How Texas Instruments Builds Foundational Semiconductors and What They Enable

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2025-12-23

YouTube video id: qPXZ23XddZ4

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPXZ23XddZ4

Let's take an inside look at the
semiconductor manufacturing process here
in Sherman, Texas, as Texas Instruments
opens up a new fabrication plant. And
did you know that semiconductors are
actually TI's core business, we're
joined today by Jeff Moroni, CTO for
power at Texas Instruments in a
conversation brought to you by Texas
Instruments. Jeff, welcome.
>> Thank you. Thanks for having me. So,
we're here at the opening of a big Texas
Instruments semiconductor plant.
>> Let's start broad. Can you describe the
state of the semiconductor supply chain?
Where are they being built and do we
have enough?
>> Yeah. So, let me first start actually
with a um a little bit of a broader view
of what's happened in the last 10 years
in semiconductors. I think it'll it'll
answer your question. So, I would
actually venture to say that 10 years
ago, the average person probably didn't
even know what a semiconductor was. And
I think a lot has changed over the last
10 years. And people realize for a few
reasons. One, because it's in the news.
But two, because semiconductors are in
our lives everywhere. And you start to
appreciate it more and more when you can
touch and feel it in your cars or in
your cell phones in your um you see the
robotics and the AI um infrastructure
and I think it's important to understand
why is that and really there's been
since semiconductor inception two things
that have I would say been constant
ambitions miniaturaturization and making
devices genon more affordable and that's
by the way actually TI's passion
statement is We want to make
semiconductors more and more affordable.
But the byproduct of that is that they
show up everywhere. Every year
semiconductors get more and more
affordable and they show up in new
applications and they solve new
problems.
>> Right. Like the smart refrigerator.
>> The smart refrigerator. It's everywhere.
Yep. Wireless uh washing machines.
That's right. And uh
>> I actually have thought a bit about
this. I'm not sure if I'm uh if I'm
missing any industries, but I can't
think of any industries over a long time
scale that have been anti-inflationary
other than semiconductors.
Semiconductors now are cheaper than they
were 20 years ago and that is because of
the scale that we can drive in
semiconductors. It's because of the
miniaturaturization. It's because of
facilities like this. So if I kind of
come to the supply chain piece then
there's really two categories of
semiconductors. There's the foundational
chips which is what's built here and
then there's the sort of leading edge
nodes that you see in GPUs and CPUs and
um and you know those kinds of products.
And I think semiconductors probably also
became very familiar for people um
during the semiconductor supply um
crunch during the COVID cycle. Everybody
started to realize, oh, I don't I can't
buy a car or I can't get this because
there's no semiconductors. And people
started to learn what semiconductors
were. A lot of that supply chain
challenge actually came from
foundational chips. Chips like the chips
that are built in this factory that TI
builds. And the reason is that you you
hear about all the investments that go
on around the world in the US including
on the leading edge nodes for processors
and for AI applications. Uh but a lot of
the um the um supply needs goes to the
foundational chips that support all of
these functions in the world and not
very many people actually invest in
that. Uh so TI is one of the few and
we're definitely the biggest in terms of
investment. We've announced $60 billion
I think over the last few years in
investments in foundational chips. So
for me the supply chain and the sort of
um the the situation that we have we see
more semiconductors in the world. We see
more need for foundational chips and
there's fewer and fewer people building
kind of purpose-built capacity to
support these chips. And so it's I think
a very unique opportunity. It also
serves to show I think the criticality
of some of these technologies that we
build.
>> Okay. That's very interesting. So when
we heard about this supply chain crunch
for when it came to semiconductors, I
think everybody like had in their head,
okay, they're being manufactured outside
of the US and they are the same. The
semiconductor in a computer or in a data
center is the same as the semiconductor
in your car. They're very different
though.
