David Bell, CEO of Intersil, talks to Electronics Weekly about the analogue business, energy efficiency, reference designs, disruptive technologies, ambient lighting and proximity sensing...
1. Can you describe a key architecture development, which is having an impact on the analogue business?
I believe that digital power has reached a tipping point and is now poised for explosive growth. Cynics will remind us that digital power has been just around the corner for many years now, but I believe we have now truly reached an inflection point.
One of the historical obstacles to digital power has been complexity. Early implementations were difficult to use and didn't provide significant benefits over traditional analogue solutions. However, the latest digital power ICs offer superior performance and are even easier to implement than analogue solutions.
I suppose it's ironic for digital power to be touted by an analogue IC maker, but such 'digital' solutions are really combined analogue and digital systems, and require expertise in both domains. The latest digital power implementations offer important advantages including increased efficiency, automatic loop compensation, and configurability so a single part type can be used for a wide range of applications. Because fewer external components are required, digital power solutions also consume less board area. In addition, the ability to communicate with the power system provides benefits in system reliability and power optimisation.
2. How is the global trend towards greater energy efficiency affecting the semiconductor business in general?
Energy conservation and 'green power' have become important drivers for the semiconductor industry. Semiconductors have the ability to contribute in all three links of the energy chain - efficient generation, transmission and consumption of electricity. Semiconductors are necessary for optimising the power delivery from photovoltaic panels and other alternative energy sources, and conditioning the power for delivery to the grid. Innovative semiconductor technology also helps move us towards the 'smart grid' which will maximize energy use by running appliances or charging vehicles when surplus power is available, and storing energy for peak demand periods. Finally, semiconductor technology is contributing to significantly reduced energy consumption in factories, buildings, appliances, computers and vehicles.
Hybrid and electric vehicles alone are having a huge impact on the semiconductor industry. The sheer number of cells, and the large amount of electric power needed to propel a car, results in significant dollar content per vehicle. The inevitable growth in hybrid and full electric vehicles is destined to have a large impact on the power semiconductor industry.
3. Specifically, how is Intersil approaching the issue of energy-efficiency in its business strategy and its products?
Energy efficiency now seems to impact almost every aspect of Intersil's business. With portable products, energy efficiency is important since it determines how long a battery charge will last, so customers have long demanded the utmost efficiency. In mains-powered products the primary consideration for power efficiency used to be simply heat generation, but that is now changing. Now power consumption is being minimized in all product types in an effort to reduce the operating cost of equipment, and to comply with global initiatives to reduce energy consumption.
Examples include products such as low-power Class-G ADSL line drivers, which have the potential to save billions of kilowatt-hours per year because of their large numbers and 24/7 operation. Intersil recently acquired Quellan, a company that has developed technology that dramatically reduces the power consumption of 10Gbit interconnects within data centres. Because it replaces much higher power fiber-optic interconnects, this technology also has the potential to significantly reduce network interconnect power consumption. Even modestly reducing the power consumption of various analogue ICs, when multiplied by the 1.5 billion units shipped per year by Intersil, can have an enormous impact on the environment.
4. Do you see any disruptive technologies on the horizon?
Of course there are many new technologies on the horizon, but I'll mention two that I think have the potential for significant energy conservation.
Intersil is a market leader in the relatively new area of ambient light and proximity sensing. Dimming the brightness of LCD displays under low light conditions can have a large impact on worldwide energy consumption. Taking this technology a step further to infrared proximity sensing allows displays to be completely turned off when the user walks away. With the large number of displays used worldwide, these two technologies can obviously have a huge impact.
The second area I'll mention is virtualisation. The ability to concentrate CPU activity to a subset of servers in a data centre allows large numbers of idled servers to be reduced to low power states. The power control capabilities provided by digital power ICs, combined with virtualisation software, enable significant power savings in an increasingly internet-centric world. For instance, data centres account for approximately 2% of electricity consumption in the USA, so even modest reductions in data centre power consumption can have a significant impact.
5. Is the analogue business a chip or solution sell? Are reference designs making an impact?
Unfortunately, expert analogue engineers are a dying breed. At the same time, the performance demands and complexity of analogue solutions are increasing. This creates a 'knowledge gap' that must be filled by the analogue suppliers, and we are filling that gap with complete solutions. Today, releasing a hot new product along with a datasheet is usually not enough - increasingly, we need to provide customers with a complete reference design and evaluation board to speed their adoption. Intersil is partnering with major chipset suppliers so that complementary reference designs are available when customers begin their design process.
See also: Q5 - Interviews with electronics industry leaders
Read all the Electronics Weekly Q5 interviews. From ARM's chairman, Sir Robin Saxby, to touchscreen technology firm Zytronic's MD, Mark Cambridge, the business leaders share their particular insights on the UK electronics industry.