Spherical: Making chips that go into space

If you imagine a satellite without chips, it's just a chunk of useless metal in space. Thomas Parry, founder and CEO of Spherical, is building the chips that make satellites work. Spherical builds full-stack spacecraft electronics: the systems, the silicon, and the software. They design their own radiation-hardened chips, build satellite power systems around them, and keep the supply chain European all the way down to the fab. We get into why chips are the real leverage point in aerospace, how the industry moved from mil-grade parts to commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), and why designing your own silicon can beat testing someone else's. Thomas explains how transistor-level radiation modeling cuts testing costs and shrinks component counts by about 10x, whether data centers in space are real or hype, what a "fully European supply chain" actually means, and how the Google/SkyWater open-source silicon push during COVID turned a frustrated satellite engineer into a chip company founder. Read the write-up: https://www.siliconimist.com/p/spheri... Thomas Parry:   / thomas-parry-spherical   Spherical: https://www.spherical.si/ CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro: Thomas Parry and Spherical 01:00 Full-stack space electronics: systems, silicon, software 02:20 Why chips are the leverage point in a satellite 03:30 From mil-grade parts to COTS: two eras of space electronics 05:00 Can you just fly a smartphone? Radiation and reliability 07:30 Assurance, testing costs, and designing your own chips 08:30 Transistor-level radiation modeling and 10x fewer components 09:40 Data centers in space: real or hype? 12:30 Building a fully European supply chain 14:00 US customers, ITAR, and plugging in a US fab 15:00 Why ESA and the EIC care about sovereignty 16:00 De-risking: chip availability and tariffs 18:00 Open-source silicon and the Google/SkyWater shuttles 21:40 From engineer to founder 22:30 Where to start learning silicon 23:30 Audio, synths, and what Thomas is reading 24:50 Where to find Spherical MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Sophia Space (orbital data centers) partnership: https://sophia.space/news/sophia-spac... SkyWater open-source PDK: https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk OpenROAD: https://openroad.readthedocs.io/ Tiny Tapeout: https://tinytapeout.com/ ESA on Spherical's chip design: https://commercialisation.esa.int/202... Thomas on Infinite Frontiers: https://infinitefrontiers.io/conversa... MORE FROM THE SILICONIMIST Tiny Tapeout with Matt Venn:    • Tiny Tapeout - Matt Venn   wafer.space with Tim Ansell:    • wafer.space - Tim 'mithro' Ansell   Fiora5 on RISC-V and European sovereignty:    • Fiora5 and RISC-V: Credibility Is the Barr...   LISTEN Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0ZMWpB9... YouTube playlist:    • The Siliconimist   #Semiconductors #SpaceTech #ChipDesign #OpenSourceSilicon