>> Yeah, I mean I think there's a lot of
different functions. I mean certainly
there's processors in all of those
applications, but none of them work
without the foundational chips. And
these are really analog mixed signal
chips. They're um embedded processing
chips. Chips that serve the function of
powering a processor or serve the
function of um providing a signal chain
so that a real world sensor can kind of
um get translated into something that
can show up in a you know in a haptic
interface for your phone or things like
that. So there's tons of analog around
us and they all require these
foundational chips and it's very
different. The technologies that are
required are completely different when
you compare those two categories.
>> So we're here in Sherman, Texas. Yeah,
>> this is day one of the production um of
your new facility to manufacture
>> this this chip.
>> Yep. This is uh there's many many chips
in this. So, this is a 300 millm wafer
and inside of this uh depending on of
course the size of each chip, there's
can be thousands, tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands of even chips on
each one of these individual 300 mm
wastes.
>> So, you're telling me that something
this size can hold hundreds of thousands
of chips?
>> Hundreds of thousands of chips.
exciting. It's a funny story actually,
but um I forget exactly when this was,
maybe five or six years ago. We ended up
building a chip small enough that it
broke um one of our systems. It was a
Y2K moment. You know, you go from 1999
to 2000. And the system wasn't designed
to handle as many chips as we could fit
in this. And so, we had to actually redo
the software so that we could handle
hundreds of thousands of chips in our
system and the way that we track it for
a wafer like this.
>> This is a dumb question. Why are they
built in a circle? Because I I think of
chips as a square, but this is a circle.
>> Yeah. There's a long uh history of that.
So they're actually singulated. So
they're cut up into squares and they're
packaged that way. A lot of the
semiconductor tools just from history
have always been um built to accommodate
circular or circle wafers. So these
start with ingots. The ingots are built
into circular silicon wafers. And then
we have processes for example where we
spin on different materials. And in
order to spin those materials on it's
much more natural to do it in a circular
pattern than a square. So there's a lot
of reasons why it's been that way from
the beginning, but yeah, ultimately the
product becomes a square when we cut it
up.
>> Okay. So I I just talk a little bit more
about the new plant.
>> How long did it take to build? Um your
CEO uh was just talking a little bit
about the amount of materials. Uh
apparently there's been enough concrete
poured here to build a highway from New
York to DC. Yes.
>> So talk a little bit about the
undertaking and then what the chips
built here are going to enable
>> building the building itself. Of course,
there's all of the work that goes into
actually designing it and um making sure
that it passes all of the standards that
we require from a clean room perspective
because these devices require ultra
clean environment.
>> Why?
>> Because any contamination causes us to
have to scrap units and so I mean we
call it yield but eventually it becomes
a yield loss. So we want these chips as
pristine as possible. And there's been
decades of work going into making sure
that clean rooms are as clean as
possible so that the devices we build
ultimately work and yield. So all of
that infrastructure, all of the design,
all of the planning that goes into it.
It takes time even just to build the
shell. And so three, four years is not
uncommon when it comes to this. So one
of the reasons why I think it's so
important in the supply chain commentary
is that we don't know what the market is
going to do. we um we all we know is
what we can do in the market to perform
and if the market wants to buy a lot
more chips because there's um there's
you know a new application a new demand
we need to have the buildings ready we
need to have the tools ready so that we
can support that and so that's I think
to me just the why it's so hard to
achieve this scale because you have to
build this in anticipation of demand by
the time the demand is here if you don't
have a facility like this you're too
late and so I think that to me is um is
very exciting It's also a very unique
opportunity and what it enables. I mean,
just take a car for example. I think in
today's cars depends, of course, on your
model, but uh it's not uncommon to see
over 3,000 chips in a car. Most of them
are foundational technology chips. And
>> what are all those chips doing?
>> Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, you move your
seat, there's a motor drive. You move
your window, there's a motor drive.
