International Prize - Trophies for new arrivals Côte d’Azur 2011 : MAXIM

Interview with Paolo Cusinato, Design Director of MAXIM Sophia-Antipolis design center

Maxim Integrated Products is a publicly traded company that designs, manufactures, and sells high-performance semiconductor products. The Company was founded over 25 years ago with the mission to deliver innovative analog and mixed-signal engineering solutions that add value to its customers' products. To date, it has developed over 6,500 products serving the industrial, communications, consumer, and computing markets.

 

Maxim reported revenue of approximately $2.0 billion for fiscal 2010. A Fortune 1000 company, Maxim is included in the Nasdaq 100, the Russell 1000, and the MSCI USA indices.

 

1-      Can you describe your business in a few words? How does your company’s offer differ from that of its competitors?

Maxim Integrated Products is one of the major players in the semiconductors market, with a particular focus on analog and mixed-signal domains: we have a very wide products portfolio (more than 6500 subdivided in 28 categories). I think that a great differentiator of our company is that we make of innovation a key point for our success (as clearly claimed in Maxim’s logo), despite of the reduced development times due to the time-to-market. Innovation is really part of Maxim’s culture and one of the main reasons of its success: all its designers are pushed to continuously improve circuits and methodologies.

 

 

2 - Why have you based yourselves in Sophia Antipolis? What aspects of the region were determining factors in your decision to develop your operation here?

Sophia-Antipolis is a very attractive region for any semiconductor company, for several reasons. The first one is that in the technology park of Sophia-Antipolis there is a solid tradition of analog and digital design, which is due to the presence of other big companies working in the same or similar markets, like Texas Instruments, Intel, STM and others. The second reason is linked to presence in the technology park of the Polytech'Nice-Sophia and other important schools.

That will guarantee our future growth since the region will always offer both experienced design engineers and you talents to hire.

 

3 - How did Team Côte d’Azur help you in setting up your office?

Team Côte d’Azur played an important role, especially in the early phases of the project: M. Chapperon provided a detailed picture to Maxim’s management about the advantages of creating a design center in the technology park of Sophia-Antipolis and then supported me and my staff in preparing all the documentation for the PAT.

 

4 - How does your company fit into the region’s “mobility” ecosystem? Do you envisage partnerships or research projects with engineering schools or research centres based in the region, particularly within the competitiveness clusters (SCS cluster for example)?

As I said before, innovation is a key world in Maxim’s culture. Hence, we will look for sure for partnerships with Universities in the region and not only. Every year Maxim Sophia-Antipolis will propose stages with the double goal to develop innovative subjects for the coming markets and attract the best young talents to secure our future. In the next future, as soon as we will have developed the first devices, we plan also to participate with papers and tutorials to SAME Conference.

 

5 -  What skills or expertise are you looking for in the region? Are you planning to recruit? How many people will you employ here?

Maxim Sophia-Antipolis is part of the HandHeld Power group of Maxim Integrated Products. The goal of our design center will be to develop highly-complex power management ICs and innovative IPs mainly for the Smart-phones market. Hence the profiles we are looking for are mainly design engineers with a solid background in power management. The plan for the next two years is to grow up to at least 20-25 people, then our long-term growth will depend on semiconductor market trends and on our ability to attract excellent candidates, capable to improve the overall skills of our team. 

 

6 - What are your latest or forthcoming innovations? What are your prospects for growth and development?

We already established collaborations with other Maxim’s design centers, which helped us during the start-up phase in getting familiar with the new methodologies and technologies; we are now developing our first device, which will be out very soon. Concerning the prospects for growth, as I said before, the plan for the next two years is to grow up to at least 20-25 people (most of them, engineers). The long-term growth will then depend on semiconductor market trends and on our ability to attract excellent candidates.

 

 

Picture: Paolo Cusinato, Design Director of MAXIM Sophia-Antipolis design center / Eric Ciotti, Chairman of the Alpes-Maritimes Departmental Council

En savoir plus : www.maxim-ic.com