Consumer electronics to green, semiconductor technology innovation as a determining factor

In every corner of the world, climate change has affected people's lives.

This morning, Beijing is unusually cold and windy, and I don't know if it's related to the climate. Chengtie and other car time, in order to maintain the body's warm, howling walking on the platform, but was attracted by the title of a public service ads. "Turn off the lights, light up hope," with hundreds of millions of people around the world to combat climate warming. The event was initially a call for Sydney residents to turn off the lights, and gradually developed into one of the world's largest response to climate change action. Originally, in order to green we can do more. The electronics industry is no exception.

Although in the global energy consumption, consumption of consumer electronics products accounted for only 0.6%, however, to achieve significant achievements in energy conservation, it is necessary to focus on terminal applications, and semiconductor technology everywhere.

"IC is the opportunity," the senior director Mei Runping semiconductor industry veteran of 17 years of NXP multiple market products of Greater China market told the EEWORLD that this is a kind of energy leverage effect: many semiconductor can be saved by energy, including the production of these semi conductor itself required energy.

Innovation in change

"What is innovation in the past?" Mei Runping recalls the semiconductor industry a few years ago, when IC was used to process data, so designers often consider the question of how to deal with data faster and more. At that time, the concept of energy was only a tool to provide energy to the system, not the theme of the design.

However, in recent years, IC vendors often launch a product, have stressed that their products are the lowest power consumption". Now the IC designers have not only the pursuit of IC data capacity index, and more is to design products from the angle of energy supply, in the system design, how to effectively control the inflow of energy, set aside, in the middle of the energy conversion and so on control problems gradually from behind the stage, at the same time, consumers and governments aware of the importance of energy saving, therefore, more and more semiconductor manufacturers will save energy consumption as a key. At this point, the energy problem has become the real protagonist of the semiconductor industry.

In fact, in the early years, NXP (formerly PHILPS semiconductor) proposed the idea of "EcoDesign": 1994 NXP launched Environmental Opportunity Program, set up a series of data of the target; published in 2001 EcoVision, then put forward in 2002 for a period of four years, 2002 ~ 2005 EcoVision environmental protection plan. EcoDesign's starting point is to consider the impact of the entire production and manufacturing process on the environment from the design of electronic products. This concept reflects the social responsibility of NXP in the development and manufacture of the chip, dealing with the environmental problems and reducing the load on the ecological environment caused by electronic products.

"In the initial stage of IC design," Mei Runping explained, NXP took EcoDesign as an important design ideas, through the concept of the whole design, the production process, through such measures the impact of electronic products on the ecological environment to a minimum. NXP is promoting LSI production, use, scrap processing environment countermeasures.

In terms of production, NXP is committed to reducing the power required for chip processing. Compared with 2001, the NXP used in the production of 1 square centimeter chip in 2006, the energy required to reduce by 43%. In addition, the miniaturization of the chip, so that the production of TV sets of the required power in the past 6 years reduced by about 80%. In addition, the use of other chemical materials instead of total fluoride as well as the optimization of process technology, the chip manufacturing process of the total fluoride emissions have been significantly reduced.

Energy Star, energy law of California (CEC), the EU Code of conduct (EU Code of Conduct) and other regulations undoubtedly play a crucial role in IC enterprises, through the implementation of the "green" project in the chip package, NXP has achieved 100% with lead, mercury and cadmium on the use of European regulations, and promote the use of no halogen and antimony oxide materials, there are 20% in line with the requirements of dark green. A "experimental field" of the Hongkong assembly is all the new technology and new environmental protection projects, the use of mature will gradually to the mainland in Dongguan, Suzhou and other places of the factory for promotion. This factory in Hongkong has also carried out a series of daily production of renewable materials, the use of softened water instead of deionized water for lead-free cutting, reducing the production of chemicals.

Give me a fulcrum......

However, to achieve significant energy savings, we must pay attention to the terminal application. Because in all areas, such as communications, consumer, industrial and automotive environmental protection must be behind, and valuable IC can save energy, will exceed the energy consumption of production.

For a semiconductor manufacturer, it is impossible to put all the terminals of all, through the use of proprietary technology to provide effective energy leverage is essential. NXP focuses on the following areas: PC power supply, automotive electronics, LED backlight, smart metering and lighting solutions.

Focus on the PC power supply GreenChip IC, has sold 400 million, 10 years of saving PC, notebook computers and TV energy, can light up to the ordinary 60 watt light bulb. The first generation of GreenChip products was born in 1997, mainly for CRT TV and monitor power part; 2001~2003 released the second generation of products, its application extends to the laptop adapter and LCD TV, DV