100 Startups
Worth Watching

Table of Contents
Foreword

4

Silicon 100:
The Class of 20206
Peak Machine Learning —A Peek Over the Horizon

6

Geographic Mapping

14

EE Times Lists 100 Emerging
Companies to Watch
16

Startups in
the Spotlight52

Weebit Nano Ltd. — Optimistic
Weebit Nano Closer to ReRAM
Commercialization

65

Aledia SA — Aledia Eyes NextGeneration Display Panels

67

SiLC Technologies Inc. — FMCW
LiDAR Chips Take Machine Vision
to 4D and Beyond

69

Spark Microsystems
International Inc. — Spark
Microsystems Brings Next-Gen, ‘No
Compromise’ Wireless to Designers

72

Jeeva Wireless Inc. — UbiquitousBattery-Free Wireless Connectivity
Serves the Internet of Everything

75

Syntiant Corp. — Always-On
Voice Processing Brings Hands-Free
Functionality to the Forefront

Ten Silicon 100 Companies
Recommended for Deeper
Analysis

52

Agile Analog Ltd. — Changing
the Analog IP Dynamic

56

Nuvia Inc. — Nuvia: Reimagining
Silicon Design for the Data Center

58

China's Fabless Chip Companies
Live in a Vibrant Ecosystem 80

60

Honorees of the 2020 China IC
Design Awards
84

UltraSense Systems Inc. —Ultrasound Sensor Turns Any Surface
Into a Touch Button

PsiQuantum Corp. — PsiQuantum
Hiring All-Hands-on-Deck Team to Build
the First Useful Quantum Computer
63

China Fablessto Watch7780

Foreword
The global semiconductor market is famous — perhaps notorious — for its cycles of explosive growthand ferocious downturns. Analysts annually place their bets on one sure thing: Except in the oddest
years and under the most exceptional of circumstances, unit shipments will increase year over year.
Beyond that, few forecasters can lay claim to regularly and accurately predicting the market’s untamed
pricing swings or determining the right balance of supply and demand to end the notorious inventory
imbalances that have decimated fortunes in segments such as DRAM.
For all its vagaries, however, the semiconductor sector commands the attention of governments, entrepreneurs, investors, engineers, and management gurus alike. That’s because the chip industry has
expanded from its zero-dollar base mere decades ago to assume a transformative role in most sectorsof the economy.
The sheer number of semiconductor startups that emerge to address every evolving market need orcoalesce around each promising technology is a testament to the importance, influence, and allure ofthis industry. In a sense, based on the ubiquitous presence of electronics, chipmakers may be the mostinvasive species with which other en-

Silicon 100 is aplace to identify thebuilding blocks for
future wonders.

terprises must partner, compete, orat least contend for profit, growth,and survival.
The numbers hint at what lies ahead.
The World Semiconductor Trade
Statistics (WSTS) first reported global chip sales in 1986 and estimatedthat year’s market at $26 billion. Ten

years later, WSTS reported that worldwide semiconductor sales had ballooned to $144 billion. The market crossed $200 billion for the first time in 2000, surging to $204 billion, a 37% increase over 1999’s$149 billion.
This June, WSTS projected the market would expand at a much slower rate in 2020, up just 3% to $426
billion. But it predicted that the industry would continue an upward trajectory that would push the global market to a record $452 billion in 2021.
Intel Corp., the world’s biggest chipmaker by revenue, reported $72 billion in sales for 2019 and is projected to top $75 billion this year. Other big players include No. 2 global vendor Samsung ($52 billion,4

versus $74 billion the prior year), Qualcomm (fiscal 2019 sales of $24 billion), and Broadcom ($22.6
billion in sales in fiscal 2019).
The big players have an outsized role in the industry, but their statistics tell only part of the story. Thisis a market of startups. Hundreds of startups have made enormous contributions to the industry since
its inception. They have energized specific sectors and sparked innovations that have advanced systems
companies’ product developments in the various enterprise and consumer market segments.
For 16 years, contributing writer Peter Clarke’s Silicon 60 — now expanded, in its 20th iteration, into
the Silicon 100 — has celebrated another hallmark of the chip industry: the daring innovators, fervent
visionaries, serial investors, and barrier-busting men and women who have collectively given the world
inventions that were unimaginable barely 100 years ago. In this industry, the limits of innovation are
unknown by engineers who thrive on the belief that whatever can be invented will eventually show up ina patent filing, preferably theirs.
This is what the Silicon 100 is all about — a place to identify the building blocks for future wonders. The
2021 list will change somewhat from this year’s lineup, as will all the iterations to come. But the criteria
used by Clarke to determine the companies that make his list will lead to the identification and discovery
of more wonders of the semiconductor world.
Speaking of wonders, AspenCore’s reach extends around the globe, including China. Currently the world’s
biggest market for semiconductors, China is chasing a bigger role as a supplier of chips to the global
electronics industry. For now, that title belongs to the United States, which in 2018 produced 45% of
semiconductors manufactured globally, down from more than 50% in the 1980s. To gain market share,
Chinese companies have mainly taken the fabless route. AspenCore Asia tracks China’s fabless semiconductor companies annually. This year, for the first time, we are publishing AspenCore Asia’s findings on
those businesses as part of our Silicon 100 package of features.
Our list of 23 Chinese Fabless Startups rounds out this Silicon 100 e-book, indicating that while thesemiconductor industry began its journey in the United States, the top startups in the market today are
spread worldwide.
You’ll be hearing more about many of these companies soon.
Bolaji Ojo, global publisher and editor-in-chiefat AspenCore Media

