Jennifer Zhao - EEWeb

PULSE What are the key initiatives in the
interface business line?
The key initiatives in my current role are
maintaining NXP’s number one position in I 2 C
products in the market. I’m also responsible for
delivering financial targets that the company
set for the product line. This includes top line
revenue, gross margin, and EBITs, which
stands for earnings before interest and taxes.
I have also put a lot of focus on innovation
and expanding our group to address some
key growing markets, like the mobile sector.
It’s a rapidly growing and competitive
market, so you have to be fast-to-market.
Of course, in order to achieve all of these
goals, it’s important to have a strong team, so
managing the team and the people involved
is an important part of my role. At NXP, we put
a lot of focus on employee engagement—we
use Gallup employee engagement surveys,
and we have a lot of activities around people
management and engagement. With an
engaged team, our chances of being a great
company are greatly improved.
Could you give us an overview of NXP’s
system management products?
The system management product line
consists of a broad portfolio of I 2 C products.
I believe we have the broadest portfolio of
I 2 C in the market. This portfolio includes I 2 C I/O
expanders, muxes and switches, bus buffers,
level shifters, and bus controllers. In addition,
we also have local and remote temperature
sensors, constant current and voltage source
LED controllers, and LED flash drivers. You can
see that some of these families are really
targeting mobile and computing. It’s a pretty
expansive portfolio.
Philips Semiconductor (now NXP)
invented the I 2 C-bus in 1982. Since
its creation, I 2 C has been adopted
by several competitors to bring
I 2 C products to the market—all of
which are compatible with NXP’s
original system.
My experience in the embedded space has
really helped me in working with this portfolio.
With the interface products, we developed
them around the core. The ways in which
we work with the SoC microprocessors and
microcontrollers is really important, so we
focus primarily on the interface. It’s important
to understand the trends on the core, so
processors are really important for us. We
also work with our microcontrollers group really
closely. In some of the microcontrollers like the
Cortex M0, we worked to have it support the
I 2 C I/O, which is the first microcontroller of its
kind to be able to support it.
Do you find that you have
customers that are using your
interface products even if they
aren’t using your processor?
Yes, we do. For example, a lot of our products
work well with SoC, which NXP supports. We
work closely with some of the SoC vendors like
Qualcomm and we also have a really strong
relationship with Intel.
Do a lot of your products in the
interface area have development
boards available?
Absolutely. For all of our products, we provide
demo boards. The newest one that we have
is called Fast-mode Plus development kit.
Basically, we have the main board connect
to our microcontroller and then have multiple
daughter cards so you can plug in and
evaluate the parts. Pretty much, for every
product, we supply a demo board, which
makes it much easier for the designers to
evaluate the parts.
How are NXP’s system management
products positioned in the market?
NXP is the leading I 2 C product provider in the
market. The I 2 C bus was created by Philips
Semiconductor in the early 1980s, which was
first used in TVs and really expanded from
there. The I 2 C allows easy communication
between components that reside on the
same circuit board. It’s not just to be used
on single boards, but to connect components
which are linked through a cable. It’s able to
be adapted widely because it’s simple and
flexible, which are key characteristics that
engineers are looking for. That’s why this bus
is really attractive for a lot of applications.
Jennifer Zhao (Center) with system management team.
Philips Semiconductor migrated to NXP back
in 2006, so we took over the portfolio and IP,
which included the I2 C-buses.
What trends in technology do NXP’s
products support?
As I mentioned earlier, we work very closely
with the core chip, because we provide
interface solutions. One trend we are seeing
is that the SoC is going towards lower voltage
applications. A few years ago, the SoC was
operating at 3.3V, but later on, it went down to
1.8V. Now, the lowest has gone down to 0.9V.
Many peripherals are still operating at 3.3V,
so there is a strong need for level translation.
Our level shifter family addresses this trend in
the market. We have products that translate
voltages from 1.8V to 3.3V and vice versa.
The other trend we see is higher speeds. The
original I 2 C ran at 100Kb per second, then we
developed a Fast-mode I 2 C specification,
which runs at 400Kb per second. Now, we’re
seeing customers adopting 1Mb per second,
which we call Fast-mode Plus I 2 C-bus. We
have all these different speed families to
support the higher speed trends in the system.
What is the company culture
like at NXP?
I would describe NXP as a high performance
culture. We also have a lot of focus on values.
We implement the highest company values,
which we try to carry out with all of our
employees. We stress raising the bar, engaging
curiosity, taking initiative, developing the
core competency, and working together.
Our motto is “Customer Focused Passion to
Win.” It’s been a great pleasure working with
a really professional team and we all want our
company to be a great company. ■
INTERVIEW
“At NXP, we put a lot of focus on
employee engagement...With
an engaged team, our chances
of being a great company are
greatly improved.”
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