EEWebPULSE_2012_i0066.pdf

EE Web PULSE INTERVIEW

EE Web.com

Issue 66

October 2, 2012

PULSE

Ranjit Deshpande

Vice President of Engineering

Renesas Electronics America

Electrical Engineering Community

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Ranjit Deshpande

RENESAS ELECTRONICS AMERICA

Interview with Ranjit Deshpande - Vice President of Engineering

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Ranjit

Deshpande

Renesas

Renesas Electronics America

Renesas Electronics America is a leading semiconductor company that

relies on all facets of their technology to come up with unique solutions.

We spoke with the vice president of engineering, Ranjit Desphande , about

their lagship microcontroller products, maintaining Renesas’ reputation of

integrity and quality and how his experience in other ields helps bring a

fresh perspective to Renesas’ ever-evolving product line.

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Tell us a little bit about yourself.

How did you get into electrical

engineering?

It goes back to school, when I

first encountered the BBC Micro

computers that my school had.

I started playing with these

computers in an environment

where we didn’t really have much

in terms of structured instruction.

I became fascinated with the fact

that I could move a square block

of pixels across a monitor from left

to right and right to left. That really

sparked my interest. Later on in

school, I took an optional course

in electronics, so I got started in

11th and 12th grade building little

circuits that had 555 timer ICs. I

went on to do my Bachelor’s and

Master’s in Electrical Engineering

and Computer Science.

What can you tell me about

the culture at Renesas?

Worldwide, Renesas is known

for integrity, honesty and quality.

That’s something that I’ve known

by looking from the outside in—I

was always impressed by how

Renesas was always good at doing

what they said they would do. Not

just in terms of delivering products

that met specifications, but simple

stuff like getting your purchase

orders paid on time. From within

engineers don’t feel disconnected

from the upper management. Often

times, they view me as just another

engineer who is able to listen to

their arguments or offer feedback.

I am also trying to encourage our

engineers to think about solutions

when they are trying to address

problems. We will often have

something that we are working on

that is specific to a single customer.

What I try to tell our engineers is not

to view that as a one time project,

the NEC Electronics and Renesas

Technology semiconductor

business. That particular part has

been extremely successful for us

and we continue to bring in different

models and different features on

that RL78 microcontroller line. We

are going to see more and more

options for that part in different

areas like automotive, where it

has a lot of potential for increasing

the efficiency and increasing the

amount of features in automotive

Signal Chain

Coming from the outside, a lot of today’s customers expect that

the semiconductor companies will provide anywhere from

40 to 70 percent of their product solution as a building block.

My role is to really foster the development of these solutions

based on our microcontrollers and microprocessors, analog

and power devices and add software to the mix as well.

to do dimming for LED lights.

Typically, if you go to Home Depot

or a home improvement store and

buy a dimmer that traditionally

works with the incandescent bulbs,

they don’t tend to work that well

with LED lights or CFL bulbs.

We’ve come up with some very

innovative solutions that use not just

analog and power parts, but also

a microcontroller that can adapt

dynamically to the characteristics

of the bulb that is being dimmed.

We’ve also created solutions around

motor control, which is another

significant area of interest, given

our customer profile in appliances

and automobiles. All of these are

at the heart of several sub-systems

for motor controls. What we’ve done

is taken some of our leading-edge

flagship 32-bit microcontrollers

and designed a solution with IGBT

or power MOSFETs that are also

manufactured by Renesas and put

together some sophisticated Vector

Control algorithms. The result is

presented as a complete solution

to customers that can then build

their particular product or their

intellectual property on top of that.

It’s another example of going from

not just the microcontrollers, but

also from the analog and power

domain.

will provide anywhere from 40

to 70 percent of their product

solution as a building block.

My role is to really foster the

development of these solutions

based on our microcontrollers and

microprocessors, analog and power

devices and add software to the mix

as well. The focus for me is to go

after these solutions.

Could you tell us more about

your career prior to working at

Renesas?

I started off in a company called

SCO (Santa Cruz Operation),

which is a Unix software provider

that famously sued IBM for patent

and copyright infringement. I

started working on Unix kernel

development. Operating systems

have always been my area of

interest. After that, I moved on to

join Sun, but the most significant

part of my career was starting my

own company back in 2000, which

was in the networking software

domain. We did software for home

networking devices like Access

Point, DSL gateways, Ethernet

gateways and with customers like

Motorola and Linksys. In 2007, my

company was acquired by 2Wire

which is in the DSL/Gateway space.

What kinds of solutions have

you targeted?

the company, what I found is that

it’s a culture that permeates every

organization. I tried to instill some

of that global culture in the team

here in the U.S. In addition to that,

my style of management coming

from a start-up is an open style,

meaning every engineer within the

organization is absolutely welcome

and encouraged to walk in my office

and talk about any project they are

working on, discuss ideas or bring

complaints to my attention. The thing

I enjoy the most in this atmosphere

is the ability to bounce ideas off of

each other. Even though I have the

position of VP of engineering, I am

still very hands-on—it’s always been

the way I am. There are a lot of areas

where I like to work on the designs

with my engineers, which I feel

creates a much better relationship

in the management chain so that

rather to try and take a solution for a

particular customer and generalize

it for applications to future products.

design. On the analog and power

side, we had several new devices:

our Super Junction MOSFETs, our

Silicon Carbide Diodes and our

IGBTs. We’ve made a very large

push in the analog and power

domain because we recognize that

in today’s world, we can’t be only

focused on the microcontroller.