5

Silicon 100:
The Class of 2020

Peak Machine
Learning —A Peek Overthe Horizon
By Peter Clarke

EE Times’ 20th revision of its list of emerging startups is marked by a major change: from our practiceof listing 60 of the brightest — which we have done
since 2004 — to listing 100 electronics and semiconductor companies that catch our attention.

occasionally, end-user equipment areas. However,such definitions can be loose, and some startups

The change was made because of a rapid increase

work both sides of the street.

in startup company formation that happened in thesecond half of the last decade and the fact that soTake the example of Royole Corp., a unicorn

many of those concerns are achieving emerging

that was in the Silicon 60 v19 and has been

growth company status. And bear in mind that EE

retained in the Silicon 100. The company provides

Times takes a narrow view of the term “technology,”

intellectual-property (IP) licenses, development

requiring that companies have at least one foot inservices, and mass production for flexible electron-

the hardware camp, unless they are perhaps in the

ics such as full-color AMOLED flexible displays and

EDA or IP licensing space.

flexible sensors. But it also makes flexible productsthat show off its capabilities, such as a foldable

Nonetheless, hardware startups are again investi-

smartphone. It is effectively competing with poten-

ble, and that reflects a return to investment that had

tial customers, but it is also betting big in hopes ofdiminished to relatively small amounts a decade

winning big.

ago. That was a time when venture capital moved
predominantly into software and internet-mediatedRoyole

has

a

4.5

million-square-footmass-services.

production campus in Shenzhen, China, with a total
investment of $1.7 billion.

The love that the venture capitalists show for theinternet and for services remains, and almost

So why did venture capitalists’ confidence in hard-

all the best-known “unicorns” — privately held

ware return? It can be thought of in terms of thestartup companies with valuations in excess of

ebb and flow of a technical tide against a changing$1 billion — are in the software, services, or,economic and applications background.

Silicon 100: The Class of 20207

For many years, the biggest value-add proposition

Engineering creativity extended into a slew of re-in hardware was the efficient fabless design of ICs

lated activities, including alternative computational

using standard manufacturing platforms fromarchitectures and business models such as open-

foundries. Digital computation and business mod-source hardware, RF communications, sensors, 3D

els remained stable. Venture capitalists became

assembly and packaging and chiplet-style manu-

habituated to trying to spot the next big thing or thefacturing, and human-to-machine and machine-to-company that had executed best on some known

machine interfaces. Some of these activities

protocol and had the ear of a systems company.

required far less funding than the $100 million orso needed to get a leading-edge digital chip out theIn effect, the existence of Moore’s Law attracteddoor, and so they started to gain some traction.

funds to the design of the latest ASIC or SoC that
could exploit the next manufacturing process node.

It also became clear that software and networking

Moore’s Law sucked investment away from otherarchitectures that had proved powerful in the cloud

electronics activity that did not seem to have therunning on servers could be supported by fresh

same big-buck potential. In the first decade of thearchitectures and ICs to reduce power consump-

21st century, moving down through the processtion and potentially transfer similar functions to thenodes seemed the easy route to wealth creation.

edge.

But as the migration of chip architectures to subse-

Of those software architectures, the most impor-quent nodes became more expensive and the vol-tant was artificial intelligence, particularly artificial

umes needed to justify the expense increased, theneural networks. The possibility of direct hardware

opportunities declined. The reaction of the venture

support for AI, which would allow the win of lower

capitalists was to swim up the supply chain. Follow-

power consumption and computation more closely

ing the example of their peers who hadbacked Google, Amazon, and Facebook,the rest of them were pumping money
into the likes of Uber, Lyft, Spotify, and
GoPro.
Many venture capitalist firms stopped
investing in hardware altogether. Much of
the hardware investment that remainedcame from strategic investors, such asIntel, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Bosch,or from government-backed regional
development boosters who hoped toencourage job creation.
But then, as the end of Moore’s Law cameinto sight, R&D activity moved out into
other areas.