There's radar that um can detect um
objects outside for safety. Those are
foundational chips. There's LED
headlights that they can individually
dim. So you can beam steer, you can
illuminate, you know, maybe a dog
running across the street for safety
purposes, that function is all enabled
through um foundational chips. So
basically any electronic LED lights that
illuminate the inside of your cabin for
aesthetics. U audio amplifiers in your
car so you can hear, those are all
foundational chips. So basically
everything that happens inside of that
car is supported or enabled in some way
by a foundational chip. Those are all
technologies that are built in
fabrication plants like this. There's
new applications like robotics. People
see, you know, robotics, you know, these
humanoid robots walking around, motor
drives, sensors, interfaces so that they
can feel, so they know how much pressure
they're applying. Uh vision systems, all
foundational chips.
>> And so this new plant will produce tens
of millions a day.
>> A day. Yes, that's right. And there's
actually I mean we're in one of them,
but there's going to be four here
eventually. So we're we see sort of a
scale of um of um a quarter of what this
eventually will be. And the scale of
that I think is just extremely important
for the reasons I mentioned earlier.
More and more semiconductors in our
lives, more and more foundational chips,
fewer and fewer people investing in
facilities that can support foundational
chips. So we think the scale of this is
actually a huge competitive advantage
for us. And it also helps serve our
customers. We're able to give them the
devices they want when they need them.
And you know, it's interesting. We're
sitting here at Texas Instruments. Um,
one thing I learned recently is that
semiconductor manufacturer is actually
the biggest business that TI has, bigger
than the hardware that you guys make.
>> Uhhuh. Yeah. We uh I I kind of joke
actually I even joke with my
sister-in-law, but you hear Texas
Instruments and a lot of people think
calculators, but we make a lot more than
uh calculators. And uh the the the
business that we have here is actually a
long kind of evolution of investments
really over the last 30 years. We um we
started building these um semiconductor
chips and I would say that it started
actually with the advent of the
integrated circuit which was invented by
Jack Kilby who worked at TI and the
story is that he had a summer internship
where he was sort of left to um left to
do what he wanted to do and during that
summer internship he invented the
integrated circuit and that integrated
circuit became the backbone for
everything I just described when it
comes to the foundational chips. He won
the Nobel Prize for it, I think, a Nobel
um science prize for it um a few decades
later. But that is where this all
started and you can kind of see now what
what the world looks like as a result of
some of those inventions.
>> Okay. Um you know, we kind of made a
distinction or you made a distinction
earlier that there's two types of chips
uh and there's like the foundational
chips and the other type that you might
see in an AI data center.
>> Yeah. But maybe that world merges,
right? Because um the way that the AI
industry is moving, it seems like the
models are becoming more efficient. Um
there's a trend in AI, the small
language model, right? Maybe you don't
have to fire off all the world's
knowledge to be able to, you know, get
an LLM to do something for you. Maybe
you can have something that's purposely
built, purpose built.
>> Yes.
>> Maybe in a car, for instance, you have
an LLM or a small language model.
uh that can deal with car functions
>> and that's going to run many of those
will run on device.
>> Talk a little bit about how you know
some of those tens of millions of chips
a day might end up powering some of
these uh AI ondevice activities and
whether TI and whether you anticipate
that to be a growing business line here.
>> Absolutely. So actually there's two
categories but they're actually similar.
they're just um different in the
implication it has for the foundational
chips. So let's talk about data center
first. So um I would say that the single
biggest challenge that we face when it
comes to the trend in um AI is power.
There's a macro scale of actually grid
level power in the infrastructure
required to support the grid level
power. And then there's even the micro
level. If you actually look at these
processors, they're about this big.
>> And um if if I
>> AIP,
>> an AI processor. Yeah, it's about that
big. I mean it's you see some of the
presentations and it's like they're
holding what looks like a Grammy award.
>> You know what the rest of that stuff is
around it? It's power
>> really.
>> So there's you know on some of these um
particular products there's maybe one
two or three of these AI processors and
then it's on a big board and that big
board has all kinds of stuff around it.
