Voices: Silicon Laboratories’ Mark Thompson
EDN asks the microcontroller-division executive about Silicon Labs' focus on 8-bit devices and supporting embedded developers.
By Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor -- EDN, January 22, 2009
Mark Thompson is the vice president for the microcontroller division of Silicon Laboratories, which manufactures high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal ICs. The company’s products include 8-bit microcontrollers, broadcast audio and video products, embedded modems, ProSLICs (subscriber-line-interface circuits), silicon direct-access arrangements, clocks, and oscillators. In an interview, we asked him a few questions about supporting embedded developers.
You are one of a shrinking number of companies offering only 8-bit processor products. Your high-end, 8-bit offerings include heavy integration with high-performance analog peripherals. What do you see as the future for your 8-bit processing products, and do you see your product line expanding to include 16- or 32-bit processors?
We’re seeing good success with our current product offerings. We look forward to continuing to innovate and expanding into more market segments with the type of products that we have. We have a long list of projects that we could do or could work on. In general, we select projects based on return on investment, so, if or when there appears to be an attractive return on investment for creating a 16- or 32-bit-processor line relative to the other projects that we have, then we’ll go execute on that [line]. We have to be disciplined about doing the things that get us the biggest return first.
Silicon Labs looks at markets less with regard to how many bits we have and more with regard to what problems our customers are having and how can we best solve those problems. Today, we have been pretty successful in solving our customers’ problems using the 8-bit core that we have, which is a pipelined, high-performance core that is very cost-effective. The price of any given product varies widely based upon a large number of factors, including the peripherals on the chip, the pin count, the memory size, and any customized software that we need to write for our customers. We look at the things we can bring together to solve our customers’ problems.
How much of a role is software taking in influencing your next choice in features to add to your system offerings?
Software can definitely be a differentiating aspect of a product. We take the approach of building a flexible hardware platform and then exercising the flexibility in the hardware through the use of software. That [approach] enables us sometimes to more quickly solve a customer’s problems. In general, we have built our systems and ensured that our tools are easy to develop with. I think this theme is a common one among many of the companies in this business. Every wants to have its products be easy to use and simple to design with so that customers have a quick and efficient experience. I believe we have achieved that goal. We have some very nice development tools, including USB-tool sticks that make it easy to explore products, figure out how they work, write software for them, and get your applications into production.
You can offer flexibility in several ways—number one, with the variety of peripherals that you offer and, number two, with the ranges that those peripherals can support. If you can build in fairly wide ranges with regard to many of the peripherals, whether they be analog blocks, temperature sensors, ADCs, or capacitive-touch sensors, … then, the customers are not necessarily limited to a strict range. If they want to vary the capacitance on a capacitive-touch-sensor application and your product is designed from the get-go to handle a wider range of options, then you can exercise those ranges through software and select something that matches the customers’ needs.
We often find ourselves partnering with our customers in helping to write either drivers or application software running on the microcontroller itself. Our approach is: We want to partner with the customer and help solve the problem. Does the customer need application software, hardware support, or testing support? Whatever it is, we want to help that customer with that problem so that the customer can get into production as fast as possible.
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Are you seeing processors becoming more generalized or specialized?
We can solve customer problems in multiple ways, but several general trends that we continue to see are that customers want cost-effective, easy-to-use solutions in a time frame that meets their needs. In general, specialization is one way to delve deeper into a customer’s problem, better understand the factors surrounding that problem, and understand what it connects to. If you can wrap up some of those things into an overall solution for the customer, that [approach] can help them get to market faster. In one sense, specialization is a trend that we see and pursue.
Are your customers using your processors as the only processor in the system or as one of several processors in the system?
It varies. Some applications have external interface points or sensor points, where data can be collected and transferred back to a central-processing node. In those cases, there are usually multiple processors, some of them for sensing or handling the interface points and then one or more for the central processing. In other cases, for a variety of consumer or industrial products, the 8-bit processor can be the only processor in the system; this [approach] is also common with systems using our high-performance core.
Is energy efficiency a growth opportunity for small processors?
In general, energy efficiency and power savings are macro trends on a worldwide basis. With the population expanding and the cost of oil being quite volatile these days, energy prices are fluctuating dramatically, and, in general, everybody would agree that saving energy or lowering the amount of power that you need is a good thing. We have a new line of low-power microcontrollers, which can operate down to 0.9V and act as supervisors for multiple processors for those types of applications that need to conserve power.
