The microscope footage and your guided tour through that package was just delightful. Please more of those!!! I think the micro packaging and the sheer beautiful colors helps make this video really special and extra helpful for people who aren't circuit experts, too. The fact that each component is isolated on its own island makes the symmetries of each island 'pop' and the wire bonding interconnects make it clear that there is no funny business with vias, etc below. I seriously implore you to try and start a series on TNP where you do impromptu walkthroughs of specifically these kinds of chips. It's the kind of thing that could tail off and become a hit. It's just so stunning! I suspect you might have more of these lying around on dead boards! Great stuff as always my king.
Glad Keysight stepped up. I had a similar experience with GE on a humidity sensor. I somehow got into the engineering dept & someone there sent me a "sample" & repaired my weather station. The part was unobtainium otherwise. 👍
Amazing stuff. Thanks to Keysight and you for your excellent diagnosis and repair. Yes, we'd love a complete reverse engineering/detailed description of how those FETs and other elements are implemented and what to look for when trying to understand the architecture. I've actually decapped, removed, and opened up a lot of microwave and mmWave devices from the big brands like an Alcatel 8 GHz transceiver, Siemens 38 GHz microwave link, etc. Would love to be able to reverse engineer some of their dies. Thank you!
It's always cool to look at small wire bonded circuits like this. I actually used to be a sputtering engineer in a passive component fab. We specialized in MOS capacitors, resistor arrays(like precision dividers), inductors and combinations of all the above. The majority were for RF applications like this but we also made them for medical applications and fiber optics/photonics applications. We also made quite a few interposers with integrated passives. Unfortunately we did not have an ion implanter so we could not really make active devices other than diodes. Interestingly, you can tell which gold was sputtered and/or plated by looking at the roughness/color. Plated gold tends to look grainy while sputtered gold looks shiny or almost white. Look at the active components in this video compared to the passives. Also the active devices and have probably been passivated with SiO or similar that's why they have an almost green color over much of them. Passivation in essence is just sealing them under some material to protect them from oxidation or the elements. We mostly did SiO passivation but sometimes used a chemical sort of like a high grade epoxy and spun it on. One thing we specialized in were SiCr resistors which had a high sheet rho. I think we were one of the only places in the world that did it as it was a VERY finicky process, but it could be made very stable (like
Aw man I love direct laser writers. We had a LW405C that our group bought along with the physics department when I was in college, and it was absolutely awesome for prototyping without the mask turnaround times.
It would definitely be interesting see you drawing out the schematic for that amplifier! It doesn't seem to be very complex, so i think it would fairly easy to follow the structures while going through the schematic.
As I said in the last video 'I hope the Keysight guys see this and give you the part for free' and they did...Keysight are awesome ! Hopefully one day I will be able to afford to buy some kit off them !...cheers.
Always nice to be surprised in things like this. Someone at keysight came through. Nice for use and good publicity for them. Everybody wins. I am curious however how the solder this in the factory if the housing is so vulnerable to heat. Makes me doubt they do repair at all themselves.
You could open up the package like he did here, and then run it and use a manual probing station (like this: www.microtron.be/media/5f61471da324cd6ea65fc20692689d9b/cascade-pm8.pdf) to look at the signals along the way. But at this scale you would only do that if there was a series failure issue and you were improving the design for future. I don't know if Shahriar has a manual probing station.
an Aztec death god carving under microscope... This is of course a 3dB attenuator :) I don't argue but it could just be RF magic as far as I'm concerned
great video again - what a sucess ! And nice you get the replacement part!. Interesting method with the low melting solder, do you have a part name on this ? Or melting temperature? I have sometimes very temperature sensitive devices to solder which is a nightmare using the standard melting powerder and reflow oven, especially when it comes to replace them.
How do parts like this even break? Static discharge? Does anyone know? I am really curious, I always thought ICs last forever for small signal applications.
I think a small hot plate under the board bridged to the thermal pad and set to 260 C with 400-450 C air from above would make leaded solder work. Give the hot plate a head start of 30-45 s and concentrate the air near the pins around the perimeter. Otherwise, bake the board at 110 C for an hour to remove condensed water and utilize an infrared oven to reflow the entire board. Also, plenty of good flux always helps.
