The design of a position observer for the interior permanent magnet
synchronous motor is a challenging problem that, in spite of many research
efforts, remained open for a long time. In this paper we present the first
globally exponentially convergent solution to it, assuming that the saliency is
not too large. As expected in all observer tasks, a persistency of excitation
condition is imposed. Conditions on the operation of the motor, under which it
is verified, are given. In particular, it is shown that at rotor
standstill---when the system is not observable---it is possible to inject a
probing signal to enforce the persistent excitation condition. {The high
performance of the proposed observer, in standstill and high speed regions, is
verified by extensive series of test-runs on an experimental setup