8

modeled on biological systems, was clearly the next

Silicon 100 involved in AI. To be sure, AI,

logical step for multicore systems and the power-machine learning, and neural networks are theefficient way forward.

latest buzzwords, but there is no consensus yet
about the best architecture or development frame-With the advent of machine learning, the internet ofwork or who will become the Intel of this next era.

things and 5G communications, and ramping electronics in automobiles, the venture capital funds

The additions bring the total number of compa-

came flooding back, and the number of startups

nies on the list claiming development of an AI or

being formed increased dramatically.

machine-learning solution either as a fabless chipcompany or as an IP licensor to 31, compared with

It seems that human beings are rarely more crea-

15 companies on the previous list and six on the list

tive or hardworking than when they are chasing an

before that.

engineering dream and a fortune at the same time.
It is notable that Intel is repeatedly buying startups

Machine learningin this area, from Movidius and Nervana in 2016

EE Times has hosted much discussion over the past

to Habana Labs Ltd. (Caesarea, Israel) in 2019.

few years about the rise of machine learning as aIntel announced that it would buy Habana for about

form of hardware-supported computing, and the$2 billion, which makes Habana a unicorn swal-

discipline has been a theme of the year for the last

lowed by a giant.

two Silicon 60 listings.
Nonetheless, the Silicon 100 is broader than
It is a theme again this year, with 14 of themachine learning. The technologies covered in this51

year’s Silicon 100 include silicon and compound

additional

companies

brought

onto

thesemiconductor manufacturing, materials
research, analog and digital ICs and SoCs,
memory, FPGA fabric, gallium nitride forpower and lighting, energy harvesting,sub-threshold voltage operation of ICs,
signal-processing techniques, 5G communications for automobiles and IoT, LiDAR,
wireless power transfer, environmental
sensors, MEMS design and manufacturing, neural networks, and other architectures for machine learning, vision, andcognitive processing.
This year, we allowed ourselves to be lesssevere than in previous years, retaining 49
of the previous year’s 60 companies andadmitting 51 startups. This brings the total number of companies admitted to the

Silicon 100: The Class of 20209

list to 506 since v1.0 came out in April 2004.

of magnitude greater than the status quo, thensometimes adoption is worth the disruption.

Itshouldbeconsidered

that

AI

and

machine learning are not single entities but

For now, a more general hybrid engine that can takediverse fields of computation ranging in complexity

your conventional compiled programs and acceler-and data requirements. This, in part, explains why

ate machine-learning algorithms while fitting seam-so many companies can attract funding.

lessly into the engineering community’s preferreddevelopment environment is likely to be a winner.

It is not yet known whether it will be better to be
more general — even hybridized — with conven-

LiDAR and radar

tional data processing or more specifically focused

Machine learning is joined by LiDAR, radar, and 5G

on tasks such as natural-language processing,communications as strong themes in the Siliconmachine vision, and so on. The requirements

100. The prospect of automated transportation as

are different depending on where training anda service provided by autonomous vehicles may notinferencing are performed and whether a neuralbe the most appealing, but to get there, vehicles

processor is expected to scale in the data center ormust be upgraded into highly aware, mobile, con-operate at the edge.

nected computers. And in any case, such smart cars
will undoubtedly save lives and would be worthwhile

Several technical approaches are demonstrated

for that reason alone.

in the Silicon 100 list. Some companies, such as
Habana and Graphcore, are looking to do heavy lift-

LiDAR — ranging using infrared light — is generally

ing in the data center, replacing GPUs.

thought to be an essential element for autonomousvehicles and can provide much more information

Some are betting on the TensorFlow development

than radar. However, LiDAR is complex, the vol-platform as the software engineer’s target and areume of data generated is burdensome, and LiDAR

seeking to accelerate that seamlessly, while others

data has been misinterpreted with potentially cat-believe that minimal energy consumption is key andastrophic results. As such, it has remained in de-are looking at compute-in-memory architectures

velopment mode for many years, and the accepted

as a way to minimize data movements. Still oth-view is that LiDAR and radar — and other sensors

ers are turning to analog electronics to accelerate— will be deployed together and some sort of sen-matrix-multiplication operations that are key tosor fusion will be necessary to produce reliable andmany neural networks. Another set of companies isuseful systems.

exploiting the inherent parallelism of light to let optical processing perform mathematical operations.

Early LiDAR was often of the mechanical, spinningvariety, which provided an all-around view of the

10

Historically, the more exotic the fundamental tech-vehicle but was too bulky for inclusion on anything

nology, the greater the effort required to interface

but prototype and demonstrator vehicles. It oper-that technology to the pre-existing mainstream

ates on time-of-flight principles to provide a detailed

electronics. Likewise, the closer the fit to pre-depth map of vehicle surroundings in contrast to

existing vested interests, the more likely the adop-

the one or few channels of distance information

tion. But if the benefits of the technology are orders

provided by radar.

