Texas Instruments disbands China’s MCU R&D team and moves to India!The reasons behind the secrets

According to the news on May 7, according to industry insiders,Texas Instruments has abolished the MCU China R&D team located in the Shanghai R&D Center, and moved all the R&D of the original MCU product line to India.

According to the data, the MCU R&D team of Texas Instruments in China mainly focuses on the MSP430 product line. This product line has introduced a series of 16-bit ultra-low power consumption and low-cost MCUs to the market since 1996. So far, it has more than 500 MSP430 series products, which are widely used in industrial control, automotive, consumer electronics, medical and other fields. Applications.

The Texas Instruments Shanghai R&D Center was established in 2010, and the Chinese R&D team for the MSP430 product line was established in 2011.

According to the introduction of “The History of IC Men’s Struggle” who worked at Texas Instruments,After the establishment of the Texas Instruments MCU China team, it has experienced several years of development and growth. It reached its peak around 2017. The team has more than 60 people. It is the team with the largest number and the most complete functions in the Shanghai R&D center of the old owner. From marketing/system engineer to digital/analog design, from verification to back-end layout, from ATE test to chip application, and even including customer quality related positions.

It should be pointed out that,The abolition mainly involves the MCU R&D team of the Shanghai R&D Center, some of which have been merged into the LED DRIVER chip team, while the market and application-related teams have been retained.

A person in charge also revealed: “At present, TI has two product lines of LED DRIVER and BCS in Shanghai, and one product line each in Beijing and Shenzhen. The MCU team has at least a dozen R&D in China.”

However, according to “The History of IC Men’s Struggle”, Texas Instruments forced the original MCU product line R&D personnel to transfer to the analog chip department, and directly switched from mixed-signal chips to pure analog chips, not only without considering the feelings and technical expertise of employees, but also because of The original MCU team has a large number of people, and there are not so many vacancies in other product lines, so there is no work for the transferred employees, and the performance of the transferred employees will naturally be the worst. If you do not accept it and feel that the position arranged is not suitable, you can only propose your resignation.

“IC male struggle history” believes that,“This move is actually forcing employees to resign voluntarily in a disguised form. They don’t want to go through the layoff process, and they don’t want to pay compensation.”

However, it is reported that after Texas Instruments abolished the MCU R&D team of the Shanghai R&D Center, domestic MCU companies have begun to frantically “snatch people”. Come to think of it, even if these R&D personnel are forced to leave, they can quickly find a good job.

In recent years, under the trend of Sino-US technology war and domestic substitution, domestic MCUs have developed rapidly, especially under the MCU shortage that broke out since 2020, domestic MCUs have even snatched up many foreign veteran MCU manufacturers. market.

Domestic MCU companies represented by Zhaoyi Innovation, Smart Microelectronics, Huada Semiconductor, National Technology, Zhongying Electronics, Fudan Microelectronics, Chipsea Technology, and Hangshun have also developed rapidly.

Xinzhixun believes that Texas Instruments abolished the domestic MCU R&D team,On the one hand, the reason is that its MCU business has been affected by the rapid rise of domestic MCU manufacturers.According to industry insiders, Texas Instruments’ MCU business has already begun to decline in 2018.

On the other hand, due to the explosive growth of the domestic chip industry in recent years under the blessing of capital, the demand for chip talents is also increasing day by day, and the salary level of chip talents is also rising.

In order to accelerate development, some start-up chip companies that have received large amounts of financing are even willing to pay several times their salary to poach people from other manufacturers. In contrast, for established companies such as Texas Instruments, they can give R&D personnel. Salary levels may not be enough.

“IC Men’s Struggle History” also stated that Texas Instruments abolished the MCU China R&D team and moved to India,One reason may be that the executives of Texas Instruments’ MCU team have been replaced by Indians in recent years.

Moreover, compared with the cost of domestic chip R&D personnel, India is also lower. As early as 1985, Texas Instruments had set up its R&D center in Bangalore, India.

It is worth mentioning that in January this year, Micron Technology also disbanded its Shanghai R&D center with about 150 people, and concentrated product design and R&D to areas outside the mainland. At the same time, more than 40 core R&D personnel were selected to provide qualifications for skilled immigration to the United States.

At that time, it was reported that Micron’s disbanding of the DRAM design team was likely to prevent technology leakage, but in fact, before that, the team lost a lot of employees due to the “poaching” of domestic companies.

Therefore, some people in the industry also said that in the face of high salaries from domestic manufacturers, Micron abolished its Shanghai R&D center and transferred its R&D overseas.

In addition, for Texas Instruments, the abolition of the MCU R&D team in the Shanghai R&D Center may also be related to the Shanghai epidemic that has lasted for more than a month.

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