Decoding: Where does TI's analog competitiveness come from?

Three secrets

Every time Steve Anderson visits a customer, he uses the following picture as his opening statement. Many companies in the analog field also have similar pictures, the purpose is more to illustrate the importance of analog in the real world, while Steve Anderson's is to let customers know at a glance that analog and digital complement each other and are inseparable. For TI, this is more like a product distribution map of its own, because TI has business in every block, which means that TI can provide a complete set of solutions.

"TI has analog products, embedded processing technology and interconnection technology, and no other company in the industry can make progress in all three business areas like TI. You often need to find three or four rival companies and connect them together to compete with us." Steve Anderson looks as kind as Santa Claus, and this gentle sentence is very domineering because no one can deny the fact that TI has more than 100,000 analog and embedded products. When it comes to the scope and breadth of the product line, other suppliers can only catch up.

In addition, TI's analog department is strongly supported by its strong semiconductor process and manufacturing capabilities. The world's first 300mm analog wafer fab RFAB, which was completed in 2007, has been in operation for many years, and TI has also been adhering to a diversified manufacturing strategy. In addition to the United States, TI has wafer fabs and packaging and testing plants in Japan, Chengdu, the Philippines and other places, and uses foundries to expand production capacity, which ensures the stability and long-term nature of TI's supply cycle. Even products such as the first generation of Simple Switcher, which were more than 20 years ago, are still in supply, which is particularly important for companies with special industry applications.

The third outstanding advantage is strong support and service. Take TI China as an example. It has offices in 18 cities, 4 R&D centers, 1 product distribution center, and an integrated manufacturing base for wafer manufacturing, packaging testing, and wafer bump processing. In fact, when TI transformed into analog, competitors felt strongly the pressure of TI's "human sea" tactics, because TI can always send engineers to the site to communicate with customers, and can also design corresponding products and reference designs according to customer needs.

In addition to strong localization support, there are also a large number of software and hardware development tools, the most extensive reference designs in the industry... In addition to the prestigious E2E forum (the Chinese localization has the Texas Instruments online technical support community), WEBENCH online design tools and TI Designs online reference designs have become important helpers for electronic engineers. "The reference design we provide may not be the only reference design, but it will definitely be the best in the field. Our reference design will be the first step for customers to succeed. There are few other companies in the industry that can provide such strong technical support capabilities in analog and embedded devices." TI Designs, which makes Steve Anderson so confident, is a reference design collection formed by TI's decades of experience, including schematics, block diagrams, test data, BOM, design files, software and hardware, etc. This allows customers to invest more energy and resources in the differentiated development of products and accelerate the product launch cycle.

In the world of analog, how can TI maintain its achievements in the future? Undoubtedly, continuous innovation is the only answer, even though innovation is not easy for a company of such size. Steve Anderson pointed out that in the world of analog technology, innovation is happening regularly. The great transformation of Industry 4.0 that we are currently experiencing will further promote analog innovation. These innovations will mainly be reflected in power management and energy collection, as well as in analog signal chains. Perhaps the innovations in analog signal chains are not particularly well known to the outside world, but they are indeed happening regularly. By seizing these innovations, TI analog will also seize the future.

Opportunities of Industry 4.0

"Industry 4.0" is a concept that is sweeping the world now. Whether in Europe, China, or the United States, everyone is excitedly talking about the next wave of industrial automation that it represents. In fact, as early as 2013, Richard Templeton, chairman, president and CEO of TI, proposed at the shareholders' meeting that TI will continue to deepen its vertical markets such as industry and automobiles in the future and continuously improve its extensive product portfolio. According to TI's 2015 financial report, the industrial field accounted for 31% of the total revenue, and the automotive field accounted for 15%, which together accounted for almost half of the market. In Templeton's letter to shareholders, it was also mentioned that new markets for semiconductors in the industrial and automotive directions are becoming a source of growth for new opportunities. This is particularly good news, because looking at the entire market, the industrial and automotive fields are still in the early stages of adopting semiconductors.

