EEWebPULSE_2012_i0048.pdf

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PULSE

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Issue 48

May 29, 2012

Russ Croman

Silicon Labs

Electrical Engineering Community

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Russ Croman

SILICON LABS

Interview with Russ Croman - Director of Engineering, Broadcast Audio Products

Featured Products

Illogical Logic - Part 2: Karnaugh Maps

BY PAUL CLARKE WITH EBM-PAPST

This installment shows how K-Maps can clean up the messy task of creating logic gates.

NAND Evolution and the Future of

Solid State Drives

BY ELI TIOMKIN WITH WESTERN DIGITAL

With next-generation solid state media technologies, several evolutions loom on the horizon as

future storage options are being put to the test by system manufacturers and storage vendors.

RTZ - Return to Zero Comic

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INTERVIEW

Russ

Croman

Silicon Labs

it in the lab. I eventually came to

interview here in Austin at Crystal

Semiconductor, which had just

been acquired by Cirrus Logic,

and was hired by them in May 1993.

I worked there in the hard disk

drive read channel group for about

seven years, which was an exciting

field at the time. We revolutionized

that area by applying some new

signal processing techniques and

also implementing the solutions

in a single CMOS chip, which

is a theme in everything I have

worked on. CMOS mixed-signal

design allows you to make a lot of

system-level optimizations, such

as implementing things in the

digital domain that you previously

implemented in the analog domain

and vice versa. I then moved on

to Silicon Labs in August of ’99

and started work right away on

cell phone transceivers, which

was a brand new product at that

time. Silicon Labs had previously

Russ Croman - Director of Engineering, Broadcast Audio Products

How did you get into

engineering and when did

you start?

I graduated from Washington State

in 1993 with a Master of Science in

Electrical Engineering. I studied

under Dr. Terri Fiez, who is now

the department head at Oregon

State University. I got my masters

in Analog Circuit Design and

did chips as a part of my thesis,

which is becoming less and less

common—to actually have the

design fabricated and measured

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INTERVIEW

been successful in building RF

synthesizer chips for cell phones. I

worked on the team that extended

that basic technology to build a

whole transceiver, and I mainly

worked on the transmitter section of

that project. A funny story about that

was when I came to interview with

the three founders of Silicon Labs,

the CEO of the company was my

original hiring manager at Crystal

and so he and I already knew each

other. We did the interview, and it

all went fine and at the end of the

day, he asked me what I wanted

to work on. I told him if I had my

choice, I’d work on RF circuitry, but

I admitted to him that I didn’t really

know anything about RF. He replied,

“That’s okay, neither did we!” It was

a very telling fact about Silicon Labs

in that you didn’t have to necessarily

be an expert in RF circuitry; you just

had to know the fundamentals and

principles, and you could derive

everything else that you need to

know. I appreciated that attitude!

phase, there are challenges in

keeping the design culture and

innovative spirit alive. You start to

have multiple product divisions

within the company and you have

to work to overcome organizational

barriers that arise between groups

of engineers and so forth. It was

sometimes a struggle, but I think

we’ve done a pretty good job of

In the design area where you

work, how many engineers

are there?

In my area, we do all of the

broadcast radio tuner products. On

the hardware side, I think there are

around 18 engineers, both analog

and digital. We have large systems

and applications teams as well,

about 15-20 engineers in total, who

design the embedded firmware and

applications circuits for our chips.

I think the best advice

I could give would be

to remain constantly

willing to step back

from what you are

doing and look at

the big picture. It’s

easy to bury yourself

in the technical

details of a task...

What architecture do you use

for your microcontrollers and

DSPs?

For microcontrollers, we have

mainly used the 8051 core. Silicon

Labs acquired a company called

Cygnal, which developed 8051-

based 8-bit microcontrollers with

some high-end analog peripherals,

so we started using that in our FM

and AM tuners, which opened a

whole new world of possibilities.

Instead of designing a tricky analog

calibration circuit or a custom

digital calibration engine, these

things could be implemented much

more flexibly in software. As far as

the DSP goes, we developed our

own, so that’s been an in-house

operation.

How would you describe the

culture at Silicon Labs?

Right off the bat, it was very dynamic

and very driven to improve things.

Even if it’s something that has

been done the same way for a long

time, we would see if we could do

things better: higher performance,

lower power, less die area, etc..

That is a core part of the culture, I

think. I came in before Silicon Labs

went public, so it was very much a

start-up company and since then,

we’ve transitioned through that

into a medium-sized going toward

a larger company. That’s been an

interesting journey. When you get

past the start-up phase and you

get closer to the “big company”

keeping that innovative spirit

and excitement alive. Now I’m a

manager, and I feel it’s my job to

ensure that it stays fun to come to

work in the morning—I don’t want

it to feel like drudgery or to feel

like we are doing the same kind

of chip that we’ve done before but

just in a new process. We want to

keep it innovative and fresh for our

designers.

Silicon Labs recently introduced

the company’s first 32-bit

microcontrollers – the Precision32™

family of ARM Cortex-M3 based

MCUs. The advent of our 32-bit

MCUs not only expands our served

available market for embedded

controllers, it also opens up

many more possibilities to deliver

innovative solutions based on ARM

technology, such as wireless MCUs

that combine a 32-bit MCU core with

a high-performance RF transceiver.

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