A lot of that is power management
actually. And um the way I try to
describe it actually just to to sort of
make it hit home. Okay, so one of these
chips, these processors, it can take
somewhere on the average of two
kilowatts, which is not an uncommon
amount of average power for a household,
a full house in the US to take. It's in
this amount of power or in this size
>> like per day or like per per minute per
minute
>> instantaneous. So I mean it can run that
much power instantaneously.
>> Okay.
>> And
it actually is a very dynamic system. It
goes from it can go from no power to
that two kilowatts and it can do it
hundreds of thousands of times faster
than you can blink. And while doing that
the power that is given to that chip
needs to stay tightly regulated so that
the billions of transistors in there
which by the way are also tens of
thousands of times smaller than a human
hair. They all work properly. And in
order to do that power management
becomes the biggest challenge just at a
micro level. The chips that do that are
built as foundational chips in factories
like this Sherman Sherman factory. And I
think that that to me is
maybe the most exciting area to be when
it comes to foundational chips and power
right now.
>> Okay. So, so in AI data centers, the
chips built here are being used to
regulate power going to those bigger. So
the the chips here are part are part of
of the data center picture.
>> That's right. They don't the data center
picture doesn't exist without chips like
this. And what about on device then?
>> So on the device on the processor
itself. Yeah. So on the processor itself
there is um there is uh a lot of um of
computation a lot of um of additional
circuitry that's in there. But for the
that all is built on what we call the
leading edge nodes.
>> Okay.
>> And so all of the stuff that powers it
comes from the foundational chips and
then uh and then the processor takes it
from there.
>> Can I ask you so as the AI buildout has
exploded? I think that word doesn't even
do it justice.
>> No. Um has has the demand I mean
obviously if your components are being
used to regulate these data centers like
have you felt that?
>> Oh yeah.
>> How have you felt it?
>> I felt it in I would say one distinct
way um
the pace of innovation. So you you know
we go to these customers I personally go
to our customers we'll stand at a
whiteboard and we'll think of ideas um
focusing on what their problems are
because they don't necessarily know what
the solution is but they all know what
their problems are and a good idea comes
out. It could be from us. It could be
from them. It could be joint. The next
day they're ready for it. When can we
have samples? When can we have a proof
of concept? And I think it just goes to
show how big the challenge is when it
comes to power specifically. They're
hungry for solutions. They really need
the solutions. And if they don't get
them, it stalls their ability to build
out the infrastructure. And so I feel
that very real in terms of just the pace
that we have to move with them in order
to solve the problems that that um that
are coming. There's also, you know, the
kind of um the manufacturing side of it.
They have very high demand when it comes
to a couple of things. One is just how
much you can supply, how many units you
can ship to them. And the second is the
quality. Uh if you just imagine that one
unit on this board goes down, that rack
could go down and it's a very
missionritical application. And so
reliability, quality, those are very
very important to them. And that's where
owning your own manufacturing actually
becomes a huge advantage as well because
we control everything from the
technology to the number and the types
of products that we build to the quality
that comes out of the fabrication
facility.
>> Okay. So you're you're involved in power
in so many different ways. Yes. Um and
and here you really have this
opportunity to figure out how to power a
data center, right? The one that's just
come online.
>> Like you you've already given a little
bit of an indication of the undertaking
that it takes to do that.
>> Um I was listening to a podcast recently
where you know one of the leading tech
CEOs was saying that
>> he has the GPUs he needs but he can't
get them into warm shelves uh because
power is such a challenge. So can you
just describe the scope of the of the
issue here with power? How big is it? um
does do you anticipate that the
resources are going to be there to scale
up and and then drilling down a little
bit
>> how are you able to do it here?
>> Yeah. Uh absolutely I anticipate that
and um I think it's already happening.
