HOW DO THEY DO IT?
According to Bill Murphy, product line manager for ADI's integrated amplifier product line, ADI drives developments into
leading applications and then migrates
the basic technology into other applications with minimal changes. With this
approach, a second set of customers
(fast technology followers) can benefit
from the development time of the technology-driving application.
For example, automotive manufacturers concerned with diesel-injection control and engine management were the
lead customers for ADI's AD8205, a 42V difference amplifier often used for
high-side current sensing. "Those applications drove a higher and more cost-effective level of performance than was
previously available," says Murphy.
"When inquiries came in from a
home medical electronics manufacturer,
it was a quick task to adapt the feature
set and provide a suitable solution for
the medical application," he continues.
"Because the high performance with
low-cost structure had already been
built into the basic product, the time it
took to service the newer medical application was very short."
ADI also has a family of variable gain
amplifiers that were originally developed
for cart-based ultrasound products.
Now, they've been rapidly configured to
the needs of adaptive cruise control.
Essentially, the company uses a platform
strategy and executes it well.
International Rectifier CEO Alex
Lidow has put a lot of his company's
assets behind a targeted platform called
iMotion, an adaptable set of building
blocks for appliance motor control. He
says that iMotion's focus isn't on
"faster, better, cheaper" versions of previous chips, but rather to use "faster,
better, cheaper" to displace previous
electromechanical approaches.
"The first application was in a washing machine, where it replaced an antiquated and inefficient subsystem consisting of a mechanical gear, belt, pulley, and
complex mechanical switch driving the
motor," Lidow said (see "Washing-Machine Controller Wrings Multiple
Design Wins From One Platform"). "This old mechanical system's
$30 BOM cost target became IR's budget
for an electronic replacement that could
extend the washer's feature set and cut its
energy consumption in half."
The next targets were air conditioners that had a price point of $55 and
refrigerators with a $20 price point for
the existing mechanical solution. In
both cases, IR tailored or is tailoring
the solution to fit those price points
while providing energy efficiency,
essentially for free, and with faster
development cycles.