[Introduction] Ahmad Bahai, global vice president and CTO of Texas Instruments (TI), came to China to guide China's electronics manufacturing industry through the 30th anniversary of TI China. He believes that smart power, smart cars, laser radar, EV/ HEV, small base stations, wireless charging and DLP micro-investment will be the next seven major market growth points.
TI Global Vice President and CTO Ahmad Bahai is a member of the IEEE and a well-respected professor at Stanford University in the United States. He is also the Director of Kilby Labs, TI's new technology and new solution development center. Before entering TI, he was already National Semiconductor. Director of the company's CTO and research laboratory. It is no exaggeration to say that for many years he has been fascinated with the research and development of the latest semiconductor technology and application solutions, and he has the clearest and most powerful voice in the world's leading semiconductor technology.
With the opportunity of TI China's 30th Anniversary, he first met with the Chinese media for the first time at the beginning of this year. I was also honored to have a face-to-face discussion on the future development of China's electronics manufacturing industry. opportunity.
Ahmad Bahai said: "The seven major application growth points in the Chinese market in the future are worthy of our attention. One is smart power, the other is smart car, the third is laser radar, the fourth is EV/HEV, the fifth is small base station, and the sixth is wireless charging. Seven is the DLP micro vote."
Intelligent power supplies are now widely used in various fields. Whether it is IoT or sensor applications, EV/HEV cars or cloud servers, efficient power supply for smart power supplies is required.
Ahmad pointed out: "Intelligent power supply has four major technological development trends in the future. First, with the market demand for increased power density, new converter structures and circuit topology technologies must be adopted; second, with market requirements being smaller and thinner. Faster chargers must use higher switching frequencies and better power components; third, require smart power solutions to have lower standby current and lower quiescent current; fourth, high-power smart power supplies with GaN and silicon carbide The use of power MOSFETs will increase."
Smart cars will be a growth highlight in the automotive electronics market this year, and almost all car manufacturers are striving to provide better driverless experiences and active safety systems. The sonar system traditionally used for underwater submarines and surface ships will also enter the automotive market.
Ahmad said: "My car has an unmanned system installed. I have been enjoying the fun of this driverless system on the California road for the past few months. I don't need to control the car myself. The whole driving process is all TI's radar and many sensors to control."
He said that from a technical point of view, the future smart car will be equipped with a large number of cameras and integrated radar, sonar and lidar. Many smart cars now rely heavily on camera systems. The new generation of BMW cars will use more than 10 cameras and radars capable of detecting all directions. These active safety systems can prevent the car from producing a variety of unnecessary collisions.
The sonar enters the car mainly to ensure that various collision accidents are avoided in foggy weather and heavy rain weather scenes, because the effects of camera systems, lidars and high-frequency radars in these harsh environments are greatly reduced, and sonic radar is almost unaffected. .
Figure 1: TI Vice President and CTO Ahmad Bahai, and Director of TI Kilby Labs
In addition to sonic radar, it is now increasingly popular to use lidar, which is capable of detecting tiny obstacles during driving very accurately. Ahmad revealed: "We are currently developing a chip that integrates components such as radar and sensors. We are also developing the next generation of laser radar. I very much hope that in the near future we will be able to complete the development of these products and quickly bring them to market. â€
Emerging EV/HEV vehicles also show good market prospects. Ahmad revealed: "From 2018 onwards, EV/HEV cars will be popularized in the European market, because by that time the cost of power lithium batteries will be greatly reduced, which will greatly promote the development of this market. The Chinese government There is also a special project to subsidize the purchase of EV/HEV cars, which will also promote the development of China's EV/HEV car market because it can alleviate air pollution problems."
Small base stations will also be a fast-growing market in the future, because nowadays every family and everyone has a lot of wireless networked terminal devices in use, and every day there will be very large audio and video and text data that needs real-time global transmission. In particular, the data coming from the wireless terminal has to pass through the base station, so the large base station is not enough to support the current demand.
Ahmad said: "We need to combine the large and small base stations to meet the current data transmission needs. The concept of small base stations has been around for many years, but it has not been well developed. One of the most important reasons is that there is no good business. Mode. Because these small base stations can only be as large as shoeboxes, and combined with LTE services and Wi-Fi services, support a small range of hotspots when the amount of data becomes larger. The question now is who should manage such a Is the base station itself the operator itself, or the company that establishes the base station, or the data provider company? This problem undoubtedly brings great obstacles to the realization of this concept. However, some supply chain manufacturers in China are willing to Directly cooperate with operators and establish a reasonable business model. In the next few years, we are very optimistic about China's small base station market."
Wireless charging will also become an important growth market. Today's wireless charging technology is already available in the smartwatch, smartphone and tablet markets, and the next generation of wireless charging technology will also be able to charge cars.
Ahmad believes: "Wireless charging technology can be used in parking lots. When we need to park, we don't need to connect to the charging power supply. We only need to park the car in a specific area of ​​the vehicle for wireless charging. We are now working with some China. Vendors negotiate to see if there are suitable opportunities for cooperation."
DLP micro-investment is another application market that has received wide attention. DLP micro-investment technology is now applied not only to the 3D digital cinema market, commercial projection market and home projection market, but also to future smart cars.
Ahmad said: "Now we have not only adopted DLP micro-injection technology in the front end of smart cars to reduce environmental reflections, making the driving process safer, and the next generation of DLP products can also protect drivers from raindrops when it rains. Far. This product combines TI's DLP micro-injection technology, image processing technology and lidar technology to make the next generation of smart cars safer in any environment."
Many of TI's important innovations and new technologies have been developed in the Kilby lab, and it is arguably the driving force and core of TI's long-term development. The lab was named after Kilby because TI's employee Jack Kilby won the Nobel Prize for his innovation in the field of integrated circuits.
Kilby Labs was first established in Dallas in 2009. In 2010, TI built a Kilby lab in Bangalore, India, and Silicon Valley, USA. Centered around the three Kilby labs, TI has also established R&D centers in other parts of the world, including Europe and China.
Ahmad introduced that Kilby Labs is not only focusing on some interesting technical issues, but we also pay attention to issues that really affect the long-term development of our company. This is also a key direction of Kilby Labs. Many of the technical issues we are investigating now are not only a new technology for a certain product, but also a technology that can be used on different products in different product lines. This is also a focus of attention of Kilby Labs.
He said: "I have had contacts with large, medium and small customers all over the world, such as major customers in the United States and many small customers in Silicon Valley, as well as well-known companies in the European automotive industry. I will come to China three to four times a year, Discuss the direction of development and the problems that need to be solved with the CTOs of different companies, and then turn them into Kilby Labs R&D projects."
Working in the Kilby lab is top talent. Ahmad is proud to say that we generally go to top universities around the world, such as MIT and Stanford University to recruit top students to join the team. More than 80% of employees at Kilby Labs have a PHD degree. Kilby Labs itself operates in a slightly different way than other R&D Labs. Because in other R&D labs, researchers are engaged in project development for a long time, but at Kilby Labs, when researchers do a one- or two-year study on a project, they join the product line to participate in the final development of the product. . This approach ensures that our platform can work dynamically with the product development component.
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