SBIR/STTR Award attributes
There are significant Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages (DMSMS) issues with electronics used in Department of Defense (DoD) systems. Nearly all DoD electronic systems are uniquely designed and manufactured for their specific applications using commercially available microcircuits at the time that they were designed. Integrated Circuits (ICs), or microcircuits, have an average product life cycle of eight years while most DoD electronics systems are in use for many decades. This frequently creates occurrences where replacement electronic parts are required, but are obsolete, and unavailable. Global Circuit Innovations’ (GCI’s) provides solutions for DoD customers who require authorized reverse engineering to solve Line Replacement Units (LRUs), Circuit Card Assemblies (CCAs) and/or microcircuit obsolescence issues. GCI also provides solutions to the oil and gas industry; specifically environmentally hardened microcircuits with greatly extended survivability at temperatures up to +250°C with shock and vibration requirements of 20,000g. For comparison, the maximum temperature rating of most microcircuits in DoD applications is +125°C. “GCI performs reverse engineering for forward thinking solutions.” GCI’s proven reverse engineering obsolescence electronic solutions provide highly robust products while saving our customers time and money by avoiding expensive full system redesigns, typically providing a Return on Investment (ROI) of 4 to 1 thus avoiding 80% of the cost as well as 50% of the schedule. GCI provides drop-in replacements for obsolete systems where no other options are available, short of an entire system redesign. GCI’s methods provide solutions for CCAs that would otherwise remain obsolete due to one or more obsolete microcircuits on the CCAs. Without this solution, entire system redesigns will be required. GCI’s engineering and technical staff has an average of 25+ years of experience designing, debugging, manufacturing, assembling, testing and performing failure analysis on electronics used in DoD applications (space, air, land and sea), as well as industrial and commercial applications, over careers working for several of the largest and most successful U.S. semiconductor (i.e., IC or microcircuit) manufacturers (e.g., Intel, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, United Technologies, Cypress Semiconductor, Atmel, etc.). GCI has successfully designed and manufactured hundreds of types of microcircuits, CCAs, and other electronic components for a broad spectrum of DoD, as well as industrial applications in highly rugged environments.
