An Interview with Øyvind Janbu - Feracious Fabless Facilitator

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Welcome Øyvind Janbu, CTO of Energy Micro!

• Øyvind went to school in Trondheim where there are multiple schools and many tech companies based around them.
• Many early members, including the CEO, were part of ChipCon, which was later purchased by Texas Instruments.
• Energy Micro (EM) is mostly employee owned.
• Since EM is a fabless semiconductor company, the processing (manufacturing) is done primarily at TSMC.
• "Le Sense" is an homage to the movie Pulp Fiction, in the same scene where they mention the Royale with Cheese.
• Energy Micro has a VP of Simplicity, dedicated to making things easier for the customer.
• The radios coming from EM are a variety of radio standards, including Bluetooth Low Energy.
• The royalties of an ARM core are confidential, but ARM has more information about licensing in their annual reports.
• Some of the newest parts in the EM Gecko family use the ARM M0+ core, which many vendors are promoting right now for low power.
• The EM products have some unusual features, like DMA from an ADC while in sleep mode.
• Energy Micro publishes their longevity guarantee right on their website for all to see.
• Chips are available through distributors like Digikey and have been part of their strategy from day one.

Many thanks to Øyvind for being on our show and giving us more insight into chip companies. He was really straightforward with his answers and we hope you learned a lot from him. Please leave any additional questions in the comments and we’ll try to make sure the proper people answer them.