LiDAR has migrated to scanning MEMS mirror de-range of microwave frequencies from 3 GHz to 81

vices in a second wave, but taking the technology

GHz and have been employed in sectors including

properly solid-state and moving it up in reliability

automotive, construction, agriculture, smart homes,

will probably require a third wave based on beam-

robotics, and medical care.

steering by optical phase-array or liquid crystal
metamaterials.

Geography
We have discussed in previous years how the return

Innoviz Technologies Ltd. (Kefar Sava, Israel), aof venture capital to hardware investment has been

2016 startup, is a Silicon 100 company that repre-

accompanied by the rise of California and China as

sents that possibility. However, SiLC Technologies

the most popular headquarters locations for start-

Inc. (Monrovia, California) claims to have gone fur-ups. California has almost unimaginable amounts

ther than others in integrating photonics func-of venture capital locally available, while China istions, including lasers and detectors, into a single

also attractive to VCs and has government funds,

chip. It also touts the benefits of using frequency-

subsidy, and encouragement.

modulated continuous wave (FMCW) at a wavelength of 1,550 nm rather than pulsed laser light at

Israel also deserves mention as a small country witha 905-nm wavelength. SiLC contends that to avoid

a high density of startups and a history of producing

eye-safety concerns, power and, therefore, range

some of the most successful exits.

are restricted at 905 nm and that pulsed but unencoded light will cause multi-user crosstalk.

This year’s expansion to 100 companies has done
little to change the overall picture, although it is“It is broadly accepted that a transition to FMCW

notable that India has slipped back. While manytechnology at 1,550-nm wavelength is needed toelectronics engineers are employed in India, rel-address eye-safety regulatory concerns and enable

atively few notable startups are headquarteredvolume deployment with minimal multi-user inter-

there. Europe continues to generate ideas andference,” states SiLC. That remains to be seen, but

companies but has a relatively weak venture capi-

the field is definitely one to watch.

tal environment. This is partly compensated for by
government-backed regional funding, although

Meanwhile, radar techniques are pushing up insuch funds tend to reinforce a technology pushfrequency in automotive applications and pushing(rather than a market pull) approach.

out into other applications. We highlight the rise of
China’s

Calterah

Semiconductor

Technology

PsiQuantum Corp. (Palo Alto, California) provides(Shanghai) Co. Ltd. as a provider of 77-GHz CMOS

a good example. Professor Jeremy O’Brien, thenmillimeter-wave radar sensor ICs targeting ADAS, se-of Bristol University in England, had spent most of

curity screening and imaging, and the smart home.

his academic career up until 2016 pursuing ideas
about quantum computing. In that year, he formed

Vayyar Imaging Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel) is a slightly

PsiQuantum Ltd. in the U.K. and PsiQuantum Corp.

older fabless semiconductor company that develops

in the United States. But it was upon moving to Palo

intelligent radar sensors for 3D imaging. Initially

Alto, California, that PsiQuantum could gain the ear

developed for the purpose of detecting cancerof some serious venture capital. The company dis-with SoC radar technology, Vayyar sensors cover a

closed that it had raised $230 million in November

Silicon 100: The Class of 202011

2019 from investors, including Playground Global, aWhile quantum computing is thought of as having

venture capital fund co-founded by former Google

application to a limited set of problems, the arrival

executive Andy Rubin.

of more general and affordable quantum processors will change the landscape. This will initially be

Silicon Valley continues to thrive, and California

in such fields as cryptography, database search-alone provides 40 companies for the Silicon 100.

ing, simulation of physical and chemical processes,

With nine startups from other U.S. states and five

medical discovery, and so on. But then engineering

headquartered in Canada, that makes 49% ofcreativity will be used to apply quantum algorithms

Silicon 100 startup activity headquartered in theto the important — and most profitable — tasks

U.S. and 54% in North America.

facing humanity. This will perhaps create quantum-computable ways to increase the efficiency ofChina is the next busiest location, with 13 startups

tasks already performed by classical computing.

that we highlight, and Israel is incubating seven of
our startups. The rest of Asia has just four startups,

Although the field of quantum computing started

providing a total of 17 (or 24, if you include Israel inin the electronics area, its development has beenAsia). That leaves 22 startups out of the 100 spread

limited by the need to operate circuits at close toacross Europe, with hot spots in France and the U.K.

absolute zero. The use of optical quantum com-

Quantum computing

puting is widely seen as one way of avoiding the
low-temperature requirements of electronic quan-With the large showing of AI and machine-learning

tum computing, and a number of the youngest

companies in the Silicon 100, it seems likely that westartups are eager to exploit these possibilities.

have hit or are close to “peak machine learning.”
And it seems likely that the next wave of startup

It is also notable that quantum computing may be

activity to command our attention will be in the area

applicable to highly parallel AI algorithms. So theof quantum computing.

ultimate winner in the race toward the AI processor, and the riches that it will command, may yet ar-

The list of companies on our radar already includes

rive on the Silicon 100 list as a quantum computing

about 40 startups that were formed to address thestartup.

field with a hardware engineering approach. These12

were all formed in 2015 or later, and as is usuallyPeter Clarke is a freelance electron-

the case, there are very many more with a focus on

ics journalist and the curator of thesoftware or services around the base technology.

