July 29, 2011 — "More than Moore" means growth in various sectors. At SEMICON West 2011, Ricky Jackson, Texas Instruments (TI), discusses analog IC developments.
TI builds analog devices on a high-speed platform (Example: hard-disk drive power amps); precision platform for low-noise devices (touchscreen controllers); high-power platform (controller ICs and power management chips); and high-density for integrating memory with analog.
At SEMICON West, Jackson addressed digital and analog pursuits of Moore’s Law. In digital CMOS, scaling down lithography nodes is the major enabler. Analog is different, with differentiation in design and precision.
Precision performance is critical at each node that the semiconductor industry acheives, Jackson adds, and new technologies will be a big part of that. TI’s infrared temperature sensor (made on the high-precision line) is 95% smaller and lower-power than conventional temperature sensors, providing one example of scaling and new technologies.
Jackson also discusses new capacity: since 2009, TI has added about $5 billion of potential revenue growth with added wafer fab capacity. It started with a Qimonda bankrupcy sale, the equipment from which is ramping to volume now. TI also bought some fabs in Japan from Spansion (2010) and added China fabs as well. The company launched its Clark packaging house in 2009.
Also read:
TI acheives volume production with stacked clip-bonded QFN
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