NXP's Li Tingwei: Adhere to win-win cooperation, NXP will strongly support China in realizing the Internet of Everything

The genes of Fairchild Semiconductor, the polishing of Signetics, the precipitation of Philips Semiconductor, and the reinforcement of Freescale, the profound and diverse historical heritage have created the current NXP Semiconductors. When people mention NXP, the first impression of it is that it is the leading manufacturer of automotive chips. NXP accepts this label, but has never been imprisoned by it. Instead, it is striding towards further places.

At the "Everything is Connected, the Core is Sparking a Prairie Fire" AI Chip Innovation Theme Forum at the 2020 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Dr. Li Tingwei, Chairman of NXP Semiconductors Greater China, said that NXP's current focus markets have covered four major areas: industry/IoT, automotive, mobile devices, and communications infrastructure. Through leading products and security solutions, it will provide a faster and more secure connection experience for the smart world. 

Li Tingwei, Chairman of NXP Semiconductors Greater China

China is perhaps the country closest to the era of "Internet of Everything". Big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence technologies are developing rapidly in the Chinese market. This fertile land has therefore attracted enough attention from international semiconductor giants such as NXP.

In February this year, Dr. Li Tingwei, who had served as a senior executive in many high-tech companies including Goertek, Broadcom, Marvell and Qualcomm, took up the position of NXP, taking full responsibility for all external affairs of NXP China. As a practitioner of deepening and expanding cooperation in the Chinese ecosystem, Dr. Li Tingwei talked about NXP's determination to deepen its roots in China and the way to win in the intelligent era in an interview with Jiwei.com.

How to cooperate

Under the complex international trade situation, the "roles" of overseas semiconductor companies in China seem to be gradually being cut, and local manufacturers are being quickly pushed to the center of the stage. Therefore, while embracing the huge opportunities in the Chinese market, overseas companies also need to think about how to make their roots deeper in China.

"Win-win cooperation must be the main theme of NXP." Dr. Li Tingwei told Jiwei.com that as a global company headquartered in Europe, NXP has always attached great importance to the Chinese market and has already established a deep and broad layout in China. Among the company's 9,000 R&D personnel worldwide, 1,500 are in China.

Dr. Li Tingwei pointed out that from the perspective of the semiconductor industry itself, win-win cooperation is the correct development model. Innovation in each link of the industry is not closed and can be completed by a certain company alone, but can only be achieved through cooperation. "The more you understand the world today, the more you know the importance of cooperation. After decades of development, the semiconductor industry has long become a place where you are in me and I am in you," said Li Tingwei.

After the main theme is established, whether win-win results can be achieved will depend on the specific implementation methods of cooperation. Dr. Li Tingwei said that NXP's cooperation with Chinese companies is mainly carried out in three ways, including strengthening depth, broadening breadth and collaborative innovation.

In terms of depth, NXP has begun to strengthen its ties with the Chinese supply chain and establish a closer cooperative relationship. According to Dr. Li Tingwei, NXP has many foundry business cooperations with SMIC and is one of the latter's important customers. In addition, from the perspective of foreign exchange, NXP supports euro settlement in addition to US dollar settlement in China, which also reflects NXP's support for Chinese companies.

In terms of breadth, the digital upgrade of the whole society has blurred the boundaries of many industries, and the demand dimensions have begun to blend. In order to meet these cross-industry needs, NXP is committed to covering the intelligent upgrade of all nodes in the entire chain with its deep accumulation of leading industries. For example, last year NXP and smart logistics platform Cainiao Network Technology Co., Ltd. signed a strategic cooperation memorandum to jointly promote the digital strategic upgrade of logistics supply chain; in the field of smart cars, NXP also has a lot of cooperation with Chinese Internet companies such as Baidu and Alibaba.

Finally, collaborative innovation is the most important point. If the cooperation between an overseas company and a Chinese company is limited to business dealings, then the localization of this overseas company will only remain on the surface. Dr. Li Tingwei emphasized that NXP already has a good layout in China. On this basis, what needs to be done in the future is further localization. "Many of NXP's processor chips and IP development are completed by Chinese teams. In the future, these designs and developments will be more original, and these IPs will be considered to remain in China." Dr. Li Tingwei further pointed out, "In addition, it also includes the joint development of IP with other Chinese companies. These are one of the main directions of win-win cooperation."

Just as more and more Chinese companies are becoming global companies, more and more companies like NXP are becoming Chinese companies, and localization is an important prerequisite for these companies to take root in the Chinese market. According to Dr. Li Tingwei, in order to truly achieve localization, NXP is also working hard to improve the "self-sufficiency" capabilities of the Chinese team to provide better services and support to the Chinese market.

Strengthening cooperation with the Chinese ecosystem is just practicing the "swordsmanship". How does NXP sharpen the technological "sword" needed for the decisive battle in the intelligent era?

Decisive Battle in the Intelligent Era

"NXP's early products were used in automobiles and industries in Europe and the United States. Both markets have extremely high requirements for semiconductor products, which has brought NXP industry recognition for both high performance and safety," said Dr. Li Tingwei.

In recent years, integrated circuit companies have sprung up everywhere. For some automotive or industrial products, some latecomers seem to be able to design qualified products, but it is still very difficult to get different car manufacturers or factories to adopt them. Dr. Li Tingwei said that unlike product differentiation, NXP enjoys high product quality assurance, deep industry insights and system-level solution capabilities in the industry, forming an invisible differentiation.

As a semiconductor company, NXP's ability to combine software and hardware is particularly important. With the generation of massive amounts of data in the intelligent era, the market has begun to have some AI capabilities at the edge. Dr. Li Tingwei believes that NXP's early layout has created opportunities for itself. More than 26,000 customers around the world have given it a full understanding of all walks of life, and its software and hardware reuse can well meet the various needs of customers.

Regarding the four major target markets of industry/IoT, automotive, mobile devices and communication infrastructure, Li Tingwei introduced NXP's layout and advantages respectively.

In terms of industry/IoT, NXP can provide a wide range of scalable product portfolios, including ultra-low power and high-performance processors, high-performance cross processors, low-power security MCUs, etc. At the same time, NXP is also a market leader in connectivity chips, with a complete product portfolio including UWB, Wi-Fi, NFC, RFID and Bluetooth. Dr. Li Tingwei said that the substantial increase in embedded processing complexity has led to the rapid evolution of MCUs for industry/IoT, and NXP's platform-based i.MX series came into being.

Regarding the automotive field where NXP focuses and leads, Dr. Li Tingwei pointed out that a car can be understood as a large mobile IoT terminal. NXP has accumulated many years of experience in the automotive field. From a technical perspective, vehicle networks, master control, ADAS, radar, battery management systems and other technologies are covered by systematic solutions. Li Tingwei emphasized that the transformation of the mobile phone industry from feature phones to smartphones will be reflected in the digital upgrade of the automotive industry. Automobiles will lead the development of various technological fields because the complexity of automobiles, as well as the requirements for the combination of software and hardware and safety, are much higher than those of other industries.

In addition, in the mobile phone industry, NXP mainly promotes the security of mobile wallets, including providing NFC connection chips, etc. As for the hot 5G base stations, Dr. Li Tingwei said that RF and filters are the biggest challenges, and NXP can provide all technical solutions from low frequency to high frequency, low power to high power, such as silicon germanium, gallium nitride, and LDMOS.

With such a complete product line, coupled with years of technological accumulation and an open and cooperative business model, I believe NXP will quickly gain a favorable position in the decisive battle in the intelligent era.