Silicon 100.

Available in September 2020

AspenCore Media Guide
to Sensors in Automotive
Making Cars See and Think Ahead
Foreword…Identifying the key players in the industry and clarifying
the market potential and limitations of the next generationof sensor technology allow the reader to catch a glimpseof the future of automotive safety to understand the mostimportant challenges that we will need to overcome.
— Michiel van Ratingen, Secretary General at Euro NCAP

Market Analysis by Yole Développement
Technology Analysis by leading
automotive thinkers:• Colin Barnden• Mike Demler• Mark Fitzgerald• Egil Juliussen• Philip Koopman• Phil Magney• Robert Stead• Q&A with Mobileye
CEO Amnon Shashua• Q&A with TDK InvenSense
CTO Peter Hartwell
ADAS/AV News & Analysis by theeditors of AspenCore Media
Industry Resources

Edited by Junko Yoshida, EE Times
Publisher: AspenCore Media
Available in PDF and in print (limited edition)

Geographic Mapping▶ Graphcore Ltd.
(Bristol, England)▶ Irresistible Materials Ltd.
(Birmingham, England)▶ Tenstorrent Inc.
(Toronto, Ontario)▶ Cambridge Touch Technologies Ltd.
(Cambridge, England)▶ Untether AI(Toronto, Ontario)▶ PragmatIC Printing Ltd.
(Cambridge, England)▶ Agile Analog Ltd.
(Cambridge, England)▶ VueReal Inc.
(Waterloo, Ontario)▶ Mindtech Global Ltd.
(Kings Langley, England)▶ Oxford Photovoltaics Ltd.
(Oxford, England)▶ Skywater Technology Foundry LLC(Bloomington, Minnesota)▶ Paragraf Ltd.
(Somersham, England)▶ AccelerComm Ltd.
(Southampton, England)▶ Lumotive LLC(Bellevue, Washington)▶ Pivotal Commware Inc.
(Kirkland, Washington)▶ Jeeva Wireless Inc.
(Seattle, Washington)▶ PureLiFi Ltd.
(Edinburgh, Scotland)▶ Lunewave Inc.
(Tuscon, Arizona)▶ Spark Microsystems International Inc.
(Montreal, Quebec)▶ Boréas Technologies Inc.
(Bromont, Quebec)▶ Mythic Inc.
(Austin, Texas)▶ Lumiode Inc.
(Bronx, New York)▶ BrainChip Inc.
(Aliso Viejo, California)▶ Lightelligence Inc.
(Boston, Massachusetts)▶ Lightmatter Inc.
(Boston, Massachusetts)▶ Aledia SA(Échirolles, , France)▶ Iota Biosciences Inc.
(Berkeley, California)▶ Upmem SAS(Grenoble, France)▶ JITX Inc.
(Berkeley, California)▶ SiLC Technologies Inc.
(Monrovia, California)▶ Palma Ceia SemiDesign Inc.
(Santa Clara, California)▶ Atmosic Technologies Inc.
(Campbell, California)▶ Flex Logix Technologies Inc.
(Mountain View, California)▶ Qromis Inc.
(Santa Clara, California)▶ AIStorm Inc.
(Cupertino, California)▶ Esperanto Technologies Inc.
(Mountain View, California)▶ AerNos Inc.
(San Diego, California)▶ Groq Inc.
(Mountain View, California)▶ InnoPhase Inc.
(San Diego, California)▶ Royole Corp.
(Fremont, California)▶ Metawave Corp.
(Palo Alto, California)▶ Kneron Inc.
(San Diego, California)▶ Menlo Microsystems Inc.
(Irvine, California)▶ PsiQuantum Corp.
(Palo Alto, California)▶ Wiliot Inc.
(San Diego, California)▶ Movandi Corp.
(Irvine, California)▶ Rain Neuromorphics Inc.
(Redwood City, California)▶ Anaflash Inc.
(San Jose, California)▶ Syntiant Corp.
(Irvine, California)▶ Exo Imaging Inc.
(Redwood City, California)▶ AnDapt Inc.
(San Jose, California)▶ OnScale Inc.
(Redwood City, California)▶ SambaNova Systems Inc.
(Palo Alto, California)▶ Movellus Inc.
(San Jose, California)▶ Cerebras Systems Inc.
(Los Altos, California)▶ Efinix Inc.
(Santa Clara, California)▶ UltraSense Systems Inc.
(San Jose, California)▶ AlphaICs Corp.
(Milpitas, California)▶ NovuMind Inc.
(Santa Clara, California)▶ SiFive Inc.
(San Mateo, California)▶ Gyrfalcon Technology Inc.
(Milpitas, California)▶ Nuvia Inc.
(Santa Clara, California)▶ Eta Compute Inc.
(Westlake Village, California)▶ Rigetti Quantum Computing Inc.
(Berkeley, California)▶ Navitas Semiconductor Inc.
(El Segundo, California)

