be called "Spending $10, 000 on just 20 electronic components". We'd then also get "Most expensive, GOLD 555 TIMER!!! OMG! REAL!!".

[scowell]

That first regulator was only available on a 70pc minimum order... gotta count that in the purchase price! Rochester buys up mfgr inventory, along with full wafers, masks, testing equipment, etc... when they want more parts, they will dice up and package a wafer or two... and they can test to OEM specs. Don't bother asking them for 68060's though... the Amiga bois bought all them up ages ago. BTW... *everything* is 52 weeks lead time... giant PITA, we're buying up boards off of eBay and scalping the processors off them for our production.

[frankcarlsen]

One of my friends worked in the space industry. He once travelled to the us and had parts in his hand luggage. He also had the invoice with him for tax purposes. The lady that handled his luggage in the custom inspection just had one question. "Could I please the cable that costs 30, 000 US$."
It was about 30 cm cable that had been tested under the most extreme conditions and had a certification spec the size of a Gideon bible.