According to the latest report by Semicast Research, the global industrial semiconductor market size in 2016 was $42.2 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3.7%, and the main growth momentum lies in traditional analog ICs, optoelectronic components and power components. Among the top 10 players, Texas Instruments (TI) continues to rank first, followed by Infineon, Intel, STMicroelectronics, ADNO, NXP, Nichia Chemical, Micron Technologies, ON Semiconductor and Renesas. However, the report also pointed out that the total market share of the top ten companies is only 40.9%, and the first TI market accounts for 7.9%, and there is no single or a few dominant, because industrial semiconductors are very complex in composition.
Industry through TI's eyes
Lu Yuzhao, TI's general manager of sales and applications for East China, was not surprised. In his eyes, or in TI's eyes, the industry covers a wider range of fields, with a total of 14 market segments, including factory automation and control, motor drives, building automation, power delivery, medical, test and measurement, and so on. He thinks the category of big industry concepts may be more suitable for TI's appetite. First, because "TI has a comprehensive product system and a wide range of solutions provided by the system team, which can support the development of applications in a wider range of industrial fields." â€ï¼› Second, while the industrial market has many different applications and end users, they still have a commonality in that they are all opportunities based on analog and embedded processing innovations.
He prioritizes factory automation, motor drives, test and measurement, and grid infrastructure for future industrial development. Because whether it is a national strategy such as Industry 4.0, Made in China 2025, artificial intelligence, or a vertical market segment such as test and measurement, consumer electronics, and grid infrastructure, the pursuit of efficiency, intelligence, and green energy conservation is eternal.
"TI wants to give its customers something 'modular'." Lv Yuzhao said that Industry 4.0/Made in China 2025 must be truly implemented through one functional module. Therefore, TI Designs is the tool for the functional realization of these modules, TI's chips are an integral part of these modules, and users can innovate directly based on TI Designs, without having to design from scratch, which provides customers with better convenience.
For example, in the power protection and transmission and distribution market, most of the industry's leading customers in the early years were in Europe and the United States, but in the past few years, we will find that Chinese companies are leading and influencing the development of the market, and their demand for higher channel count and higher precision ADC/DAC is increasing. Different from the traditional industrial markets in Europe and the United States, the design cycle of Chinese customers is getting shorter and shorter, and the design cycle in some industrial fields is only 3-4 quarters, which means that faster time to market has become a core demand. In other words, if a company can succeed in China, it will be relatively successful globally.
He believes that what customers really care about is not the function of a chip, but whether the chip can help them achieve the desired function in the system. This also explains why TI will change its role from providing chip-level solutions to providing system-level solutions, because only by solving the customer's system problems can we promote more products; In turn, because of the optimization of the system, higher requirements will be put forward for the product, helping to promote product research and development, and making products that better meet customer needs.
Yuzhao Lv, General Manager of Sales and Applications of Texas Instruments East China
The efforts behind the hegemon
Industrial systems have a wide range of coverage. For a semiconductor chip manufacturer, without a complete product line, it is difficult to imagine being able to provide customers with all-round and in-depth services. But this does not seem to be a problem for TI, which has more than 100,000 products, covering processors, microcontrollers, wireless connections, and analog devices. Lu Yuzhao also put more emphasis on the TI reference design.
"TI Designs offers more than just reference designs, but also a full set of schematics, PCB layouts and Gerber files. So for customers, they can spend more time on application implementation and product differentiation rather than hardware design. "By handing over the hardware-related requirements to TI, we can make these more complete reference designs to the customer, which actually saves the customer's resources and time." â€
The TIDA-00915, TI's latest GaN power stage reference design, is capable of driving 200V AC servo drives and robots with an efficiency of up to 99%, allowing customers to use them directly without any changes. TI believes that the benefits of this reference design are mainly reflected in the following three aspects: 1. The switching frequency is increased, which can optimize the power supply design scheme to the maximum extent and improve the efficiency; 2. Higher control accuracy during high-speed operation; 3. GaN devices can optimize switching performance, reduce motor power loss, and reduce the size of the heat sink, thereby saving board space. And its most powerful point is that in 200 volt motor control, it can achieve 99% efficiency at 24kHz PWM; Efficiency greater than 98% can also be achieved at 100kHz PWM.
At present, TI not only offers GaN FETs (such as LMG3410 & LMG5200) and GaN drivers with integrated drivers, but also 13 TI Design solutions related to GaN, mainly in the field of power transmission, but also some in household appliances, grid infrastructure and other fields. Related hot research will focus more on high voltage, controllers and related algorithms, power conversion topologies, high-frequency and high-power density passive devices, and gate drivers.
The 2 kilowatt (Kw) isolated bidirectional dc/dc converter reference design for 48V to 400V uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and energy storage systems, the TIDA-00951, is also the industry's most efficient reference solution, with a conversion efficiency of more than 94%, which is 90% higher than the industry average. For most traditional designs, when converting between 48V and 400V is required, two systems are often required to implement both functions, which means higher costs. The advantage of TI's solution is that the two systems are made into one set to achieve bidirectional functions, thereby saving costs. In addition, TI integrates the industry's most efficient current-sensing chip INA240, the highest performance enhanced isolation amplifier AMC1301, and the fastest isolation gate driver UCC21520 to ensure performance while making the board space more compact.
In addition to breakthrough innovations, TI is constantly upgrading its market-specific products. For example, the recently announced DesignDRIVE Fast Current Loop software makes the C2000 MCU the industry's first device with less than 1 microsecond current loop performance, which together provide system-on-chip (SOC) functionality and simplify the development of drive control systems. The new DesignDRIVE fast current loop software is said to not only outperform traditional MCU-based current loop solutions, but also simplifies the design by eliminating FPGAs typically used for external current loop control.
Lv Yuzhao believes that industrial upgrading has been going on, such as the upgrade of industrial automation and control, which will bring about the upgrade of test equipment; After the birth of the iPhone, battery detection required higher accuracy; Smart buildings bring an increase in the demand for fingerprint locks, smart bracelets can change medical security and services, and even agriculture needs sensors to sense changes in the land for smart irrigation. "Whether in traditional or emerging fields, the speed of the entire iterative innovation is accelerating, but intelligence, energy saving and customer system cost optimization will be the three major directions that no one can avoid."