14▶ Prophesee SA(Paris, France)▶ Synsense(Zurich, Switzerland)▶ Senbiosys SA(Neuchâtel, Switzerland)▶ Beijing Winner Microelectronics Co. Ltd.
(Beijing, China)▶ Bitmain Technologies Holding Co. Ltd.
(Beijing, China)▶ Ferroelectric Memory Company GmbH(Dresden, Germany)▶ Cambricon Technologies Corp. Ltd.
(Beijing, China)▶ Horizon Robotics Technology Co. Ltd.
(Beijing, China)▶ E-peas Semiconductors(Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium)▶ Calterah Semiconductor Technology
Co. Ltd. (Shanghai, China)▶ Cista Systems Corp.
(Shanghai, China)▶ SemiBlocks B.V.
('s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands)▶ Smartsens Technology Co. Ltd.
(Shanghai, China)▶ Dispelix Oy(Espoo, Finland)▶ Shanghai Zhaoxin Semiconductor Co. Ltd.
(Shanghai, China)▶ Minima Processor Oy(Oulu, Finland)▶ Hanking Electronics (Liaoning) Co. Ltd.
(Shenyang, China)▶ ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc.
(CXMT) (Hefei, China)▶ Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. Ltd.
(Wuhan, China)▶ AImotive Ltd.
(Budapest, Hungary)▶ Flosfia Ltd.
(Kyoto, Japan)▶ Kyulux Inc.
(Fukuoka, Japan)▶ XTX Technology Ltd.
(Shenzhen, China)▶ RoboSense aka Suteng Innovation
Technology Co. Ltd. (Shenzhen, China)▶ USound GmbH
(Graz, Austria)▶ ProteanTecs Ltd.
(Haifa, Israel)▶ Zhuhai Eeasy Technology Co. Ltd.
(Zhuhai, China)▶ NeuroBlade Ltd.
(Hod HaSharon, Israel)▶ Weebit Nano Ltd.
(Hod HaSharon, Israel)▶ Unispectral Ltd.
(Ramat Gan, Israel)▶ INT Tech Co. Ltd.
(Hsinchu, Taiwan)▶ Morse Micro Pty. Ltd.
(Sydney, Australia)▶ Innoviz Technologies Ltd.
(Rosh Haayin, Israel)▶ Hailo Technologies Ltd.
(Tel Aviv, Israel)▶ Vayyar Imaging Ltd.
(Tel Aviv, Israel)

15

EE Times Lists 100
Emerging Companies
to Watch
By Peter Clarke
It’s been more than a year since EE Times produced

recent list of companies that we believe are worth

the 19th iteration of the Silicon 60. In the ensuing

keeping an eye on and selected 51 startup com-months, there was an explosion of startups

panies to join the list, expanding the total to 100.

emerging with novel technologies, implementations,

We have been publishing and updating our listarchitectures, and materials. So for v20, we haveof emerging startups since April 2004, with the

expanded the Silicon 60 to make it the Silicon 100.

revisions reflecting corporate, commercial, technology, and market conditions. The latest batch of

The semiconductor and electronics sectors have notnewcomers includes companies active across the

been so vibrant for many decades — a time whenbreadth of the widening technology front.

these industries were much smaller in terms ofannual global revenues than they are now. How-

Areas of interest include analog circuits, AI,

ever, today’s feverish and global R&D activity isneural networks, vision in the form of processors andcast in an economic context that is inhibited and aintellectual property, processing-in-memory, mem-

geopolitical mood that is confrontational. Set thatory, optical processing, machine vision and speechagainst a global climate that is changing — and notrecognition, security, sensors, haptics, displays,

for the better — and we must conclude that the

LiDAR, RF, internet of things, energy harvesting andhuman race has a lot on its plate.

power management, photovoltaics, materials, andprinted electronics.

