Fairchild’s focus has turned increasingly to power management and interface products—the technologies driving the explosive growth of the wireless and e-world systems. With our solid manufacturing base, award-winning customer service and recognized expertise in product and process innovation, Fairchild is uniquely positioned for dramatic growth in the coming decades.
      Fairchild is focusing all of our intellectual property, design methodology, process and packaging technologies toward providing one of the broadest and most optimized tool kits for managing power in any electronic system. The reason is simple. Internet appliances, wireless phones, industrial systems and consumer products have a growing need for semiconductor products that improve power management capabilities, specifically the conversion and control of power.
      The more expectations grow for lighter and longer-lasting cell phones or notebook computers, the more power management becomes important. The more miniaturized the power device, the more challenging the manufacturing task. Fairchild has synergistically developed our analog, mixed signal and discrete portfolio, re-directed our non-volatile memory technology, and enhanced all of these products with state-of-the-art miniature packaging to support the growth in power management products.
      In the silicon world, there has never been a perfect connection due to the physical fact of resistance. Resistance creates heat and wastes power—both enemies of today’s battery-operated hand-held digital appliances. By investing in technology that reduces resistivity while shrinking our silicon footprint, we’re creating products that maximize performance and minimize cost.
      Our Trench technology is a perfect example. Fairchild’s PowerTrench® process etches trenches into the surface of the silicon, maximizing the switching speeds of the device while minimizing resistance and heat. We have combined this leading process technology with tiny, power-efficient packaging. For example, our MOSFET BGA package is effectively the same size as its silicon die, yet it delivers five times more power than the competition’s larger packages with far less heat. Our creative development of wireless leadframes and chip scale packages that combine good thermal management with superior electrical performance and a small footprint allows us to continue to add value on a miniature scale.
      Complementing this wide power discrete line—which ranges from 10 volts to 1500 volts—is our growing power analog product portfolio. Our Fairchild Power Switch products combine the drive of discrete devices with the power management of an analog IC. We have a complete line of power IC products, which cover low voltage, high voltage, PWM and linear regulators as well as on-line and off-line switching. And we have embedded our ACEx microcontroller technology into our analog product line to provide power management for portable electronics.
      Our products manage and control power all the way from the wall socket to the heart of the circuit board. Our extensive portfolio, combined with our power design expertise, allows our customers to rely on us for their power solutions while they focus on their core strengths. No competitor competes strongly with Fairchild across our full power product line. This is what makes us different.
      Our investment in power has enabled us to grow margins and increase sales from power products to over 40 percent of our total trade sales—all while meeting the electronic needs of the world.