Maxim supervisor chip runs on 125nA

I thought it was a big deal when we got op-amps and comparators to run off of 1 microampere of current, so I was stunned when my buddy Eric Schlaepfer told me he was working on the MAX16056, a supervisory circuit that runs off of 125nA. Eric works at Maxim on supervisors and other circuits. He is a hard-core engineer, so when he tells me something is cool, I tend to pay more attention than when a marketing person tells me it is cool. Marketing people think everything they work on is cool. Even though the electronic flea market is not held during the winter, several of us get together for breakfast on the second Saturday of the month anyway. So we were all chewing the fat and talking about low-power circuits when Eric mentioned his part. We were all pretty impressed; it is hard to make anything run off so little current. Maxim has version of the part that works over the –40 to +125C temperature range and still draws only 125nA typical. The max draw is 430nA at 125C, but it is not necessary to design to max ratings for power supply current, since the parts on your board will all average out to typical anyway. One clever thing about the supervisor is that you set everything with capacitors, they can’t have a resistor to set things since even a megaohm resistor would draw a lot of current relative to the 125nA the part nibbles.

I took a snap of Eric at St. John’s the other night, he had just been given an Android phone by Andy Rubin the honcho over at Google. Eric was with one of his buddies at a function and Andy showed up and handed 5 phones out like cookies. This was 3 days before announcement; Eric had to wait a couple days to get the phone on a network.

Why doesn’t anything like this happen to me? Oh well, I am not too keen on smart phones anyway. My buddies all bury their noses in their Palm Pre’s and iPhones and Blackberries, but I get along fine with my 9-dollar Samsung. Oh god, I am becoming a crusty old curmudgeon. Bah humbug.