[time-nuts] WWVB PM Time Questions

[Hal Murray]

> I'm sure there are a lot of transistors in their IC to handle all the phase
> tracking and time decoding.

They aren't doing phase tracking, just decoding time data.  All that crap 
about Atomic Time is just advertising BS.

Moore's Law applies to transistors.  It doesn't matter if you use them for 
analog or digital.

There is a wonderful concept: Pad Limited.  Suppose your design takes N pads 
for bond wires to the outside world.  Start with the logic for your design.  
Squish it down to a sensible shape.  Now put the pads around it.  Pads are big 
(relative to transistors).  If they bump into each other, you may have empty 
room left over inside the pad ring.  In a mature process, the yield is close 
to 100% and doesn't depend on how many transistors you put in that empty space 
so you might as well use it.

If you don't have empty room today, wait a bit.  Transistors are shrinking 
faster than pads.

Watches are the classic example.  They have lots of pads because each segment 
on the display needs its own wire.  So you get watches that can keep track of 
days of the month and know about leap years.

-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.