Since Alex began working at TI 23 years ago, he’s been looking for unique and more efficient solutions to problems.

According to Alex, innovation means understanding the customers’ needs and “peeling away the onion” to resolve core issues or bottlenecks, optimize the system, and deliver faster or less costly processes or a product with higher performance. For example, when he recently worked on a trigonometric math unit, Alex figured out how to do trigonometric operations faster and more cost effectively. CPU operations that took 15-100 cycles now take 3-4 cycles, delivering faster performance. A faster system enables TI’s customers to control more motors on one chip or gives them the flexibility to choose a lower cost, lower performance chip without decreasing the efficiency of the motor control.

Alex believes we have to make bold choices to help our customers differentiate their products. He is particularly excited about the endless opportunities to improve lives with renewable energy, and he is fascinated by the merging of different technologies, such as motor control and communication. Much like the smart phone, which now includes a camera, calculator and phone all in one, Alex sees motor control adding wireless feedback information, enabling such things as tracking power consumption in a motor.