But technologies that can create well-being andwealth while helping to turn back the greenhouse gas

Selection is based on the consideration of a mix oftide are likely to be part, if not all, of the solution. So

criteria,

we are eager to recognize these startups.

ket, financial position and investment profile,includingtechnology,

intendedmar-maturity, and executive leadership. These are
The flow of venture capital toward hardware-based

emerging companies to follow for a variety of rea-startups, which ticked back up in the middle of thesons. The names of the newest recruits appear inlast decade, has not abated, and the consensus now

red in the pages to follow.

is that artificial intelligence, machine learning, 5G
communications, and transportation solutions are

Readers are welcome to nominate their own emerg-

set to drive the industry onward and upward for theing companies for inclusion in a future iteration ofnext several years.

the Silicon 100 list and should include a short citation
providing details about the company and explaining

EE Times has retained 49 companies from its most16

why the company is suitable for inclusion on the list.

A

AccelerComm Ltd.
Southampton, England

AccelerComm Ltd. is a semiconductor IP core company
that provides channel coding solutions for communication standards. Founded in 2016, AccelerComm is coming
to market with polar encoder and decoder solutions for
3GPP’s 5G standards.
www.accelercomm.com

AerNos Inc.
San Diego
AerNos Inc., founded in 2016, uses doped materials andnanotechnology to detect multiple airborne gases andvolatile organic compounds simultaneously at parts-perbillion levels. Its sensors include carbon nanotubes, nanowires, and polymers.
www.aernos.com

Agile Analog Ltd.
Cambridge, England

Agile Analog Ltd., founded in August 2017, is seeking
to change the way analog circuits are designed with theintention of becoming a leading analog IP company. Agile
includes Arm alumni at the top of the company and on its
board of directors and claims that it can design analog circuits faster, to a higher quality, and on any silicon process.
www.agileanalog.com

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A

AImotive Ltd.
Budapest, Hungary

AImotive Ltd. is an AI company working on Level 5 (fullautonomy) driving. It was founded in 2015 as AdasWorks
but changed its name to AImotive in November 2016.
AImotive has raised $75 million in funding, including frominvestors Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Nvidia, Inventure
Oy, Draper Associates, Day One Capital Fund Management,
and Tamares. The company is a licensor of ADAS-related
IP and counts Altera, Arm, Bosch, Ceva, Intel, Nvidia, NXP,
Qualcomm, Volvo, and Wind River among its partners.
www.aimotive.com

AIStorm Inc.

Cupertino, California
AIStorm Inc. was founded in 2011 and has a chip design
capable of 2.5 TOPS and 10 TOPS/W. It uses switchedcharge processing, which allows the chip to control the
movement of electrons between storage elements. It canalso use CMOS image sensors as part of the input layer.
AIStorm refers to its technology as AI-in-sensor.
www.aistorm.ai

Aledia SA

Échirolles, France
Aledia SA has developed a method of forming light-emitting
diodes (LEDs) within vertical pillars of gallium nitride (GaN)
grown on silicon wafers. The company spun out of CEA-Leti
in 2011 and claims that the technique produces 3× more
light per planar area than conventional approaches while
using less GaN material.
www.aledia.com

18

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AlphaICs Corp.
Milpitas, California

AlphaICs Corp. was founded in 2016 to address a broad
variety of AI and machine-learning tasks with a processor
architecture designed to support “agents.” The company
also has an office in Bengaluru, India.
www.alphaics.ai

Anaflash Inc.
San Jose, California
Anaflash Inc., founded in 2017, is an AI accelerator
chip startup that uses logic-compatible single polysilicon embedded flash memory for compute-in-memorymachine-learning acceleration. A multi-level-cell program
scheme has been employed to program the cell state
without using sophisticated voltage regulator circuits.
www.anaflash.ai

AnDapt Inc.
San Jose

AnDapt Inc., a fabless company founded in 2014, haslaunched a range of configurable ICs that combine power
MOSFETs, analog circuitry, and digital circuitry and that canbe used to create a variety of power circuits. The company
includes veteran semiconductor executives Kapil Shankar
and John Birkner and is backed by Intel Capital and Cisco.
www.andapt.com

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B

Atmosic
Technologies Inc.
Campbell, California

Atmosic Technologies Inc., founded in 2016, has launched
Bluetooth 5.0 transceiver chips with low-power features
including RF energy harvesting. The company is led byformer Atheros and Qualcomm engineers David Su (CEO)and Masoud Zargari (vice president of engineering).
Atmosic has received $21 million in Series A/A1 financing
led by Sutter Hill Ventures, Clear Ventures, and WaldenInternational. The company’s products, starting with aBluetooth transceiver, enable the IoT device ecosystem —designers and manufacturers, as well as end users andthose responsible for deployments — to lower cost andeffort for IoT in multiple market segments.
www.atmosic.com

Beijing Winner
Microelectronics
Co. Ltd.
Beijing Winner Microelectronics Co. Ltd., or Winner Micro,
is a fabless company founded in 2013 that focuses on wireless communications chips in the IoT field. The products
are mainly used in smart home, health-care, wireless video
and audio, and industrial applications.