Steve Anderson believes that the core technologies for achieving Industry 4.0 include sensors, high-precision simulation, embedded processing and communication, isolation and power management, and these technologies must meet standards such as reliability, high precision, safety, and energy saving. For industrial applications, the most important basic point is to ensure high reliability at the system level. It is hard to imagine that an automobile production line is shut down due to system reliability problems, or that a smart grid cannot deliver electricity due to reliability problems. Therefore, semiconductor companies have to consider more when designing products. The solutions provided by TI can ensure extremely high reliability in industrial and automated applications. He took the newly launched TCAN1042 and TCAN1051 transceivers as an example. The product does not require an external noise reduction common mode choke, which not only reduces the bill of materials and reduces costs, but also reduces the product's usage space and increases reliability.

Innovation in power supply

Since power is everywhere and is needed in any application, power is another very important area of ​​innovation. As early as the 1990s, TI began to vigorously develop the field of power management. Through the acquisition of Power Trends and Unitrode and other small mergers and acquisitions, TI has achieved unprecedented success in the power management market. The subsequent acquisition of National Semiconductor has made TI an absolute leader in the power supply field.

Currently, TI's power business accounts for more than a quarter of TI's analog business, and its advantage over its competitors is very obvious, almost three times that of its closest competitor. With nearly 10,000 products, more than 18 core processes, and 30 power design centers around the world, these technological advantages allow TI to always maintain its innovative spirit. Looking to the future, Steve Anderson believes that TI's innovation in the power field needs to be reflected in more aspects, such as gallium nitride (GaN) technology, high-voltage power supplies, wireless charging, etc.

For example, in the emerging field of high-voltage power supply, TI has made sufficient preparations. Its newly launched high-voltage drive integrated GaN solution can provide customers with a better technical experience. This includes a two-fold increase in power density and a half-reduction in loss; secondly, due to the high integration of the package, it can effectively reduce parasitic inductance and power loss; thirdly, high integration brings improved reliability; fourthly, a broader GaN ecosystem that can provide a complete set of analog-to-digital power conversion controllers.

Steve Anderson said that TI will also vigorously expand and develop the ecological chain based on GaN technology, including launching more product portfolios, high-voltage chips and new topologies, etc. "At the APEC exhibition in the United States, we specifically demonstrated the latest UCD digital controller, which achieved 99% efficiency PFC. At the same time, we also exhibited analog controllers optimized for GaN, so you can see that it is not only a product, but also an ecosystem." Anderson said, "In the future, we will focus on the application layer and open up potential markets. Emerging fields including servers, motor drives, solar inverters, etc. have shown great interest in the performance and protection of GaN."

The World of Signal Chain

Although TI's power products are well-known, the largest revenue of TI's analog department actually comes from the signal chain business. In 2000, TI acquired Burr-Brown to become an important player in the analog market, and the acquisition of National Semiconductor in 2011 enabled TI to provide customers with more choices, such as in sensing, sensors, clocks and timing, Ethernet, interfaces, low-power signal chains and other aspects.

In addition to the automation field, signal chain products are indispensable for personal consumer electronics, automobiles, communications and other applications. Signal chain is the main source of business for TI on the one hand, and a means to expand the customer base on the other. Take TI's high-performance analog products as an example. The largest customer contributes no more than 5% of the total business. It has more than 17,000 product combinations and serves more than 70,000 customers.

"TI can solve any problem in signal chain design." Steve Anderson's confidence is not limited to the signal chain, but can be extended to the entire analog field. This confidence is supported by its R&D team. In 2015, TI invested more than 1.3 billion US dollars in R&D and launched about 350 new analog products, all of which serve the latest applications. And this investment is still increasing. "I am confident that everyone will see TI's continuous innovation in analog technology in the future." Although he also admitted that TI still has quite a lot of competitors and challenges in the world. However, he believes that TI will still find differentiated competitive areas, one is product and technology differentiation, and the other is supply chain strategy. "As long as it is in a specific local market, we will have countermeasures. At the same time, we can guarantee a stable supply through a diversified manufacturing strategy, which is unmatched by other suppliers."