Always great to see a nice bit of kit like this be repaired and and saved from being scraped, big thanks to those at the Keysight engineering department for sending the mythical part presumably before anyone could say no, I would be very disappointed if anyone were to face repercussions for supplying the part. Part of me was hoping there would be some obviously broken bond-wire on one of the ceramic transmission lines that would be an ""easy"" repair but alas. However that resistive element on the switch die certainly didn't look very happy but are we sure it's a termination load, seems excessively small for the signal levels in this signal path, it's definitely not part of the forward biasing for the PIN diodes? As a drift/failure of that element could feasible cause excessive loss in the system as observed. But also I noticed the first stage of the amplifier die at 12:18 seems to have some slight funny business going on with it? The support electronics for this device didn't seem too complex in the previous video, what's the chance of power it up by itself and probing this with an active probe or possibly some thermal measurements to determine exactly which die/substrate has failed? Would be very interested in that follow up! But regardless as always top notch video!
Hi. Thanks for your nice Videos and your great explanations. 🙏 Would it be possible to use VPS (vapour phase soldering) e.g. deep fryer with Galden HS240? Or are these HF parts to delicate? Greetings from Germany
با تشکر از برنامه های فوق العاده شما. اگر تو برنامههای بعدی یکی از اون امپلی فایرها رو توضیح بدین که چجوری برای اون فرکانس های بالا طراحی می شن ممنون میشم. قربانت
Thank God/Allah for the translate function. Otherwise your comment would have made no sense whatsoever. Arabic comments on an English language channel is quite useless.
That was an exciting journey! Really glad Keysight chimed in and provided the unobtanium chip. Thank you for sharing the process! Are you still using Dino-Lite USB microscopes? Are these the same units you reviewed at ruclips.net/video/larmop2B--E/видео.html ? Also, still using the Vision M1? Would you still recommend them today for the very same purposes you use them?
Yeah, liquid metal is indeed a nice thing, BUT, your main concern should not be only its electrical conductivity, in this case. Rather the fact that it will eat tin based solder, and killed a lot of Nvidia GPU, where people were using it to decrease the shunt resistance used to assess the GPU power draw, allowing for greater power draw, so greater clocks. You should also beware when using it on bare copper, it will permeate and diffuse into the copper atomic layers, decreasing slightly its thermal conductivity, hence its electrical conductivity. Do not use liquid metal on tin solder or bare copper, on sensitive electronics, or you will regret it. It's fine to use when deliding CPU, to remplace the original thermal interface, or when when repasting laptops. It is also fine if the copper is plated, with a fine nickel layer, for example.
Yay! So glad R&D was able to step in and help get you this part!
Nice repair - it certainly pays to have friends in high places!
Yes, and you are one of those friends! :)
The microscope footage and your guided tour through that package was just delightful.
Please more of those!!! I think the micro packaging and the sheer beautiful colors helps make this video really special and extra helpful for people who aren't circuit experts, too. The fact that each component is isolated on its own island makes the symmetries of each island 'pop' and the wire bonding interconnects make it clear that there is no funny business with vias, etc below.
I seriously implore you to try and start a series on TNP where you do impromptu walkthroughs of specifically these kinds of chips. It's the kind of thing that could tail off and become a hit. It's just so stunning! I suspect you might have more of these lying around on dead boards!
Great stuff as always my king.
Glad Keysight stepped up. I had a similar experience with GE on a humidity sensor. I somehow got into the engineering dept & someone there sent me a "sample" & repaired my weather station. The part was unobtainium otherwise. 👍
Kudos to Shahriar & Keysight! Please be more supportive to customers, R&S
Kudos to the guys at Keysight...sure wish R&S folks were as friendly.
Both companies stepped down their support massively over the last few years.
Always great to watch your videos. Following the signal path on the micromodule was just stunning. would love to see more.
Would be super interesting to go over some of those mmics in detail!
There's nothing better than a happy Shahriar after a repair :-) Kudos! and thanks to Agilent/Keysight for sending the unobtanium part.
Amazing stuff. Thanks to Keysight and you for your excellent diagnosis and repair.
Yes, we'd love a complete reverse engineering/detailed description of how those FETs and other elements are implemented and what to look for when trying to understand the architecture.
