"Efficiency can be misleading," says Bob Dobkin, co-founder and CTO of Linear Technology, "efficiency is only valid for comparing two identical regulators with the same input voltage, the same output voltage and the same output current."
Power loss tells the real story. "Efficiency is just a number," says Dobkin, "power loss
is a real world number which describes the circuit. It is more important than efficiency, it defines the need for a heat sink, describes sleep battery life and is immediately understandable."
"Some of our competitors compare devices on efficiency," adds Dobkin, "if they take a device with a high output voltage it makes it very easy to get high efficiency. Efficiency only applies if the output voltage and the output current are the same."
On his own definition of ‘high-performance analogue’, Dobkin sees only TI, ADI, Maxim and STMicroelectronics as rivals, stating: "There’s no company trying to do as much maximization in straight analogue as we do. We try to push for better performance all the time."
Asked what differentiates Linear Tech from its competition, Dobkin replies: "It starts from the way we run our company. The engineering group talks to customers and decides what products we should make. We don’t have a group of marketing people that pick the products for us."
"Sometimes we’ll see something the customer doesn’t even think about," says Dobkin, "the customer doesn’t know he needs it, but we think it’s a good idea for a new product. We’re very proud of having great ICs – that goes right across the whole company. We’re here to serve the customer and we’re going to do it in the best way possible."
Dobkin started Linear Technology with Bob Widlar and Bob Swanson 30 years ago last month.
Dobkin is in anyone’s list of the top ten circuit designers of all time. He developed the first three-terminal adjustable voltage regulator, and the first bipolar low-dropout regulator.Throughout its 30 years, Linear Tech has stuck rigidly to the view that a circuit must add value. So it has avoided chasing commodity markets for low margin growth.
Consequently, Linear has the highest margins in the industry, while still pulling annual revenues of over $1.5bn in its latest fiscal year.
