Renesas Electronics Germany GmbH

ZMDI (Zentrum Mikroelektronik Dresden, ZMD AG)
Founded in 1961, ZMDI enables its customers to become #1 in their selected markets by providing on-time, innovative, robust, high precision, and cost-effective analog mixed-signal silicon solutions for energy efficiency in automotive, mobile medical devices, industrial automation and consumer devices. With an annual growth rate of 10-15%, ZMDI aspires to become the leading independent global provider for application-specific solutions for sensor signal capturing, processing, actuating and transmitting.
The company specializes in design and marketing of high temperature, high voltage and ultra low power application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and application-specific standard products (ASSPs). Highly advanced circuit-design expertise allows the company to offer ICs with operating temperatures as high as +160°C, and voltages from 0.85 V to 40 V. ZMDI’s customer-oriented development team of 130 engineers deploys proven development methods and a tested “golden IP library” to ensure first-time right in the development of analog mixed-signal circuits. This approach has reduced the average development time of customer-specific solutions by around 50 percent. ZMDI undertakes all product tests in-house to ensure the exceptionally high quality level. In 2007, ZMDI divested of its fab operations to the X-FAB group. Today, X-FAB is the principal supplier of foundry services for ZMDI which, in turn, is one of the Top 10 customers of the X-FAB Group. This way, ZMDI can focus on its core competency – developing innovative analog/mixed-signal circuits – while maintaining access to X-FAB’s world class manufacturing capacity, thus providing customers with a one-stop-shopping for semiconductor products.
ZMDI’s headquarters are situated in Dresden, Germany, the heart of Silicon Saxony, a renowned high-tech cluster which has made the region one of the world’s premier microelectronics centers of excellence. The company has 280 employees worldwide and serves customers from the company’s offices in Dresden, Stuttgart, Germany; Milano, Italy; Paris, France; the U.S. Pocatello, ID, Melville, NY; Tokyo, Japan and Hsinchu City, Taiwan. ZMDI has design centers in Dresden and Stuttgart, Munich, Germany; Varna, Bulgaria and Madison, Wisconsin.
ZMDI endorses the lead-free production of semiconductors: All of ZMDI’s products conform to the RoHS guidelines and other international environmental protection standards. ZMDI’s lead-free products also conform to WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment). ZMDI is committed to the environment and is certified under ISO14001:1996.

Enabling Energy Efficient Solutions for Sensors and Actuators
“Companies that pioneer energy efficiency in their home markets will be well placed to carve out a leading position in the global market for “green” products and services before it matures.”
Source: McKinsey, Quarterly Feb. 2009.
Systems or appliances are called energy efficient if they use less electricity, fuel, or other power to perform the same function that conventional ones do. ZMDI is actively working with key customers on solutions for future energy efficient products and applications.
AUTOMOTIVE
Modern automobiles are full of sensors, monitoring everything from brake fluid pressure, wheel speed, and oil temperature to the presence and orientation of a child safety seat. Ongoing efforts to increase fuel efficiency and lower emissions as well as new applications to assist the driver will expand the number of sensors used in each car rapidly. ZMDI’s line of sensor signal conditioners amplify very small sensor signals and correct them for errors and non-linearities. ZMDI has earned solid, long-standing relationships with leading automotive suppliers and understands their specific requirements – the need for automotive quality levels, long-term supply agreements and the importance of energy efficiency.
To this end, ZMDI invests in a portfolio of products that help to reduce gasoline consumption, save battery power, reduce emissions, meet environmental standards, and reduce application weight.  There are many more, and an even greater number in the future: Battery Monitoring Systems in light and heavy vehicles for sensing the battery status in order to optimize the charge cycle, enable Start/Stop applications and monitoring the battery status to supply enough energy for engine start; and Fuel Quality Sensing to adjust motor management to the composition and the quality of fuel for gasoline, flex-fuel, natural gas or fuel cell vehicles.
ZMDI’s management is commited to a zero failure strategy to fulfill the customers expectation for zero defects of outgoing products. ZMDI has successfully been qualified for world class quality standards of ISO/TS 16949 (International Automotive Industry Quality Standard) and ISO 14001.
MEDICAL
With the increasing costs of medical services in combination with the aging population in western countries, home medical treatments and monitoring will become more and more important. ZMDI has a proven track record in energy efficient products for mobile, battery-driven medical devices requiring ultra-low power and low voltage solutions. With its extensive know-how in low power design of mixed-signal ICs as well as in low power wireless transmitting of measured sensor signals ZMDI looks at the medical market as one of the strongest growth opportunities for the company. Today, ZMDI offers medical equipment suppliers a number of highly successful ASICs for blood glucose monitoring and devices for blood pressure measurement. In the future, we will support our customers in realizing battery-optimized handheld applications with extended battery lifetimes.
STANDARD ANALOG AND MIXED-SIGNAL
ZMDI offers a broad portfolio of standard products designed to make industrial environments as resource-, time- and component-efficient as possible.

