Bulletins of an IP acquisition deal and a considerable funding spherical for an analog IP reuse specialist final week underscore the essential significance of semiconductor IP at a time when extra performance is built-in right into a single chip. Excessive-quality IP reduces danger and allows chip designers to hurry time-to-market.
On July 20, Thalia, an analog IP reuse specialist, introduced it has secured a $2.7 million funding for its subsequent part of development. Thalia claims that its confirmed IP-reuse resolution allows system-on-chip (SoC) builders to shortly and effectively migrate present IP designs into the sub-20-nm nodes.
Determine 1 Thalia’s AMALIA IP platform claims to supply value and time effectivity advantages in migrating SoC designs to new wafer fabs and course of nodes.
The UK-based IP provider additionally claims that its AMALIA platform has been validated on over 50 IPs, starting from RF to baseband and energy administration IC (PMIC) to PLL and analog-to-digital converter (ADC). And lots of of those IPs are already in industrial use.
On the identical day, Cadence Design Programs introduced that it’s buying PHY IP property of Rambus. That encompasses SerDes and reminiscence interface PHY IPs, essential in synthetic intelligence (AI), CPU architectures, knowledge middle and hyperscale purposes, and networking designs. Moreover, Cadence will pay money for skilled PHY engineering groups in the US, India, and Canada.
Alternatively, Rambus will retain its digital IP enterprise, together with reminiscence and interface controllers and safety IP. In keeping with Sean Fan, senior VP and chief working officer at Rambus, the corporate will enhance its deal with AI and knowledge middle markets, that are driving ever-increasing demand for reminiscence and safety. “Rambus will broaden the roadmap of novel reminiscence options to help the continued evolution of the info middle and AI.”
Determine 2 Cadence is steadily rising its IP choices throughout vertical markets.
Right here, it’s value mentioning comparable IP acquisitions that Cadence’s archrival Synopsys made a few years in the past. In early 2020, Synopsys acquired sure IP property of Invecas to broaden its DesignWare IP portfolio. That included logic library, common goal I/O, embedded reminiscence, interface, and analog IP. And Invecas retained its HDMI IP and ASIC design options companies.
A few months earlier, Synopsys bolstered the DesignWare IP portfolio for embedded reminiscence by buying eSilicon’s ternary content material addressable reminiscence (TCAM) expertise and multi-port reminiscence compilers in addition to its interface IP portfolio with high-bandwidth interface (HBI) IP. The transfer was aimed to higher serve design necessities in rising markets resembling AI and cloud computing.
That clearly exhibits IP constructing blocks are steadily gaining prominence within the semiconductor design and manufacturing worth chain. Particularly when more and more complicated SoCs require a broad vary of IPs to deal with stringent efficiency, energy, and space necessities of superior purposes. Semiconductor design expertise is one other issue driving these acquisitions.
As Ashwin Kumaraswarmy of Mercia Ventures places it, semiconductor chip design is a guide and painstaking course of and expert engineering groups are uncommon. Mercia Ventures is a serious investor in Thalia.
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