Silicon Laboratories Achieves TS-16949 Quality Registration for the Automotive Market

News Release from: Silicon Laboratories Inc.
15/04/2008

Silicon Laboratories Inc. today announced that it is now among a select number of companies to become an International Standards Organization/Technical Specification (ISO/TS)-16949:2002 registered corporation demonstrating the company's achievement in meeting the most stringent quality standards. This achievement brings several benefits to Silicon Labs' automotive customers including higher confidence in products shipped, simplified manufacturing by reducing time-consuming internal audits and greater efficiency in the supply chain. The prestige of the TS-16949 certification gives Silicon Labs customers in every industry an assurance that Silicon Labs is committed to quality standards.

Based on ISO9000 standards, TS-16949 is aimed at the development of a quality management system that provides for continual improvement, while emphasizing defect prevention and the reduction of variation and waste in the supply chain. Meeting this qualification is required to supply products to automotive customers.

Silicon Labs provides a number of microcontrollers (MCUs) for the automotive market including its C8051F52x and C8051F53x families, which are automotive qualified. These MCUs are the most functionally dense 8-bit automotive MCUs on the market and offer a superior level of integration, performance and features over competing solutions. The F52x and F53x MCUs are currently being designed in with major automotive manufacturers for body control applications within the automobile such as fluid level monitoring, seat position and adjustment, window lifters, steering angle sensors and back-up cameras. All devices are designed to operate across the full automotive temperature (–40 to 125 ºC) and voltage range and integrate a ±0.5 percent precision internal oscillator and a 12-bit ADC in packages as small as 3 x 3 mm2.

“The automotive market for semiconductors is a high growth area we are very focused on strategically,” said Jon Ivester, vice president and general manager of Silicon Labs. “Because quality is a paramount concern in the automotive industry, Silicon Labs is proud to be granted this achievement, which will ultimately reduce cost and simplify manufacturing for our customers worldwide.”