Semiconductor Lifeline Keeps Fighter Jets in the Air

Turtles all the way down and up: Vehicle makers sourcing plug-compatible devices which emulate floppy drives for updating tank s/w, Airlines sourcing print and terminals emulating IBM mainframe era dependencies for gate check processes.

Talking of mainframes, many core bank registry functions are emulations of prior systems long embedded into architectures now themselves superseded. Support for tech archaisms has long roots.

This makes me think of Jazz Semiconductor in Newport Beach. I think they’re Tower Semiconductor now, but I believe they’re still there, a small fab in SoCal that I assume is making obscure, important stuff.

Nothing new under the sun: Strobe Data did this decades years ago for things like PDP-11s (http://www.strobedata.com/home/pioneer10.html) and DG Novas.

It's surprising the DoD didn't require stockpiles of spares for every electronic component in these phenomenally expensive and long-lived weapon systems. This is after all the one arm of the Federal Government that is both good at logistics and planning, and was able to deliver frozen ice cream and other amenities to the most remote Forward Operating Bases in Afghanistan.

> "[Phoenix] repackages off-the-shelf semiconductors into devices that are virtually identical to the phased-out chips."

I'm slightly surprised that _virtually_ identical chips are allowed. I expected truly identical chips to be required…