We Are NXP | Hubert Bode: A Man of Vision

Hubert Bode has been with NXP for 25 years, and quite by coincidence, during his silver anniversary he was named an NXP Fellow and a Master Inventor. With 32 patents in 25 patent families, you might think Hubert would be happy to rest on his laurels. However, he has no intention of stopping because he is a man of vision, always looking beyond the next mountaintop for new heights to climb. Besides, he has his loving family to keep his feet firmly planted on the ground.

How Does It Feel to Be Named an NXP Fellow and a Master Inventor?

It’s all a bit overwhelming, particularly as it happened in the same year as my twenty fifth anniversary at NXP.

What a Nice Way to Celebrate! How Important Is Recognition to You and Your Colleagues?

It’s not so important to me personally, but this kind of recognition dials up visibility, which helps the local team to gain more weight. Finally, every engineer wants to have an impact and leave a footprint.

How Did Your Family Respond to the News of You Becoming a Master Inventor?

They use it to make fun of me.

I Guess Patented Inventions Are Kind of Like Your Children, but If You Had to Name Favorites, Which Would They Be?

There are some patents that deal with protection against current injection in bulk CMOS based UHV technology. Together with the device engineering team, I came up with special transistors for that purpose. These transistors enabled us to build the S12ZVM128 successfully. This is a microcontroller driving BLDC motors for all types of pumps and fans in a car up to 1.5 kW motor power. S12ZVM128 is extremely successful in the marketplace.

Are There Everyday Products We Can Point at and Say “That’s Possible Because of Hubert?”

I guess our MagniV family of MCUs. These MCUs integrate S12Z microcontrollers with NVM and analog stuff, which is suitable to be connected directly to the car battery harness. My patented contributions to these devices are for the non-volatile memory. The current injection protection I mentioned earlier, as well as some structures to improve the gun stress ESD performance of our CAN/LIN physical layers, which are also integrated on these MCUs.

What Is Your Particular Expertise?

I have been honored to work on various topics in the past, which has enabled me to broaden my expertise around mainly the analog side of microcontrollers for automotive applications. This spans from architecture, mainly for power supplies, via memory, data converter, UHV and ESD/EMC topics with some process technology background.

What Motivates You Most About Your Work?

Getting down to the nitty-gritty to ensure that our products are easy to design in and very reliable.

Are There Any People Who Have Inspired You in Your Career?

In my career I have come across so many brilliant people in the company that they are too numerous to name. There is so much to learn from them. As a fun fact I used to tell the story about a colleague of mine during his second day at the company. He had previously worked at two of our competitors. We joined a meeting, which went bad after 15 minutes and he just said: “It’s the same everywhere.” This really helps me a lot when things don’t go as hoped.

The We Are NXP program embodies the people, spirit and values of NXP, which is committed to advancing the world by making it safer and more connected. We pursue our ambitions through technological innovations designed to enhance the quality of life of our employees, our communities and the world at large, all the while ensuring sustainability and minimizing our impact on the environment. Read more here.