“As we look forward to 2022, growing our team remains a priority”
Petre Barac
Posted On December 16, 2021
“2021 has been a year of accelerated growth for NXP globally, based on a very strong recovery of the automotive market coupled with a consistent growth of the IoT demand across the world, with an estimated global revenue in the range of 11 Billion USD for 2021,” Radu Pavel, Country Manager, NXP Semiconductors Romania told Automotive Today.
“Our investment strategy in the last 3-5 years has placed NXP in a unique leadership position for the Secure Edge that will dominate the technology industries in the next decade. After the time of computers, data-centers or smartphones, we believe that the next 10 years will see an exponential increase in smart connected devices, from cars to industrial and smart home applications. This plays directly into our strengths and NXP Romania, as a key R&D center for our company, will continue to play a substantial role in leading the innovation path for the years to come.”
COMMITMENT TO PERFORMANCE | BUSINESS EVOLUTION, PROJECTS, PERFORMANCE, FIGURES
“NXP Semiconductors enables secure connections and infrastructure for a smarter world, advancing Automotive, Telecommunications, IoT and Industrial solutions that make lives easier, better and safer. NXP Semiconductors Romania is a center of excellence for embedded R&D for Analog, Automotive, Radar and Edge Processing, providing also global functions for NXP IT R&D and operations, board design solutions and supply chain management. Our company is present for more than 20 years in Romania, generating several hundreds of issued software patents as part of our growing portfolio of innovative, cutting-edge products. We are proud to recognize that every modern car on the road has at least one part from NXP (if not tens, for newer models) and each of those parts has at least one software component created by our engineering team in Romania, getting you and your family home safely every day.
2021 has been a year of accelerated growth for NXP globally, based on a very strong recovery of the automotive market coupled with a consistent growth of the IoT demand across the world, with an estimated global revenue in the range of 11 Billion USD for 2021. This allowed increased investments in R&D centers, like NXP Romania, where we grew by more than 150 new colleagues in 2021 alone. And we are looking to further expand our investment, with around 100 additional open positions for which we are recruiting currently, plus many more in the years to come.
Our investment strategy in the last 3-5 years has placed NXP in a unique leadership position for the Secure Edge that will dominate the technology industries in the next decade. After the time of computers, data-centers or smartphones, we believe that the next 10 years will see an exponential increase in smart connected devices, from cars to industrial and smart home applications. This plays directly into our strengths and NXP Romania, as a key R&D center for our company, will continue to play a substantial role in leading the innovation path for the years to come.
STRATEGY & VISION | RETHINK STRATEGY & PRIORITIES
“One of the key challenges of 2021 was related to our employees safety. In the context of the global pandemic, we have introduced work from home and have been operating in this mode for the better part of 2021. While there are many advantages to working from home (and having this as an option also in the years before the pandemic has made it easier for us to switch to this mode since 2020), we have also started to recognize a fatigue – due to the increased number of on-line meetings that had to replace day to day interactions, making it more difficult to collaborate, solve problems and innovate. After we had started to return to office in the summer and enjoying an increased sense of return to normal, we moved again to a remote work setup in the autumn. This makes even simple things, like our traditional employees Christmas carols choir to move to an on-line setup. The fun was still there, but we will welcome the opportunity to perform again live in front of our colleagues and families at our Christmas parties in the years to come.
Another key challenge in 2021 was growing by more than 150 colleagues this year. Ramping up on the complex technologies we create requires a lot of interaction and working with your assigned mentor in an on-line setup with embedded boards and various lab equipment requires more time and patience. Also finding the right ways to attract the most talented engineers on the market to join NXP was a challenge in itself now that more traditional methods had to be adapted to the realities of the new world context. Not to mention that the increased amounts of meetings and efforts to interview and select the best new colleagues while dealing with global challenges like the semiconductor crisis and keeping customers’ production lines going has put further pressure on the work-like balance of our employees.
Finding ways to deal with all the above challenges kept my colleagues and me busy for most of 2021, but I am fortunate to work with a great team that has always delivered the best solutions with their out of the box mindset.
As we look forward to 2022, growing our team remains a priority for NXP Romania together with the wellbeing of our employees. They bring the key ingredients for success in delivering the most innovative products for the Secure Edge emerging markets and represent our core value as a company. There are many cutting edge projects we will focus on in 2022 and the years to come, like the introduction of the first 5nm processors for automotive, 5G and 6G communications solutions, battery management systems for the fast growing EV market, radar SDKs, machine learning and high speed communication middleware, connectivity solutions, world class development tools like our Model Based Design portfolio and next generation architecture compilers, IDE and debugger solutions, just to name a few. We will continue our sharp focus into finding solutions for our customers during the global semiconductors supply crisis and look at 2022 with the hope of getting closer to normality both from a pandemic and supply perspective.”
PEOPLE & COMMUNITY | FOCUS ON SAFETY, SOCIAL APPROACH, LEVERAGE THE POWER OF COMMUNITY
“After our 2020 donations towards the efforts to equip our front-line medical staff, in 2021 NXP Romania looked to help those struggling with moving to the new on-line paradigm and donated various IT equipment (laptops, monitors, keyboards, etc.) to schools and associations like Asociatia Scleroza Multipla Bucuresti, Asociatia Casa Buna, Scoala Gimnaziala “Prof Mihai Emilian Mancas“, Asociatia Narada, Fundatia Vita Pro Vita, etc.
