JMD(NY) you're not correct this time.
Typically I agree with you, but not this time: to say that discrete transistors are "lagging edge" reveals to me you're not an AnalogRFMW engineer.
Fawad EXACTLY uses them to achieve what's not possible with pre-fabricated MMIC's, limitation though it cannot be done successfully above K-band or say > 29GHz dueto dismal gains of discrete devices. Anyway, reason he uses them is for extreme customizations - you can't wiggle an MMIC as much as an optmized/matched network of discrete transistors, so Amplitech has a right to claim niche market populated by few other manufacturers. Problem is, it means near-zero financially. It's cool to supply a couple amplifiers to NIST or some cryogenic nutty mad science project, but you're investing to make money, not to make +10cents/share in 10 years, HybridMIC's built from fully discrete-transistors oe even mixed (discrete FET's driving output IC's) were great history, but it is so well-known/established design methods that ONLY reasons most others don't it same as Amplitech is b/c it ties up all the Assembly effort, wrangling WHOLE DAY to produce mere few Amps, so despite their siazable profit margins /per unit, in totality it's useless for investors. It's a great way for "Bell Labs" R&D but not mass production/meaningful profits.
I know more than you all guys can imagine, i've seen how stuff is done across entire country and by many companies, heck I can turn around most of the failing such companies riding the principles Amplitech remains founded on. There's an unexpected benefot of travel & contracts - you doNOT stangnate, your brain remains hungry, active, you learn, you don't grow into that office chair for 20 years doing same stuff everyday. I got lucky,
Anyways, back to Amplitech. So if a company is forced to spend a day with 2-3 assemblers elaborately "knitting" a couple amplifiers in some parking lot or garage in the beginning, well, yeah, that's fascinating, but to only have THAT as revenue generation, sorry, ... times have changed. Integrated chipsets & even surface-mount ones from AnalogDevices/Hittite, Qorvo/triquint, Skyworks, others I can't mention for proprietary reasons here, as opposed to Hybrids, are so good nowadays, Amplitech is facing an ever growing mountain of competition I sensed in 2008 and fully panicked in 2012. This is the end of HybridsMIC production on dsicrete FET's en-masse, and dropping MMIC's/mmIC into a metal cavity - anyone can, no Amplitech manual knotting wirebonds all day is required.
And add Skyworks or ADI to it, it's relaly the end. Iam so impressed with Analog Devices swallowing Hittite, and triquint eating RFMW to form Qorvo. HE, WHO DESIGNS ON PHYSICAL LAYER (SEMICONDUCTOR IC's) CONTROLS THE WORLD - I SAID THAT IN 2008. See how it played out exactly as I feared.
Companies like Amplitech can only get crumbs from the big table of this industry, novadays.
Sorry for typos, too busy to write long....
