Renesas Vice President: Customers will always remember how you served them during difficult times

Dr. Sailesh Chittipeddi, General Manager and Executive Vice President of the IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit at Renesas Technology, was recently interviewed by electronicsforu. In the interview, he mentioned the popular technology trends after the COVID-19 pandemic, the efforts made by Renesas, his views on Arm and RISC-V, technologies such as the Internet of Things and biometrics, and his insights into the Indian market.

Below are the details of the conversation.

Q: Can you share some key strategies post-COVID-19 and how things are changing?

A: One of the biggest trends we are seeing is a big push for more bandwidth consumption. For example, Netflix or web video consumption, Facebook and even text messaging, most of which have grown by double-digit percentages in just a few months. This has increased data center spending quite a bit for major players like Google, Amazon, etc. This is helpful for us because we have a presence in both power and memory interface products.

There's a growing focus on healthcare and the environment, and if your oxygen levels drop alarmingly, there's a correlation between SpO2 levels and COVID. So that's driving interest in our products, particularly around biosensing and ventilator systems.

As electric vehicles develop, traditional vehicles are decreasing. On the industrial side, smart metering will definitely lead to higher energy consumption. Monitoring and voice human machine interface are becoming big, and monitoring and voice user interface will continue to develop as contactless development develops. So these are the main trends we have seen. Fundamentally, the driving force is really the development of data-centricity from the front end to the back end.

Q: Does this also lead to more frequent product releases, i.e. some products are being expedited while others are being put aside, or is it simply being produced based on demand?

A: Both. Demand has certainly increased, and the demand for laptops and personal computing has really increased significantly. Even in the United States, in many areas, elementary school students cannot afford laptops. So the Chromebook market has grown significantly, and schools have been placing orders with customers.

In terms of investments, we've emphasized some things in areas like voice and monitoring and are trying to get some products out faster. For example, our 48V scooter and e-bike solutions are being driven more aggressively than before. Same thing with all the components of the ventilator, which need to be a complete solution. So I wouldn't say we've slowed down everything, but we've accelerated some things to meet the six trends that we're seeing.

Q: Renesas has been launching products very frequently during the COVID-19 pandemic, while other brands have remained relatively silent. How have you managed to do this? What best practices do you follow to ensure a continuous rollout of new innovative products?

A: We are working hard to make up for lost time. One of the challenges we faced was that we were late in launching Arm-based microcontroller products from the Renesas RA family in 2018. So we launched that MCU family in October 2019 and it was quickly adopted with a full suite of RA MCU products and more RA MCU ecosystem partners who have access to off-the-shelf partner solutions that can significantly expand our portfolio. We then quickly addressed the gaps in our portfolio.

One of the messages I give to the team is that customers will always remember how you served during challenging times because challenging times always form the best relationships, whether it’s between people or between organizations. One of the messages I tell people all the time is that this is when we have to outperform our competitors, whether it’s new products or supply chain. We’ve used it to put a lot of effort across the company. People realize we have gaps, so we’re committed to filling them across our portfolio.

Q: Are there any interesting products or recent innovations you’d like to highlight that are game-changing and provide unique differentiated value to engineers?

A: I think most of our products are interesting and differentiating, including our MCUs and increasingly our MPU family. On the MPU side, we have a technology called Dynamic Reconfigurable Processor (DRP), which is basically feed-forward based neural technology that works very well for things like facial recognition, object recognition, and so on. So it's an AI-based technology that gives them a lot of differentiation relative to their competitors. It gives you, for example, the high-performance capabilities of an NVIDIA Jetson, but at a fraction of the cost. So it's differentiating. If you were to ask me on the MPU side, I would certainly say DRP or e/AI technology. On the MCU side, security is a big differentiator for us. And then there's the RE family that uses Renesas' proprietary thin buried oxide process technology to significantly reduce power consumption for energy harvesting applications. And of course, Renesas has a broad portfolio of high-performance and high-efficiency power and analog products that create advantages for our customers.