I've actually decapped, removed, and opened up a lot of microwave and mmWave devices from the big brands like an Alcatel 8 GHz transceiver, Siemens 38 GHz microwave link, etc. Would love to be able to reverse engineer some of their dies.
Thank you!
It's always cool to look at small wire bonded circuits like this.
I actually used to be a sputtering engineer in a passive component fab. We specialized in MOS capacitors, resistor arrays(like precision dividers), inductors and combinations of all the above. The majority were for RF applications like this but we also made them for medical applications and fiber optics/photonics applications. We also made quite a few interposers with integrated passives. Unfortunately we did not have an ion implanter so we could not really make active devices other than diodes. Interestingly, you can tell which gold was sputtered and/or plated by looking at the roughness/color. Plated gold tends to look grainy while sputtered gold looks shiny or almost white. Look at the active components in this video compared to the passives. Also the active devices and have probably been passivated with SiO or similar that's why they have an almost green color over much of them. Passivation in essence is just sealing them under some material to protect them from oxidation or the elements. We mostly did SiO passivation but sometimes used a chemical sort of like a high grade epoxy and spun it on.
One thing we specialized in were SiCr resistors which had a high sheet rho. I think we were one of the only places in the world that did it as it was a VERY finicky process, but it could be made very stable (like
Aw man I love direct laser writers. We had a LW405C that our group bought along with the physics department when I was in college, and it was absolutely awesome for prototyping without the mask turnaround times.
Fascinating. That's generous of them to furnish the repair part.
It would definitely be interesting see you drawing out the schematic for that amplifier! It doesn't seem to be very complex, so i think it would fairly easy to follow the structures while going through the schematic.
As I said in the last video 'I hope the Keysight guys see this and give you the part for free' and they did...Keysight are awesome ! Hopefully one day I will be able to afford to buy some kit off them !...cheers.
Glad we got a part two! Kudos to Keysight 👍👍
I’ve learned an incredible amount from your videos over the years. Black magic? You’re the wizard then!
Take care and enjoy the journey. All the best
That's pretty awesome. I am wondering what the actual problem was in that micromodule?
Bravo! Great repair series!
Your photomicrography and walkthroughs are just brilliant.
Succes, really awsome repair and nice job.
Kudos and gratulations to this repair! Really great!
11:57 that is inductance to the ground for DC control current to be circled
Always nice to be surprised in things like this. Someone at keysight came through. Nice for use and good publicity for them. Everybody wins.
I am curious however how the solder this in the factory if the housing is so vulnerable to heat. Makes me doubt they do repair at all themselves.
Good save. I would have liked to have seen the entirety of the solder work.
SO NEAT. I'd love to learn more about the schematic like you mentioned. Nice job on the repair. I wonder what was wrong with that one.
Is there a way to see or measure where in the package the faulty component is?
You could open up the package like he did here, and then run it and use a manual probing station (like this: www.microtron.be/media/5f61471da324cd6ea65fc20692689d9b/cascade-pm8.pdf) to look at the signals along the way. But at this scale you would only do that if there was a series failure issue and you were improving the design for future. I don't know if Shahriar has a manual probing station.
I would have liked to see the struggles you went through mounting that device.
Wow! Great work, no kidding a though one.
Could you find what was the issue with the faulty unit?
No signs of what failed on the bad part?
an Aztec death god carving under microscope... This is of course a 3dB attenuator :) I don't argue but it could just be RF magic as far as I'm concerned
The package could be ceramic filled PEEK?
great video again - what a sucess ! And nice you get the replacement part!. Interesting method with the low melting solder, do you have a part name on this ? Or melting temperature? I have sometimes very temperature sensitive devices to solder which is a nightmare using the standard melting powerder and reflow oven, especially when it comes to replace them.
How do parts like this even break? Static discharge? Does anyone know? I am really curious, I always thought ICs last forever for small signal applications.
fascinating 😱😍
Thank you so much for your video! Can you tell me where to buy 1GM1-6226 chip?
Unfortunately, it cannot be purchased.
I see you have new chip to replace like in your video.
Yes, but it is not something you can buy "off the shelf". It has to be provided by Keysight directly. It is a custom part.
