IDT has started an analogue division and has recruited a former Maxim executive to lead it.
“Low power is a critical component of all the markets IDT is engaged in,” said Mansour Izadinia, senior v-p and general manager of the new analogue and power group which consists of around 300 people.
Izadinia joins his former colleague at Maxim, Ted Tewksbury, who has been CEO of IDT for 17 months.
The Izadinia hiring is part of Tewksbury’s approach to growing IDT which he learnt at Maxim. As he puts it: "We target the top individuals in the industry and go out and hire them. We ask: 'What are the best products in the industry?' And then we ask: 'Who designed those products?' And then we go out and hire those guys.”
IDT has a way of dynamically matching the usage of a product with the power requirement.
For instance it has a digital backlight for laptop LCD panels. So, if you’re writing emails on a laptop, the power is automatically reduced. If you’re watching video, the power is increased.
Izadinia’s approach to lowering the power used by systems is to make use of IDT’s expertise in clock and timing ICs. “If we’re in charge of the clocks we can control the power in terms of the timing,” he said.
He reckons the company has special systems understanding of monitors and basestations which allows it to devise power-saving ASSP products for them.
IDT had a classic journey through the downturn, doing €134m in Q308, €112m in Q408, €72m in Q109 and €77.8m in Q209.
Q109 came as a shock. The Sony PlayStation is an IDT design-in and, naturally, a big customer, and Sony didn’t order anything for a couple of quarters.
IDT is in the process of going fabless. Its Oregon fab is up for sale, and it intends to put all its output to foundry. At the moment it makes 40% of its output in-house.