Maine’s state slogan was changed from “Vacationland” to "The Way Life Should Be.” With our quaint little towns, bustling waterfront, state parks, that makes sense.....not so fast, noted our Club President Bowen as the club convened at the Texas Instruments facility in South Portland. After this presentation and tour, we might want to say “Maine Ain’t So Simple!” Indeed, it's not.
Our host and presenter Chris Joyce from Texas Instruments (TI), gave us an overview of the magnitude to which the company is engaged.
Start with the simple numbers: TI produces over 100,000 products to over 100,000 customers worldwide. The company is headquartered in Dallas, TX, and has operations in 35 countries, with 30,000 employees.
TI designs, manufactures, tests, and sells semi-conductor chips, specifically analog and embedded processing power chips. This differs from digital chips, that are all 0’s and 1’s. Analog chips process and convert “real world” signals—sound, temperature, electricity—into the 1’s and 0’s of the digital world.
These are the chips that are in your car – monitoring its functions and giving you feedback. These are the chips in your basic home appliances....“white goods” like stoves, refrigerators, washers and dryers; ATM machines; and medical devices. Did we mention cell phones? Between applications in industrial, robotics, communications, health/fitness, and renewable energy/smart grids, we rely on multiple analog chips every day.
The South Portland plant, aka MFAB, is a 75,000 square-foot wafer fabrication facility. A wafer, 8 inches in diameter, and about 1/8 inch thick has been embedded and layered with complex electrical circuits. The description was a little complicated, but essentially these customized wafers are shipped to worldwide customers and are used in the creation of the analog chips. What can a chip do these days? One the size of your thumb has 100,000,000 transistors, and can switch at a billion cycles per second. Think fast.
The name of the game is power. The goal is to reduce the amount of power it takes to run the chips, which in turn means longer battery life, or a more environmentally friendly end product.
There was an interesting weaving of National, and the Fairchild plant still located right next door. Fairchild began in 1962, was acquired by National in 1989. In 1996, the South Portland fabrication plant was built, next to the location that abutted the former Fairchild facility.Then in 1997, executives from National put together the funding to buy a reconstituted Fairchild. The two companies are completely separate, though there are many shared resources including suppliers and deliveries. Texas Instruments purchased National Semiconductor in 2011, and with it the South Portland location. Since that time, they have invested $60 million dollars into the facility.
Many of us associated Texas Instruments with making those really detailed hand-held calculators back in the 70’s. In fact, TI has been around since the 1930’s, and had a large role in oil exploration. By the 40’s, the company was heavily engaged in national defense systems. The 50’s brought integrated circuits, which started to reduce the size of appliances and early computers, and by the 70’s was fully engaged in processors. For the last 15 years, the concentration has been on analog and embedded processors, and is currently the third largest manufacturer in the world, behind Intel and Samsung. TI reported revenues of over 13 billion dollars last year.
TI fosters a collaborative atmosphere with its employees. Ideas are freely shared between the plants, with managers frequently visiting other facilities to learn about new ways to improve efficiencies. The company is also very involved, at both the corporate and local levels, with community programs. On the tour we saw the aftermath of a recently completed local event that raised $66k for the United Way.
TI is also very active in partnerships with the schools of Maine. Scholarship programs and internships are readily used by students from USM, SMCC, and UMaine. Right now there are approximately 35 UMaine alum, 35 USM alum, and many SMCC grads who work at the South Portland facility.
The plant runs 24/7, and has been at 100% utilization since 2012.
(Photo: Past President Kris Rosado, Chris Joyce, Texas Instruments and President Bowen Depke)
(Dick Hall - tour reporter)
After the regular meeting, several groups of members took a tour of the Texas Instruments (TI) facilities. We started out by having our citizenship verified and picking up visitor badges, which was additional security beyond needing photo IDs.
The tour took us to the third floor of the Maine Fab manufacturing building. As we crossed a walking bridge, we were given a view of TI, as well as the Fairchild facility next door. Across the bridge, we did a window tour where the equipment was explained... about the wet benches where chemical etching and cleaning occurs. Then the photolithography process was explained, pointing out that each of the dozen photo tools cost 2-3 million dollars. Several questions came from the group and it seemed clear that most were getting a glimpse of another world. The light is yellow to protect the photo process; everyone is dressed in clean room "bunny suits." Pods containing the wafers were traversing from station to station in an overhead transfer system. Technicians were doing what appeared to be very low skilled repetitive jobs, but it was explained how highly trained they all were to ensure the job was done accurately and correctly. Some eyes were getting a little glazed over when the use of gases in the thin films process were explained.
After the Fab tour, we visited the design center for a look at how designers take ideas, create circuit designs, then proto-type the semiconductor in the Fab. We saw a .1 x .1 inch device photo, magnified 500x to be able see the circuit lines. We saw several 200 mm (8 inch) wafers with anywhere from 100 to 5000 devices on the wafer.
I think everyone on the tour was very impressed.
.jpg)
The Long Creek Youth Development Center (LCYDC), 675 Westbrook Street, South Portland, is committed to creating and providing opportunity for success through personal growth in a safe and secure environment.
Mike Fortunato then regaled us with a history lesson on what was happening in 1937-1938. 
Dick Hall then gave a thorough presentation about "Rotary Foundation Basics." He included the history, guiding principles and 'Areas of Focus.' Dick’s review of the ways to donate, and the selection of funds helped explain how it all works. For more information, click on: 
.JPG)
.JPG)