Freescale Moves Brazil Operations to New, State-of-the-Art Design Center

AUSTIN, Texas--Continuing its long-term investment in Latin America, Freescale Semiconductor is consolidating its semiconductor design and sales operations in Brazil into an expansive new facility located in Campinas City, a center for high technology development located in the state of Sao Paulo.

Freescale’s Brazil Semiconductor Design Center (BSTC) previously was located in Jaguariuna, with a separate sales office in nearby Sao Paulo. Freescale has united the two separate offices into a 41,100-square-foot center that serves as the company’s headquarters in Brazil.

Freescale’s BSTC is one of 40 design centers operated by Freescale in key regions around the world. Freescale engineers at the BSTC focus on microcontroller (MCU), embedded memory, analog/mixed-signal and sensors semiconductor design for the automotive, consumer and industrial markets. Established in 1997, the center has grown from an original core team of eight seasoned integrated circuit designers to staff of more than 170 engineers.

“Establishing our new design center in Campinas solidifies Freescale’s commitment to the Latin American region and will help us to continue to attract and retain world-class digital and analog design talent,” said Armando Gomes, technology director and country manager for Freescale’s Brazil operations. “Consolidating our design, sales and field engineering teams into one location also will enhance our ability to serve our customers through improved communications and synergy across functional areas.”

According to Gomes, the BSTC team has one of the industry’s lowest turnover rates (less than 1.5 percent over the last 10 years). Freescale plans to continue expanding the Brazil design team, with a goal of growing the headcount to more than 200 in 2008.

Throughout the past decade, the Brazil design team has delivered more than 70 advanced silicon designs and secured more than 30 patents. The team’s strategic product and technology design contributions include a cost-effective, flash-based S08 8-bit MCU core, an enhanced time processing unit (eTPU), advances in control area network (CAN) and FlexCAN technology, power management ICs for wireless and networking applications, and the industry’s first local interconnect network (LIN) physical layer product.

The BSTC also serves as a strategic design resource for the joint development program between Freescale and STMicroelectronics. The two companies are collaborating to deliver jointly developed MCU products targeting a wide range of automotive applications, including powertrain, chassis, motor control and body systems.

About Campinas City

Campinas has been dubbed the “Brazilian Technology Belt” because it is home to numerous global high-tech companies and a skilled work force. The city is also a center for the automotive, communications, computer and pharmaceutical industries and is home to many of Brazil’s major research centers and universities. Campinas also boasts the largest number of high-tech business incubators and industrial parks of any city in Brazil. According to Wired Magazine, Campinas is one of the highest growth high-tech areas in Latin America, second only to the city of São Paulo. Of the 500 largest companies listed by Fortune magazine, 50 are already established in the Campinas region.

About Freescale Semiconductor

Freescale Semiconductor is a global leader in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial, networking and wireless markets. The privately held company is based in Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing or sales operations in more than 30 countries. Freescale is one of the world's largest semiconductor companies with 2006 sales of $6.4 billion (USD). www.freescale.com

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