The biggest area for us is the

signal chain. What I mean by that is

everything starting from the sensor.

If you were to draw a mental picture,

you have sensors that measure real

world analog input. The signals

from those sensors get conditioned

and get fed to a microcontroller or

microprocessor, which then analyzes

the data and decides to take some

action based on that input. As a

result of that action, you can activate

some sort of actuator somewhere

on the other side. This signal chain

is the driving principle behind any

of our solutions. We’ve worked on

several solutions in the last year.

Some of the best examples are

focused on LED lighting, given that

we have some innovative solutions

that make use of microcontrollers

What are some of the new

products you are developing?

We have had two very successful

product launches; the RX, which is

our flagship 32-bit microcontroller,

and our RL, which is our flagship

16-bit, low-power microcontroller.

Just recently we have announced

our RX200 line, which is 32-bit

processing power with a very low-

power footprint. It really scales the

RX family from the high-end 600-

series down to the low-end. It is very

competitive with other suppliers here

in the U.S. The other exciting thing

we have introduced is the RL, which

is the first product that exemplifies

the merger synergy we had between

How much of an inluence

does the engineering

department have on the future

products at Renesas?

When I first came to Renesas, one

of the first products that I worked

on had customers that were largely

centered in the U.S. I had a unique

experience, in my opinion, trying

to feed the customer requirements

back into the team in Japan and

really establish a great relationship

What is your role at Renesas?

Coming from the outside, a lot

of today’s customers expect that

the

semiconductor

companies

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and more intelligent. Those are

areas where Renesas really plays

well into and we are well positioned

to get into those domains. From an

industry perspective, I think the

challenge for Renesas is to go from

being a high-quality microcontroller

and microprocessor component

supplier to be more solution-

oriented. To a large extent, the

semiconductor industry outside of

Intel, especially in Silicon Valley

and the U.S. has recognized that

they need to be solution-focused. A

lot of that has to do with the way the

American engineering workforce

is structuring their business. A lot

of times, people in the engineering

workforces are challenged by the

number of resources they have,

so they are relying more on the

semiconductor company and other

suppliers to provide more and

more of their product solutions.

The other interesting challenge

for us is connectivity. Renesas has

not been known as a pioneer in

connectivity solutions and we see

the need to build up expertise in the

communication domain. I see a lot of

new products coming out in the next

few years in the connectivity space.

It’s an exciting thing that makes me

want to come into work everyday. ■

understanding of the systems. They

may not be experts in every part of

the system, but every single engineer

that is on our design team has to

understand the system because that

is the common goal that everyone

should be marching to. Connectivity

is obviously a big factor in today’s

market, so knowledge of everything

in the connectivity space is also very

important. The last thing, broadly

speaking, is the ability to generalize

the problem.

From an industry

perspective, I think

the challenge for

Renesas is to go from

being a high-quality

microcontroller

and microprocessor

component supplier

to be more solution-

oriented.

Could you tell us about the

future of Renesas?

Renesas as a company is large and

it touches so many different areas of

technology that I see a tremendous

amount of opportunities. In this

decade, we are realizing that more

everyday items have some kind of

processing element or intelligence

written into it. It’s not just your smart

meters or smart cars, it’s about your

smart home or smart industry where

factory automation is getting more

Renesas’ RX62G Microcontroller

analog and power parts. For every

product proposal we’ve made for

the U.S. region, there’s always

two components: an engineering

and marketing component. I have

been actively involved in certain

proposals that have been made

in the past three to four months.

I’ve also got my application

engineering team heavily invested.

It’s absolutely important for

engineering to be involved because

at the end of the day, there are

chip designers in Japan who do a

great job of manufacturing high-

quality products, but the application

engineering team is the one that gets

to use those products. They see a lot

of the issues and requirements that

our end customers are going to see.

Without that involvement, we would

not have the quality and the feature-

rich products that we have today.

Engineering plays a crucial role in

specifying new products.

with the design team. Because of

the fact that I was coming into this

job with a totally hands-on technical

background, I was able to take

requirements and translate them

down into the engineering level.

That, I think, has really grown.

From an engineering standpoint,

we’ve done several new product

proposals for microcontrollers and

For more information about Renesas, visit their website:

What do you look for

when you are hiring a new

engineer?

www.renesas.com

The first thing I look for is obviously

the breadth of hands-on experience

that the engineer has had in the

industry. Our business tends to touch

a lot of different areas, technology

wise, so the range of experience is

important. The next thing I look for

is whether the engineer has had

a system-level view of his or her

design. You could have analog and

power design engineers or software

engineers or board design people,

but the thing I look for the most

is whether they have a complete

Renesas’ Super Junction-MOSFET

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