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January 2008 • Volume 13 Number 1
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Member Profile: TI
Shawn joined TI in 1982 as a semiconductor product test engineer. Over the next 23 years, Shawn has held management positions in marketing, product development and engineering in a variety of businesses, predominantly developing communications products. Shawn earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Auburn University, a master’s of electrical engineering from Rice University, and a Masters of Business Administration from Houston Baptist University. Shawn and his wife, Brenda, live in Rockwall, Texas with their daughter and two sons. Shawn enjoys family activities, sailing and kayaking. 1. What are Texas Instruments’ (TI) main business profile and offerings? Texas Instruments is the world's largest integrated supplier in radio frequency identification (RFID), with more than 500 million TI-RFid tags, smart labels, and readers manufactured for use in asset tracking, contactless payments and government ID applications. For almost 20 years, TI, with its broad array of mobile processing and memory technologies, has delivered radio frequency innovations that help customers create contactless identification solutions for a host of authentication and security applications. TI has led the modern contactless payment industry with its innovative Exxon Mobil SpeedPass™, American Express ExpressPay™ and MasterCard® Paypass™ solutions. 2. What role does smart card technology play in supporting Texas Instruments’ (TI) business? Texas Instruments designs and manufactures the silicon that goes into smart cards, and the company’s technical leadership is a key component of its strategy. TI is focused on two smart card market segments, government IDs and contactless payments. Because the same technologies are essential to both segments, TI gains significant leverage from this overlap. In addition to contactless smart cards, TI has a considerable business in traditional passive RFID. We have produced millions of extremely efficient RF-front end and low-power circuit designs critical to passive RFID devices. TI has the innate skills and technologies for contactless smart card design that companies whose experience is rooted in contact smart cards need to acquire. 3. What trends do you see developing in the market that Texas Instruments (TI) hopes to capitalize on? Integrated circuits (IC) in the government ID space will see an ever increasing need for improved performance, including a faster and more robust user experience and faster/larger user memories. We see two- and three-factor authentication employing advanced biometrics as one driver leading to larger non-volatile memory requirements. A longer term driver for larger non-volatile memories is the gradual appearance of multi-application smart cards. TI’s ultra-fast, low-power non-volatile FRAM memory technology, coupled with its extensive experience building contactless, passive ICs and advanced 130 nm process node, position TI to address these trends. In the contactless payments market we see the benefits of speed and convenience, in addition to the coolness factor of the technology, driving increased acceptance by retailers and issuing banks. We expect the wider availability of contactless technology from banks and merchants, and the greater convenience of multi-applications on one card and payment by mobile phone to drive more consumer usage. 4. What obstacles to growth do you see that must be overcome to capitalize on these opportunities? In the government ID market the relatively slow pace of system design and government contracting, often paced by slow but important policy decision making, create a challenging environment in which to introduce new technologies. In the U.S. in particular, we see policy decisions made on REAL ID and the WHTI PASS card as missing an opportunity to derive the value that secure contactless smart cards offer. With the Enhanced Driver License following a similar technology path, the states are not being encouraged to consider the substantial benefits that would come from using contactless smart cards. In the contactless payment market, lack of consumer awareness and the relatively slow pace of merchant adoption are probably the two largest obstacles to growth. However, the trends look positive moving into 2008, as evidenced by Visa’s promotional TV campaign for payWave contactless payments and signs that banks are beginning to promote contactless more aggressively. 5. What do you see as the key factors driving smart card technology in the market? Texas Instruments continues to see the same trends driving the contactless smart card IC business that exist in other IC markets – namely, ever increasing functionality at higher levels of performance and shrinking IC geometries. To continue driving smart card technology, the government ID and contactless payments markets need: more reliable contactless card operations to improve the user experience; reduced personalization times to lower the cost to deliver new cards; and increased memory to address the inevitable demand for multi-application smart cards. 6. How do you see your involvement in the Alliance helping Texas Instruments (TI) become successful? The Smart Card Alliance is the leading industry organization bringing smart card users and implementers together in a single forum, enabling the ready exchange of ideas regarding application needs, technology alternatives and current policy issues. On the implementer side TI has particularly benefited by the active participation of competitive IC companies, card manufacturers, security architects, software companies, and system integrators, all essential to the broader market TI seeks to serve with its advanced smart ICs.
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