How to Prepare for Texas Instruments Analog Profile

Texas Instruments has been making progress possible for decades. TI is a global semiconductor company that designs, manufactures, tests, and sells analog and embedded processing chips. Their approximately 80,000 products help over 100,000 customers efficiently manage power, accurately sense and transmit data and provide the core control or processing in their designs, going into markets such as industrial, automotive, personal electronics, communications equipment, and enterprise systems. Their passion to create a better world by making electronics more affordable through semiconductors is alive today as each generation of innovation builds upon the last to make our technology smaller, more efficient, more reliable, and more affordable – opening new markets and making it possible for semiconductors to go into electronics everywhere. They think of this as Engineering Progress. It’s what they do and has been doing for decades.

TI also has a Digital domain, but in this blog, we shall discuss mainly the Analog domain and the preparation strategy to crack it. If you love Analog, Microelectronics, Devices then TI is one of the best places to work and learn. TI has an awesome work culture.

Recruitment Procedure

TI has a fixed procedure for the job as well as for the internship.

Online test: It consists of 20 aptitude questions in 20 minutes and 20 technical questions (depending upon profile) in 30 minutes.
Technical interview: 1/2 rounds of Pure Technical interview. The interview will be more interactive. They will fully cooperate with you and will give you hints if you are stuck at some point.
Human Resource - HR interview: (General question) about yourself, why not Higher Studies? Why TI? What are your strengths and weakness?

You are almost selected if you have reached till HR round unless you screw up big time.

TI Job Profiles

Let's have a look on the job profiles offered in TI for Analog Domain. In Analog, you will work in:

Audio
Energy automation
Electronic point of service
Industrial automation
Imaging
High speed
Interface
Clocking
Medical
High volume linear
Storage
Power supply
Linear power
Battery management

How to prepare for the Online Test & Technical Interview for internship/ job in TI?

First let's hear from them 👇

1. PYQs

2. Basic Network Theory (Most Important)

Basics of R,L, C
Step (voltage/current) response of 1st order RC/RL circuits (intuition method) [They keep on adding the components trying to make it complicated]
Pulse (voltage/current) response of 1st order RC/RL circuits (intuition method)

* T >>RC

* T <<RC

Finding pole/zero by inspection and draw bode plot (intuition method)
Charge sharing between capacitors (with and without initial condition)
Identification of type of Filters (LPF/HPF/BPF/BSF/APF)

3. Basic Analog Circuit

Regulators
Barkhausen Condition & Positive feedback circuits (Oscillators, Multivibrators)
Standard OPAMP circuits

* Inverting Amplifier
* Non-inverting Amplifier
* Adder
* Subtractor

* Differentiator
* Integrator

Sign of input terminals of an OPAMP
Analysis of OPAMP circuits with different non-idealities

* finite open-loop gain

* finite slew rate
* finite BW
* finite input & output resistance
* finite input-referred offset voltage

Identification of Positive and Negative feedback
Circuits with multiple feedbacks and which feedback is dominant

4. Control System

Bode plot (relation between dc gain, gain at infinite frequency, and number of pole-zero)
Stability (Gain Margin, Phase Margin, Gain crossover frequency, Phase crossover frequency)

5. Microelectronic Circuit

Basic working principle, I-V characteristics and various region of operation of diode, BJT, MOSFET
Gain of different MOSFET(or BJT) based amplifiers (intuition method without small signal model)

* CS
* CG
* CD
* Cascade
* Cascode

Looking in impedance at any node of a MOS/BJT circuit (intuitively without small signal model)
Different architectures of current mirrors and headroom of each transistor
Differential amplifier with passive and active load, Differential gain and Common-mode gain, CMRR
Internal transistor-level circuit of an OTA (Operational Transconductance Amplifier)
Different architectures of OTA and pole zeroes

* Simple 5T OTA (DC Gain, Pole-zero, UGB, PM, ICMR, Output swing, PSRR)
* Telescopic
* Folded Cascode
* Regulated Cascode

2 stages OTA with Miller compensation and dominant pole
Noise and Mismatch (current mirror and diff pair) analysis

7. Signals & Systems (Not that important)

Basics of LTI systems
Convolution
Frequency domain- CT, DT, DTFT, DFT

8. Switch Capacitor circuits with two non-overlapping clocks

Where to study from? What are the available resources?

