We can innovate and differentiate only by investing in R&D

As senior vice president & chief technology officer at NXP Semiconductors,
Rene Penning de Vries is responsible for overseeing the product creation
processes, focusing on the key areas of innovation, technology, and research. He
is part of the NXP executive management team (EMT), headed by Rick Clemmer. de
Vries previously held the position of senior VP & CTO at Philips Semiconductors.
He started working for Philips Research in 1984, before moving to NXP
Semiconductors in 1987 where he brought along a deep understanding of design and
technology needs of the semiconductor industry. His career evolved from various
technical and managerial roles in CMOS development, into management of platform
and design technology as well as IP creation. Most recently, system technology
and research have been added to his portfolio. de Vries holds an MSc in physics
from the University of Nijmegen, and a PhD in device physics from the Technical
University of Twente, the Netherlands. In an exclusive interview with Dataquest,
de Vries shares an update on NXPs technology strategy and some of the
innovations that are underway at NXP. Excerpts

How has the slowdown impacted innovation coming out of NXP?

If you are an ambitious company, you continue to invest in tough times. The
downturn might take six quarters, but creating a new product takes six to eight
quarters. What you do today is ready only after a certain time. NXP has been in
a scrutinizing mode. We have become more cost-conscious with caution on
discretionary expenditure. But when it comes to R&D and product creation, we
have continued with our innovation. You get innovation and differentiators only
by investing in R&D.

NXP has its primary focus on improving the quality of life. What are the
new innovations around this area?

We have announced a strategy on high performance mixed signal that allows
you to create solutions for making life better. Our recent partnership with Tata
BPO Solar is around this only. Renewable energy is a key thing for the world to
develop, apart from the aspect of solar cells and modules which create energy in
principle. Energy has to be converted into battery and into grid. The actual
conversion there is a very tricky thing to do. What we have done with Tata is to
create an optimized solution for this conversion. We have also announced a
system, whereby you can buy electricity by using prepaid cards even in remote
locations. This will help the local community and allow local energy generation
at a much lower threshold than what we do today. Our relationship with Tata goes
to show our efforts to do joint development with companies who are close to our
customers, by converging their domain expertise of end customers and our own
in-house expertise.

What is the latest from near field communication (NFC)?

We are pleased to see that Nokia has designed and launched five phones that
have NFC and we are starting to see some other applications being developed too.
It is a very tough process to get NFC into the world. It is a capability in
which telecom service providers and component providers have a role. Also,
retailers and banks have to create infrastructure to support NFC using
standards, authorization and security levels. All these challenges are posing
problems in getting NFC to the marketplace quickly. The entire chain of
stakeholders has to be aligned. It is not going to happen anytime soon. However,
what we see is that it is gaining momentum and the fact that Nokia is shipping
five handsets with NFC is an important element in that acceleration.

What are some of the latest innovations taking place in automotive
electronics?

As we incorporate more and more green into automotive, it leads to reduction
of weight, better safety, and optimized driving. Imagine that at any traffic
light, you would just switch off your car and switch it on without much effort.
Imagine all vehicles get that capability. Those type of things are now entering
into the automotive domain. Another thing that we have introduced in Europe is
called automotive telematics on-board unit platform (ATOP) by which the position
of each car would be dynamically known to a system by means of a GSM
communication. It would allow road tolling to be very precise, thereby,
providing an opportunity, for example to a trucking company, to know the
location of trucks. It will also take away the practice by taxi drivers to tweak
fare. Road tolling has to be applied in big cities, but the question is how is
it going to be implemented. We hope that it becomes successful and improves
traffic situation across the world.

What is the concept of intelligent car keys?

The old cars had keys that you kept in your pocket. The new generation cars
will have keyless remote entry with a radio transmit. Next generation car keys
will communicate two waysso that you will tell the car to open up, and the car
will also provide information to the user. For example, they will remind the
user if all car doors are locked after parking.

What has been the contribution of the India R&D center to NXPs product
development?

A significant part of NXPs business is in Asia and we know that we have to
expand in Asia. When we started the center in India fifteen years ago, it was
seen as a low cost software creation center, and then we moved step by step. We
started with some low level IP and then high level IP, some testing job. We do
work around 45 nm, and I see them moving more in the direction of product
creation. Tata BP Solar announcement is an example of that. It was a move from
understanding a piece of technology into making a product that hopefully is
going to be manufactured. That is where the team should strengthen itself. We
know that India is a huge country and there are innumerable opportunities, and
somehow we have not always been successful in capturing these opportunities. We
want to change all that. I think the team here has to do that.

Sudesh Prasad

sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in