Greetings, now that the MPW-8 chips have arrived, I can start designing an evaluation board. Having MPW-9 in mind I’m planning to make it caravan compatible. I’m just using 3V3 IOs with a higher bandwidth, obviously. So the question is, are simple external ESD diodes enough to handle a caravan version ? Should there be a connection to ground while handling and in power off state, which becomes opened by a simple jumper or during a power up sequence ? Any recommendations on how to design and handling and evaluation board would be awesome. Thanks in advance, cheers, Tobias

I suppose an external ESD diode can't hurt, but generally speaking the chip is just going to be very static-sensitive and you'll need to be careful handling the board. The best thing is to get an ESD mat to work on, and a ground strap tied around your wrist. It's not that hard to prevent damage to the chip, but you just have to be vigilant about it.