Last week, Reuters issued an article titled, Analog chipmakers to ride high on green wave. The article began with some key insights about the growth of Analog in the semiconductor industry by addressing the following facts:
The article notes that Texas Instruments Inc. is among the top chipmakers pumping up research and development dollars into power management chips. Additionally, the article states, “Chipmakers such as Texas Instruments, the world's largest analog chipmaker… also make[s] solar inverters. Texas Instrument's solar inverters are designed with communication capability so that users can monitor the inverter and keep track of power and operating conditions.”
The article also notes that, “Texas Instruments makes a slew of energy-efficiency chips for batteries and adaptors that go into everything from cars to printers to DVD players. The company's new green mode controller can save total power supply system costs by up to 30 percent.” At TI, out Analog business is working with leading universities and consumer electronics companies to identify how to apply solar power innovation to portable devices. Using solar cells to help re-charge batteries, portable handheld devices can sustain long battery life via sunlight or indoor ambient light.
But that's not all! More than two-thirds of the world’s inverters are based on TI’s embedded processing and analog technologies, which enable maximum system efficiency during all weather conditions, including cloudy and low light days. TI continues to make excellent progress in the area of solar inverters and more recently, solar micro converters. Our engineers work daily to design prototypes of micro converters for solar systems’ optimization and the automation of solar panel characterization.
TI is riding that green wave all the way though the way we manufacture and recycle our chips. TI sells scrap wafers to solar energy cell manufacturers in the United States, Japan, Germany, China, India, and Hong Kong. TI’s recycled wafers have produced the equivalent of 80,000 160Watt solar PV panels, which would offset 10,000 metric tons of CO2 per year. Fast Company ranked TI’s silicon wafer recycling effort 17th in a list of 50 programs that top U.S. companies are pursuing to advance corporate America's green movement.
Also, in 2006, TI completed construction of the world’s first “green” LEED Gold certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) semiconductor manufacturing factory in Richardson, Texas. The facility was designed from the bottom up with the goal of reducing impact on the environment. Earlier this year, the new assembly/test facility in the Clark Zone, earned its LEED Gold certification that distinguished the site as the first Gold-certified facility in the Philippines.
For more information about TI’s green efforts, check back with the Energy Blog.