Q: What specific customer segments can benefit from DRP MPU?

A: The RZ Series MPUs excel in certain scalable solutions such as face recognition in a crowd and tracking in a crowd with strong performance and high efficiency. We are actively pursuing certain verticals such as monitoring and preventive maintenance, which involves repeatedly finding defects. In a way, it is better than the human eye, because the human eye gets tired, but these systems can continue to operate.

Q: Arm is about to be acquired by NVIDIA. How will this affect Renesas' strategy?

A: First of all, I would say that the chances of a deal happening are slim because regulators might be concerned. But assuming that happens, and based on the discussions we have had with Arm, they are clear that they will still have an open licensing model. We recently announced the first RISC-V-based solutions, which will start sampling to customers in the second half of 2021. These are primarily MCUs, which will be application-specific solutions, and with these solutions we will enter the motor control and voice markets. In addition to this, we have proprietary 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers. We have the RX and RL78 families that have been around for a long time. So our customers don't have to worry.

On the other hand, there are other GPU providers, such as Imagination, who are also our partners. So we have fallback technology on the MPU side if adjustments are needed. But we don't have an urgent need to do that at the moment because Arm and NVIDIA have been very clear that it will support an open licensing model. But obviously, you don't want to work with someone you're competing with in another space. That brings some concerns. So we need to be careful. I must add that even before the NVIDIA acquisition news, we had taken some steps to develop some RISC-V-based products.

Q: How do you see the future of RISC-V?

A: I think people still want an open source architecture, mainly because the licensing fees have gone up. So open source is the natural choice. And I think with this agreement, RISC-V will accelerate. The Arm ecosystem has and will continue to have an advantage in the next few years, mainly because of the huge support ecosystem built around it. In any case, it will take time for any organization to develop this kind of infrastructure support. It will take a while for anyone to replicate it. If Arm is true to the open system architecture, then it is not a big deal. But please be careful because we as a processor company are on the receiving end.

Q: Where are all your R&D teams located? Do you have a team in India as well?

A: We didn’t have one before, but now we have an R&D team in India. We are setting up a large space in Bangalore, mainly for very powerful RF and clock equipment. We have partnered with a company called Steradian. We have always used Indian design houses and worked with companies like Tata Elxsi, HCL, Sankalp, TCS. We have always worked with these companies, but given all the circumstances on the trade side, we decided to have a direct presence in India, which has been very helpful for us.

Q: Do you have a roadmap for India you want to share now or is it in the works?

A: For RF, we certainly have a very compelling roadmap. A lot of our millimeter wave R&D is currently being done in India. Millimeter wave is not sub-6 GHz, but millimeter wave above 28 GHz. We are also doing some clock R&D in the region and are looking to build a stronger presence in India (Bangalore).

Q: How do you see the overall scenario in India? You have mentioned that you intend to set up a dedicated R&D facility and that this is a clear sales destination. So am I correct in assuming that e-bikes and surveillance are the two key markets or do you see other markets in the mix?

A: We also see growth in other markets. Biosensing is one of them. Providing affordable healthcare and air quality monitoring to people will become increasingly important due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our team is working hard to develop sectors such as medical, consumer, infrastructure, and industrial in the field of IoT and mobile.

My view is that India is an untapped market in terms of accessibility to electronics. The potential is huge. So, in addition to the R&D centers that we have established, we plan to work with various emerging companies. The coverage will be very important, and if India sets its mind to developing electronic systems on its own, then I think it will be a huge game changer for us. If it starts doing some of the things that are done in Taiwan, including product design specifications, etc., then it will propel us to new heights.

Q: Do you see IoT as a buzzword or a true market pioneer?

A: That’s a great question. To me, any edge or endpoint device is fundamentally IoT. Are there more devices and sensors connected around the world? Yes, absolutely. There is no doubt that we are heading towards a trillion connected devices in the near future. To me, it doesn’t matter whether it’s IoT or connected sensors. The trend is already there.