So start at the macro level actually um
if you look at the global energy
consumption it's actually um increasing
at a rate higher than it ever has
historically in let's just even the last
year
>> right the the power I've been speaking
with some experts about this actually
demand for power was relatively stable
>> for many years coming into I think 2023
or 2024
>> and now you can see the increase in the
numbers which is like it's it's a big
increase it's not like a expon
exponential or hockey stick, but seeing
it has like all of a sudden the antennas
have gone up among people being like,
"Oh,
>> here we go.
>> Here we go." And you know, um another
supporting fact there is that um the
population rate in the world has not
been increasing at the same rate as it
used to.
>> So that means that each person is
consuming on average, if you normalize
it that way, more power than they were
10 years ago. And where is it going? So
it's not going to things that scale with
population size. It's going to
electronics. It's going to these
processors. It's going to electric
vehicles that need to be charged. It's
going to the entire infrastructure
around it. So, I think the fact that
power consumption is increasing at a
rate faster than the um the population
suggests that more and more electronics
are out there. They're consuming more
and more power and it will become a
limiting factor. So, I I think there's
probably two roles that we play in that
story. And I kind of think of it as like
a numerator and a denominator. On the
numerator you have how much energy can
we produce? How much energy is generated
at a grid level and there's lots of
opportunity there when it comes to
especially diversity of energy sources.
There's of course solar, there's wind,
there's all kinds of additional more
decentralized energy sources. There's
also batteries which are a massive part
of even the installed electricity base
in Texas. And the beauty of these
diverse energy sources is that they have
they they can be used at different
times. You can charge during the day,
you can charge a battery during the day,
and then at night when everybody's got
their ovens on, you can discharge that
battery. And so you get, I think, a
dynamic in the system that helps this
problem. All of those energy sources,
all of these things I talked about
require power management, power
processing from foundational chips. I
keep using that term. And so that's the
numerator. There's also a denominator,
which is that once we have the power,
how are we responsibly processing it? So
that power that comes from the grid can
safely power a processor with as little
power loss as possible. And that's where
high efficiency, high power density,
these are kind of terms we use in the
industry comes into pay into play. And
that's really built through the
foundation of these technologies. We
have better, faster, smaller devices
that go on chips like this or wafers
like this that consume less energy and
can um generate less heat. And so we
kind of play a part I think both in the
generation and then also how we process
and manage the energy that we get.
>> It's very interesting thinking about
this this power as a limiting factor.
>> Yep.
>> I don't I don't know if there's a real
solution yet for how enough of it is
generated for the demand and how that's
done sustainably. But
>> um it is interesting here you suggest
that
>> there is there's a a generation so like
generating a power solution
>> but also a technology solution here.
Absolutely. Yeah, I think that I mean
ultimately there's always going to be a
limit where the amount of power you
generate will become your limiting
factor. But I think like I said the
exciting thing there is that there's
such a diversity of energy sources
available that um can be used in
different ways and are almost I would
say required in different ways depending
on the application and depending on what
you need the power for. And they all
require power processing. They all
require sensors. they all require, you
know, um things to keep the the system
regulated properly and safe. And so
there's another reason why we see more
and more semiconductors in our lives now
than we did 10 years ago. And I don't
think it's hard to guess that 10 years
from now we're going to see even more.
>> Oh yeah. Um early stage research.
>> Yes,
>> it is important here. Uh, another thing
that I've learned recently, um, talk a
little bit about how, um, TI, talk a
little bit more about TI's process for
encouraging early stage research and
then how you take that and turn it into
applications.