• SENSOR SIGNAL CONDITIONING – A large number of energy efficient applications in the industrial, consumer, and communication markets require highly precise sensor signal conditioning. The trend towards ever-smarter systems drives sensor use up in all of these applications. ZMDI’s portfolio of standard signal conditioning application specific standard products provides highly accurate amplification and temperature compensation of all kinds of sensor signals. ZMDI’s digital “one-pass” calibration allows the customer to calibrate only once, in the final system. This is more accurate and much less expensive than calibration during the production process of the sensor module.
  Continuously increasing the level of energy efficiency, ZMDI’s sensor signal conditioning products are designed to reduce the waste of resources and enable efficient resource optimization. Today, perhaps in the form of a humidity sensor for efficient ink-print results; in the future as an intelligent battery re-charger module for cell phones, mobile equipment, and various consumer electronics to charge associated battery to an optimal point, then keeping the battery in idle mode or totally switch off charging energy. The possibilities are endless.

 

• IrDA – Today, the company is the world’s largest supplier of IrDA transceiver ICs, shipping tens of millions of units each year. IrDA applications today range from standard remote control and built-in IrDA modules in laptops and PDAs to mobile phone-based financial payments and recently to very fast transfers of MP3 and photo image files from digital cameras or high end mobile phones to printers or PCs. ZMDI’s IrDA technology offers data rates up to 16 Mbps with very low power consumption and very small size.

 

• AS-I – ZMDI is the leading maker of AS-I bus ICs for industrial automation, a direct extension of the company’s signal conditioning products. The AS-I bus interconnects actuators, sensors, displays and switches in a very efficient way – it allows for fast, simple, flexible and economic system setups. From component-level to system-level, ZMDI enjoys an excellent reputation for its quality customer support.

 

• Temperatur sensors – The company offers a family of low power, low-cost, very high-accuracy temperature sensor IC solutions, with accuracies as precise as 0.05 °C. These sensor ICs are widely used in energy efficient applications such as portable medical equipment as well as in asset tracking, drug development and process control.

 

• ADCs – With the SARah family, ZMDI leverages its mixed-signal expertise to offer its customers a high performance low-power successive-approximation ADC family with sampling rates up to 300ksps. SARah is based on a scalable family concept enabling upwards and downwards compatibility. The SARah family offers a wide range of configuration choices. Designers can select 8, 10, or 12-bit versions with internal or external voltage references. There are 2, 4, and 8-channel versions available. The common pin-out and software compatibility increases the ability of the manufacturers to easily develop variants of their system solutions. SAR ADCs are widely used in industrial process control, power generation and consumer white goods applications, where they contribute to better appliance performance and greater energy efficiency. Advanced ASIC product know-how and process technology allows ZMD to deliver superior accuracy in this ADC family concept. SARah meets the rigorous requirements of the AEC-Q100 automotive industry standard.