Manar believes there's one simple key to maintaining technology's inexorable advance: Hire people who really love what they're doing.

As he obviously does. Currently immersed in developing a new generation of analog-to-digital converters that should be integral components in cloud computing, he's also interested in creating extremely low power data converters and automated analog design tools.

Analog design automation isn't even part of his official portfolio of projects, but he finds time here and there to work on it because a) it could lead to serious competitive advantages and b) he thinks the idea itself is really cool.

There's regularly downtime in the design cycle, of course, and that's a great opportunity to explore ideas that could have a big payoff. He's made a point of budgeting that time, in fact, ever since grad school.

Lately he's also been struck by a 1986 lecture by Richard Hamming. The veteran Bell Labs scientist emphasized the importance of individuals who are driven to follow through on their ideas, and Manar believes those are the people the semiconductor industry needs to cultivate. Because when you have people who are constantly thinking about interesting problems, that's when the magic happens.

So he thinks the biggest challenge in the industry is finding the right people – and nurturing college students to love what TI does so that they become part of the thread of innovation.

He'd like to someday spend time traveling the world and writing about his travels, he says, but he knows that eventually he'd return to a scientific or mathematical career. He comes from an engineering background, and that's been part of his life for so long that he's sure he'd gravitate back to it.