>> Yeah, it's it's so important. Um, you
know, ultimately we're a technology
company and so we live and um, survive
based off of our technologies and I
think to me where I always start and
where I think you have to start is the
customer. You have to start with the
customer in mind. What problem do you
need to solve with them? And you know,
I've said it before, but you go and talk
to these customers, not all of them know
what they want, but they all know what
problem they have. And if you focus on
the problem, that's where the magic
happens. You can start illuminating a
problem and know that it's a real
problem. And you get a diverse set of
people, diverse set of skill sets and
different capabilities into a room to
think about that problem. And a lot of
magic starts to happen and ideas are
born. And I'd say that's the genesis of
a lot of early stage research even at at
TI. I think from there where where it
gets more challenging and I think even
more interesting is
usually where we think the idea is going
to end is not where it ends. It's
research. It's got um unknowns and we
have to learn and you know I say that 10
you know you want to see 10 feet in
front of you if you have a flashlight
that can illuminate 10 feet. If you want
to see 11 feet the only way to do it is
to take a step forward by one foot. And
I think that that's how we think about
research. You have to move. You have to
go. You have to try. And you're going to
learn. You're going to pivot. When you
pivot, you're going to maybe go in a
different direction. But the worst thing
you can do is is is stay still. So once
we have the problem, we encourage and we
I think facilitate
try it, see what happens, and learn. And
as long as we're persistent, good things
come out of it. So you you have a lab
here, Kilby Labs, that's meant to do
exactly that. So what is the process
that Kilby Labs uses?
>> So um Kilby Labs, as I mentioned, Jack
Kilby was our uh kind of the inventor of
the integrated circuit. So we're named
after Kilby Labs. Uh we're named after
Jack Kilby and um we do the advanced
research for TI. So I'm actually a part
of Kilby Labs and we're really chartered
with developing the high-risk, highly
disruptive technologies across all of
the areas that TI supports. So that's
our charter in kind of um in simple
terms and it spans all of these
different foundational technologies,
foundational chips that I've mentioned.
I think that the interesting thing, you
know, I've been in Kilby Labs for a long
time. We've learned a lot of uh a lot of
things over the years, even outside of
the technology. And um I think that, you
know, 10 or 12 years ago, maybe even 15
years ago,
we would have a great idea. We would
develop that idea. We would do it in
insulation inside of Kili Labs. we'd be
really proud of what we accomplished.
Um, we would demonstrate a proof of
concept and then we would throw it over
the fence to a product team that was
supposed to to take it to product and
they wouldn't do anything with it and it
would frustrate us. And
I think what we learned over the years
is that just as important as the idea is
also the model for how you develop these
ideas. So the model that we use right
now and I think it's actually quite
successful is we co-develop these ideas
with the businesses with the technology
teams that are going to be required or
that are are responsible for making the
product. So from day one we start with
the customer problem like I mentioned we
kick off a joint project they um they
being our our partners across TI invest
resources we invest resources we
co-develop this idea from the beginning
we go down that journey where we pivot
and we learn and we have to turn and
along the way everybody knows why we
made the decisions we made why did we go
this direction why did we not go that
direction and there's full and complete
ownership uh we do that until we
demonstrate the high-risk concepts so
the goal is to fail fast if we um if
we're successful, we have something
where the risk level of it looks no
different than any other product that TI
builds, any other technology that TI
builds. At that point, that same core
team moves full-time out of Kilby and
into the um to the productization teams
that are responsible for building the
products and driving it to high volume.
And so now there's complete ownership.
There's no baton passing. It's one team
that's from there from the or that's
there from the beginning all the way to
the end. We installed this model I would
say about 10 years ago and I think it's
really demonstrated a lot of benefits
when it comes to actually solving
customer problems moving as quickly as
we need to to develop the technologies
and ultimately doing um um doing what's
necessary to get these technologies off
of paper and into like high volume into
facilities like this. So for Kilby I
think that model has been a journey but
it's very I think important because
otherwise we just do research for
research sake but our goal is to do
research to solve customer problems.
>> Can you give me like one concrete
example of something that's come out of
the lab?
>> Yeah I can give you a lot actually but
uh where do I start? The first one okay
so uh not the first one but the first
one that comes to my mind actually we
announced this um a year ago um November
of last year. Um uh we call it um
magpack. So this is basically a
packaging technology that allows us to
integrate passives. So these passives
are are um things that surround our
semiconductor chips.
