Design Article
Renesas bets future on 'smart society'
Dylan McGrath
10/23/2012 3:09 PM EDT
Cost-cutting moves
Akao has pledged to reduce Renesas' fixed costs by 25 percent by 2015. He has enacted a series of steps—including eliminating thousands of jobs, many through an early retirement incentive program—and is moving the company to a "fab lite" model by selling or transferring ownership of fabs and other facilities. Renesas transferred ownership of a fab in Japan to Fuji Electric Co. Ltd. earlier this year, and several reports have linked Renesas with negotiations to sell other fabs to foundry vendors, including TSMC and Globalfoundries.
Ali Sebt CEO of Renesas Electronics America, at DevCon 2012.
Renesas' smart society concept is one take on a broader move by the semiconductor industry to target offerings toward embedding intelligence into infrastructure such as electrical grids, home networks, cars and industrial equipment to emphasis energy efficiency. Research firm International Data Corp. projects that the total available market for chips in smart devices will exceed $25 billion by 2020.
Sebt outlined several applications that fit into Renesas' concept of a smart society, including in-home environmental detectors, improved the efficiency of HVAC motors in commercial buildings and load-balancing technologies to support a smart electrical grid.
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Akao has pledged to reduce Renesas' fixed costs by 25 percent by 2015. He has enacted a series of steps—including eliminating thousands of jobs, many through an early retirement incentive program—and is moving the company to a "fab lite" model by selling or transferring ownership of fabs and other facilities. Renesas transferred ownership of a fab in Japan to Fuji Electric Co. Ltd. earlier this year, and several reports have linked Renesas with negotiations to sell other fabs to foundry vendors, including TSMC and Globalfoundries.
Ali Sebt CEO of Renesas Electronics America, at DevCon 2012.
Renesas' smart society concept is one take on a broader move by the semiconductor industry to target offerings toward embedding intelligence into infrastructure such as electrical grids, home networks, cars and industrial equipment to emphasis energy efficiency. Research firm International Data Corp. projects that the total available market for chips in smart devices will exceed $25 billion by 2020.
Sebt outlined several applications that fit into Renesas' concept of a smart society, including in-home environmental detectors, improved the efficiency of HVAC motors in commercial buildings and load-balancing technologies to support a smart electrical grid.
Related stories:
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Brian Fuller2
10/24/2012 1:29 PM EDT
Dylan, really interesting piece. We had a chance to get some insight (on our cross-country drive) into how Ranjit Deshpande is driving innovation within his engineering group in Silicon Valley: http://www.driveforinnovation.com/nurturing-innovation-in-an-engineering-team/
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resistion
10/25/2012 8:51 AM EDT
Looks like they're trying to drive enthusiasm for embedded micro controllers and the like?
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