Is there a reason to why we see so many double connecting wires inside the micro module? ..or is it just for redundancy?
He mentions reduced inductance at 8:28
@@WisseSpring OK, thanks, I must have missed that.
I think a small hot plate under the board bridged to the thermal pad and set to 260 C with 400-450 C air from above would make leaded solder work. Give the hot plate a head start of 30-45 s and concentrate the air near the pins around the perimeter. Otherwise, bake the board at 110 C for an hour to remove condensed water and utilize an infrared oven to reflow the entire board. Also, plenty of good flux always helps.
I'm intrigued that one of the chip dies is labeled ©agilent 1995, even though agilent was only founded in 1999. (according to wikipedia) Was the name agilent used for the division at HP before that date?
They probably updated the name with some small mask change from "HP 1995". Most of the content would still have a 1995 copyright date.
I would guess this is what has happened.
Always great to see a nice bit of kit like this be repaired and and saved from being scraped, big thanks to those at the Keysight engineering department for sending the mythical part presumably before anyone could say no, I would be very disappointed if anyone were to face repercussions for supplying the part.
Part of me was hoping there would be some obviously broken bond-wire on one of the ceramic transmission lines that would be an ""easy"" repair but alas. However that resistive element on the switch die certainly didn't look very happy but are we sure it's a termination load, seems excessively small for the signal levels in this signal path, it's definitely not part of the forward biasing for the PIN diodes? As a drift/failure of that element could feasible cause excessive loss in the system as observed.
But also I noticed the first stage of the amplifier die at 12:18 seems to have some slight funny business going on with it? The support electronics for this device didn't seem too complex in the previous video, what's the chance of power it up by itself and probing this with an active probe or possibly some thermal measurements to determine exactly which die/substrate has failed? Would be very interested in that follow up!
But regardless as always top notch video!
How much would a chip like this cost if it was available?
Could be a few hundred dollars.
I love looking at RF magic under the microscope, I'd definitely watch a video going through one of those devices in detail.
hello the signal paht plis laser module
11:30 thats a nasty crack, was that actually what was broken, or did that happen during removal of the part? 🙂
That is a wirebond flying over that part.
@@Thesignalpath Oops, my bad. Thank you for the clarification!
"it looks very pretty" - yes, yes, it looks very pretty, and I also absolutely, 100% 💯 know what every part does...
Hi. Thanks for your nice Videos and your great explanations. 🙏
Would it be possible to use VPS (vapour phase soldering) e.g. deep fryer with Galden HS240? Or are these HF parts to delicate? Greetings from Germany
با تشکر از برنامه های فوق العاده شما. اگر تو برنامههای بعدی یکی از اون امپلی فایرها رو توضیح بدین که چجوری برای اون فرکانس های بالا طراحی می شن ممنون میشم. قربانت
Thank God/Allah for the translate function. Otherwise your comment would have made no sense whatsoever. Arabic comments on an English language channel is quite useless.
This is not Arabic. It is Persian. :)
@@bzuidgeest , one of the rare time when RUclips actually did something good.
@@Thesignalpath might as well be cuneiform 😀
👍🙏❤
That was an exciting journey! Really glad Keysight chimed in and provided the unobtanium chip. Thank you for sharing the process! Are you still using Dino-Lite USB microscopes? Are these the same units you reviewed at ruclips.net/video/larmop2B--E/видео.html ? Also, still using the Vision M1? Would you still recommend them today for the very same purposes you use them?
Yes, please continue reverse engineering these amplifiers!
Yeah, liquid metal is indeed a nice thing, BUT, your main concern should not be only its electrical conductivity, in this case.
Rather the fact that it will eat tin based solder, and killed a lot of Nvidia GPU, where people were using it to decrease the shunt resistance used to assess the GPU power draw, allowing for greater power draw, so greater clocks.
You should also beware when using it on bare copper, it will permeate and diffuse into the copper atomic layers, decreasing slightly its thermal conductivity, hence its electrical conductivity.
Do not use liquid metal on tin solder or bare copper, on sensitive electronics, or you will regret it.
It's fine to use when deliding CPU, to remplace the original thermal interface, or when when repasting laptops.
It is also fine if the copper is plated, with a fine nickel layer, for example.