>> So it's like a packaging that's going to
appear in here.
>> It would appear inside of here that
would allow us to integrate that
functionality in our into our product in
a way that nobody else has ever been
able to do.
>> Okay.
>> And um the journey started about 10
years ago. Um, I hired somebody who is
an expert in magnetic material into the
team and I told him to tell us what to
do because we're not experts in magnetic
material. He is. And um, we spent I I
was naive I would say at the beginning
because I thought it was going to take
two years but it took a lot longer and
we we pivoted, we learned, we solved
problems and about a year ago we were
able to release that. I think there's
six or 10 products on the web that
started in Kilby Labs about 10 years
ago. Another example that started
actually even before that is auto radar.
So we have these um chips that actually
can sense um like it's a radar on your
car and it can sense um objects car um
you know um cars in other lanes and it's
basically one of the more key functions
in enabling self-driving that started in
Kilby Labs a number of years ago as
well. So we've had many success stories.
We actually uh we pride ourselves on
being a a sort of a um a um applied R&D
and so we want to see these things go to
product. We want to see them solve real
customer problems. I think we've got a
pretty good uh pretty good track record
there.
>> Couple more for you before we go.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> So TI has the entire supply chain.
>> Why is that important?
>> Yeah. There's a lot of reasons why. Um
you know I think that controlling your
own destiny is probably the simplest
answer. We control the technologies we
build this factory
>> mean design production
>> everything design production even the um
you know ti.com
everything from the initial technology
to the manufacturing of it to the
products that we build to how we engage
with our customers we own the entire
chain and so it gives us the opportunity
and the ability to control our own
destiny and that I think spans all of
those areas we can control our factories
We can control what technologies we
install in those factories. You know, I
mean this particular factory, it was
purpose-built ground up from the layout
of it, from the tools that we installed,
from the way that we run the factory to
support these analog foundational chips.
And really exciting, I think, in the
future is that we now also have the
opportunity to define next generation
technologies to take advantage of that.
And so to me, controlling the entire
supply chain is got technology elements
to it. It's got just quality elements to
it. It's got customer supply. It's got
all of the pieces that I think is very
unique for us. There's very few people
who are able to do this at scale the way
that we are. And I think it just gives
us the ability to control our destiny in
a way that um in a way that
differentiates us.
>> Last one. Um the technology world is
changing fast. Yes.
>> I think that's an understatement. I
can't even imagine like what's going to
come next year because it's just been
bananas. Um what are you most excited
about? Yeah, I am excited. You know,
maybe it's uh maybe it's just me, but I
think that I kind of mentioned the
semiconductor thing at the beginning
that 10 or 15 years ago, the average
person probably hadn't even heard the
word semiconductor. What's the most
exciting thing to me is that it's still
the whiteboard story. You go to
customers and they really want to
collaborate. They understand how vital
of a role our technology and our
products play in their future. And to
me, the pace of innovation increases.
The ability to solve problems jointly is
much better than it is if we just show
up with something that we thought was a
good idea. But if we can jointly develop
these ideas together, jointly um um
envision the technologies. And I see an
appetite for that more so than I've ever
seen. I mean, sorry, excuse me. This
year, I probably visited more customers
than I have in my entire career. And
it's because they want to talk about
this stuff. understand the importance of
it and the supply chain, the technology,
the criticality of semiconductors. So
that to me is what gets me really
excited because now technology solutions
are not a nice to have or something you
just sort of um you know just sort of
claim on paper. They have to have it.
They need it in order to solve their
problems. And it's just very real when
you go talk to them and you realize how
badly they want to work with us and how
badly they need the new technology.
>> Jeff, thanks so much. Great to speak
with you. Yeah, it was great. Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
>> Very interesting. Thanks again.
>> Yep.
>> All right, everybody. Thank you so much
for watching. We will see you next time.