One of our main involvements in 2021 was in the initiative “Be a Santa for the ones in need” from United Way, a traditional CSR partner for NXP Romania. Many of our employees have donated to help a child with new warm clothes or a family in need to enjoy a Christmas meal.”
KEEN ON GREEN | SUSTAINABLE, GREENER, COMMUNITY & ENVIRONMENTALLY-FOCUS
“As an R&D center (with no manufacturing) our contribution to sustainability and green-driven initiatives comes from the contributions we bring to the technology that makes an impact at a global scale. For sure, when we have selected our new Campus 6.1 site in 2019, one of the key criteria was to move into a modern, highly energy efficient building and Campus 6 delivers on all sustainability KPIs. But coming back to our key contribution in 2021, let me share just one of the examples of how the technology we create in NXP Romania makes a global positive impact.
With electrification being one of the automotive industry megatrends, with analysts forecasting that until 2030 at least half of the new cars will feature full or partially electrified powertrains, it’s obvious that energy efficiency and energy conversion become key aspects of the modern car architectures.
This is where NXP’s technology helps make a difference. From our high-end to low-end microcontrollers, to analog ICs like power management chips or battery cell controllers, all are designed to support the strictest low-power, energy management and performance needs. This wide range of devices allows building complete solutions, like battery management systems or other subsystems of the electrified powertrain. To help with that, we provide many ready-to-use reference designs where software developed by our NXP Romania team plays a central role. It connects and enables digital and analog devices in an optimal safe environment.
Here is an example of tutorial created by our Bucharest team on how to use NXP Model Based Design Tools with NXP S32 products to design and easily deploy a battery management system for automotive:
DIGITAL DNA | GRASPING TECH, DIGITAL INNOVATION, CUSTOMER -DRIVEN, BUILDING NEW BRIDGES
“Digital innovation and technology creation are at the core of NXP Semiconductors Romania’s reasons to exist. One of the key themes for our team in 2021 and the years to come is related to the transitioning of vehicle designs towards Software Defined Cars.
As the architecture of the electronics subsystems changes to domain-specific networks and zonal architecture, NXP Romania has developed more integrated software products that improve customers’ experience with reference hardware and software platforms that are easy to use and configure. This helps our customers get faster to prototypes by using a software development platform created and delivered from Romania. This software platform integrates NXP delivered software components (most of them developed in Romania) and partner software (in areas where they complement NXP’s software offering). Our car-to-cloud solution puts together the items required to do centralization of sensor data from an in-vehicle gateway, processing, and telemetry of sensor data with edge processing technology, and cloud-based processing of Big Data derived from Terra Bytes of sensor data generated each hour by the car.
A specific example in this area is GoldVIP (GoldBox Vehicle Integration Platform), an innovative product launched by NXP in 2021 with design, development and delivery done by our team in Romania. GoldVIP provides a reference implementation of a Service-Oriented Gateway, which is a central piece in the new car architectures. It allows customers to jumpstart their development, being able to experience in minutes how complex integrated accelerators operate in delivering the services required for CAN networking, Ethernet networking, and cloud connectivity. GoldVIP is an open-source integration platform with all the recipes required to build the final binary image of the software that will run in the car, allowing customers to further customize our reference integration platform with their own applications, middleware, or drivers.
With the integration of AWS (Amazon Web Services) Greengrass, GoldVIP allows customers to deploy their own secure edge processing functionality and to enable new business models based on telemetry of sensor data from the car to cloud. Advanced data analytics in the cloud allow customized experiences via software updates for a safer, more secure, and more entertaining commute for the driver and passengers. For example, owners or fleet managers can quickly identify higher-than-expected degrees of pollution from malfunctioning vehicles or deploy (through Over The Air updates) novel energy management algorithms that improve the life or performance of the installed xEV batteries.
Looking ahead for 2022 and beyond, it has become clear that the automotive industry goes through a revolutionary transformation. Cars used to be combustion engine powered vehicles designed to take the driver and passengers from point A to point B, with horsepower and top speed as key value propositions. They are transforming into fully connected IoT edge devices delivering Infotainment and comfort like never before. They have increasing levels of safety, automation and autonomy that drastically reduce the risk of accidents. All this while moving to hybrid and electric powertrains transforming our world step by step into a greener and safer place. This radical transformation can only be achieved by a disruption in the vehicle architecture as we know it today. Such a disruptive transformation can only be done with an exponential increase in software content and services like autonomous drive components, time sensitive networks, gateways, security and functional safety libraries, powertrain energy efficient algorithms, infotainment frameworks and so on. And this is where the expertise we have built in the last 20+ years in NXP Romania becomes central to the success of our company.
2021 IN 3 KEY WORDS OR MORE
“2021 was challenging on many levels. It was a year of growth for NXP Romania. And it was rewarding, with many design wins and satisfied customers, despite the very challenging pandemic and supply crises context.”
2022 IN 3 KEY WORDS OR MORE
“2022 starts as a year of hope, with a very positive outlook in the automotive industry and positive signs of starting to return to normality. It will still be for us a year of sustained growth as we plan to hire more than 100 additional colleagues. And it needs to be a year of stability, especially from a political and legislative context perspective, to allow businesses to predict and plan their activities medium and long term.”
