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History of Freescale Semiconductor Canada Ltd
 
Innovation.
Freescale in Canada was one of the first international locations for Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS). Established in 1965, the facility housed sales, customer service, order entry, and a warehouse. Canada was one of the first non-US locations of SPS to have a warehouse that served local customers. SPS in Canada was also the beta site for SPS’s WACCIMS order processing systems.

Expansion continued in Canada throughout the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s by opening offices in Montreal and Ottawa in 1966, Vancouver in 1977, Winnipeg in 1982 and Calgary in 1990.

SPS in Canada continued to innovate throughout those years by deploying one of the first Field Application Engineers and technical training organizations in the Americas. From a technology perspective we opened our ASIC design center in 1988. By partnering with our customers we developed many of the innovative products that were sold throughout SPS’s history. Some of those products included SOT-23 Discrete Smoke and CO Detector Components, CMOS Remote Control Devices, ISDN U&T Interfaces, Application Specific Fast Static Rams, CMOS Filter Codecs, SSOVP (Solid State Over Voltage Protection Devices), RISC 88K, Several members of the 68302, 360, 860 Netcomm portfolio and numerous custom products.

By taking advantage of the favorable R&D environment in Canada, operations in Canada were instrumental in the development of DSP56000 Communications/Audio Product and Software Development. Additionally, V.90 and Fax over IP software was developed from 1999-2002. Today Freescale Canada operations include a software development team that is focused on delivering PowerQuicc microcode, silicon verification and performance benchmarks.

In 1988 the highly successful launch of Imaginology occurred in Toronto, which proved a significant event that demonstrated the broad portfolio of products and solutions we could offer our customers.

The Toronto Sales Team was selected a finalist in the 1991 Global TCS, Total Customer Satisfaction, event held in Phoenix. The team, which demonstrated an effective process in capturing marketing events, finished in the top 5 of the competitive field.

In 1999 Motorola Semiconductor Products acquired Metrowerks, a Canadian based company that provided us with the Integrated Development Environment needed to compete in the embedded processing world.


Freescale in Canada Today:
 
Freescale in Canada today consists of sales, applications support, marketing, business management/support, Design and software development, and IT support, serving a broad array of customers from networking to automotive to consumer and industrial.

Recently acquired Seaway Networks, a privately-held, semiconductor company offering advanced content-processing solutions for next-generation networking equipment aligns Seaway's content-processing expertise, technology and products with Freescale's communications processor roadmap and PowerQUICC(tm) processor portfolio, enhancing technology leadership and momentum in the networking equipment market.

Based in Ottawa, Canada, Seaway's strong technical team and intellectual property assets complement and add value to dataplane processing capabilities. Seaway's innovative hardware acceleration technologies leverage high-performance PowerPC® processors, which complement and further reinforce Freescale’s commitment to the PowerPC architecture.


Customers and Partners
 
The key to Freescale’s success over the years has been a legacy of strong customer and partner intimacy. In 1984 Future Electronics, a Canadian company, was authorized as a global distributor. Today Future Electronics is one of Freescale’s largest global distributors of embedded processors and connectivity solutions.

Some of the customers that helped shape our history are:

  • Northern Electric – now known as Nortel Networks.
  • GTE Fleetwood Div (One of two last manufacturers of Television sets in Canada)
  • GTE Automatic Electric Brockville (manufacturer of Telecom Switches Class 5)
  • Electrohome Waterloo (The other TV manufacturer)
  • Hermes Electronics (Sonobuoys)
  • Nautical Electronics
  • Gandalf Technologies
  • Central Dynamics Corp
  • Canadian Marconi
  • AES Data (1st Word Processor Workstations)
  • RCA (Ste Anne De Bellevue)
  • Comterm Ltd
  • Matrox
  • Yorkville Sound
  • Beltronics (early radar detectors)
  • Bruce Instruments (One of the 1st TV cable converters)
  • CDC (Computing Devices of Canada)
  • Kraus Industries (one of the 1st digital gas pumps)
  • American Sensors – CO and smoke Detectors
  • Philco – car radios
  • Ford – which became Visteon.

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