1. Online Video Lectures:

Chembiyan T Passive Devices (Intuitive analysis of RC, RL, LC, RLC circuits)
Chembiyan T Active Devices (Intuitive analysis of MOSFET circuits)
Nagendra Krishnapura Basic Electrical Circuits (Strong fundamentals)
Nagendra Krishnapura Analog Circuits (Strong fundamentals)
Nagendra Krishnapura Analog IC Design (Advanced)
Razavi 1 Lectures (Beginners)
Razavi 2 Lectures (Beginners)

2. Online Blog:

Analog Intuition (GATE & VLSI) (Intuitive Analysis)
Gate Addicted Facebook Page (PYQs of TI)

3. TI Official PPT:

Texas Instruments - Interview Preparation Tips ; Profile – Analog Engineer

4. Books:

Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits by Grey & Meyer (One of the best books in Analog)
Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits by Behzad Razavi (For problem-solving)
Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits by Behzad Razavi - Solution Manual (To check with the solutions)

Important: We tried to make this blog very compact and neat. If you want to pursue a career in the analog industry, you must go through the above material. If you find any material which is not listed here and that might help readers, please let us know. Do comment and for further queries, you can mail us at rlcanalog@gmail.com.

If you have any doubt, let me know in the comment section. For other tutorials check INDEX.

For further updates follow my blog (rlcanalog.blogspot.com).

For Better reach, Search "Analog Intuition Blog" on google.

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INTERVIEW QUESTIONS PART-2

In the last post, I discussed my interview experience. In this post, I shall take forward that discussion.

The interviewers asked some basic questions on network theory and op-amp which mostly asked to a 3rd year BTech. student, applying for the internship.
Let's have an insightful discussion.

Q4)

Solution:

This is a very basic question. It's asked to test your understanding of network theory. Immediately one should identify the fact that current through the 1K resistor is zero. Why so? Let me help you...

Here the circuit is partitioned into two parts. If circuit A provides a Current to circuit B through the 1K bridge resistor, there must be a path to accommodate the current from circuit B to A also. Due to the unavailability of a path to return the current, current through the bridge resistor is zero. Now the rest is easy.

So \[V{x}= 0+2+0-3=-1V\]

Trick: When you try to find out the potential of any node from another node, the voltage will be added if you traverse from '-' to '+'.

Q5)

Solution:

This is a special circuit. For a particular condition, it acts as a differential amplifier with an infinite common-mode rejection ratio.

At first, let me share the way I solved in the interview. Later on, I will give a complete overview of the circuit.

For an ideal op-amp, both the input nodes are virtually shorted. Due to infinite input resistance, op-amp allows no current at the input.

Consider

\[V^{+}=V^{-}=V_{A}\]

Assume the current direction through the resistor connected in between the positive terminal and the ground is downward. The direction of current through other resistor are shown accordingly. The voltage drop across the resistors is the same for all the resistors.

\[V^{-}=V^{+}+V_{A}+1+V_{A}\]

\[=>V_{A}=-0.5=V^{-}\]

now,

\[=>V{out}=V^{-}+V_{A}=-0.5-0.5=-1\]

After that interviewers asked whether my assumption for the direction of the current is correct or not? In reply, I said no.

Now come to the specialty of the circuit.
Take the below circuit

If we apply the superposition theorem to solve this circuit. First V2=0.

\(V^{+}=0=V^{-}\)

Applying inverting amplier gain formula

\[V_{out,V1}=-\frac{R_{2}}{R_{1}} \times V_{1}\]

Consider V1=0

Applying non-inverting gain formula

\[ V_{out,V2}=\frac{R_{4}}{R_{3}+R_{4}}\times (1+ \frac{R_{2}}{R_{1}}) \times V_{2}\]

Consider the condition R2/R1 = R4/R3

\[V_{out,V2}=\frac{R_{2}}{R_{1}} \times V_{2}\]

For the above condition

\[ V_{out}=V_{out,V1}+V_{out,V2}=\frac{R_{2}}{R_{1}} \times (V_{2}-V_{1})\]

In our case (V2-V1)= -1V so, Vout = -1V

Previous Page Index

If you have any doubt, let me know in the comment section. For other tutorials check INDEX. For further updates follow my blog (rlcanalog.blogspot.com). The blog is specially made for GATE and VLSI aspirants (ANALOG INTUITION ( GATE & VLSI)).

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