Beijing

www.winnermicro.com/en

BitMain Technologies
Holding Co. Ltd.
Beijing

BitMain Technologies Holding Co. Ltd. is best known as a
producer of cryptocurrency-mining ASICs on leading-edge
processes, but the company is expanding to become amore general blockchain and semiconductor company.
Founded in 2014, the company is involved in machinelearning, AI, deep learning, ASIC chip design, and AI ASIC
chips.
www.bitmain.com

20

B
C

BoréasTechnologies Inc.
Bromont, Quebec

Boréas Technologies Inc. was founded in mid-2016 andclosed a seed financing equity round in March 2017. The
company has developed its first product, the BOS1901, apiezoelectric driver IC for high-definition haptic feedback inwearables and other battery-powered consumer devices.
www.boreas.ca

BrainChip Inc.
Aliso Viejo, California
BrainChip Inc. is developing spiking neural networking
cores for licensing to semiconductor partners. Foundedin December 2013, it is now owned by BrainChip Holdings
Ltd., which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.
The company appointed Louis DiNardo CEO in September
2016.
www.brainchipinc.com

Calterah
Semiconductor
Technology Co. Ltd.
ShanghaiCalterah Semiconductor Technology Co. Ltd. was founded in 2014 and has rolled out a series of 77-GHz and
60-GHz CMOS radar transceivers and sensors, including
antennas-in-package. The Yosemite (77/79 GHz) andYellowstone (60 GHz) were produced in 2017, followed by
the Alps 77-/79-GHz CMOS radar SoC in 2019. The Rhino
60-GHz CMOS radar SoC is due to follow.
www.calterah.com

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C

Cambricon
Technologies
Corp. Ltd.
Beijing

Cambricon Technologies Corp. Ltd. develops AI chips. The
company offers the MLU100 processor for deep learningand the MLU100 intelligent processing card. Additionally,
the company offers solutions, including IP licensing andchip services. The company’s products can be applied insmartphones, security and surveillance cameras, servers,
robots, drones, wearable devices, and autonomous driving.
The company was founded in 2016.
www.cambricon.com

Cambridge Touch
Technologies Ltd.
Cambridge Touch Technologies Ltd., founded in 2012,is a provider of 3D multipoint touch technologies to theconsumer electronics, automotive, industrial, and military
markets. CTT supports its OEM and supply chain customers with IP, know-how, analog and digital technologies, andsystem architectures.

Cambridge, Englandwww.camtouch3d.com

Cerebras Systems Inc.
Los Altos, California

Cerebras Systems Inc. is working on specialized chips fordeep-learning applications and claims to be backed bypremier venture capitalists and industry-leading
technologists. The company was founded in 2016 and isheaded by Andrew Feldman, who sold micro-server chipcompany SeaMicro to Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in2012 for $334 million. Benchmark is reported to have led afunding round totaling more than $20 million.
www.cerebras.net

22

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D

ChangXin Memory
Technologies Inc.
Hefei, China

ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc. (CXMT) was foundedin Hefei, China, with Chinese state support in May 2016.
CXMT has opened a 300-mm wafer fab to manufacture
DRAM chips.
www.cxmt.com

Cista Systems Corp.
ShanghaiCista Systems Corp., founded in 2013, has developed anumber of CMOS image sensors, making use of Chinese
foundry SMIC’s 0.13-micron backside-illuminated manufacturing process technology platform.
www.cistadesign.com

Dispelix Oy
Espoo, Finland

Dispelix Oy, founded in 2015, has developed special
gratings and optical waveguides that can route an image from a display engine located in the frame of smart
spectacles to the inside surface of the glass. Company
researchers have dealt with several issues typically associated with the optical grating approach, namely rainbow
effects and pattern artifacts due to transmissive diffraction.
www.dispelix.com

Silicon 100: The Class of 202023

E

Efinix Inc.

Santa Clara, California

Efinix Inc. is an FPGA startup founded in 2012 by a coupleof veteran FPGA engineers. The company has developed
what it calls “quantum” programmable technology — acircuit-level architecture that it claims gives it a 4× improvement in power-performance-area (PPA) over traditional
programmable architectures. Efinix has received backing
from Xilinx and Samsung.
www.efinixinc.com

E-peas
Semiconductors
E-peas Semiconductors has announced its first chip, anenergy management IC for use with photovoltaic and thermoelectric energy harvesting. The company was foundedin 2014 with a vision to address IoT applications on two
fronts: by increasing harvested energy and by reducing theenergy consumption of circuit blocks. It also offers an Armbased microcontroller.

Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium

www.e-peas.com

Esperanto
Technologies Inc.
Mountain View, California

Esperanto Technologies Inc. was founded in 2014 by
CEO Dave Ditzel, a chip industry veteran well known as achip designer previously with Intel and Sun Microsystems
and as founder of code-morphing startup Transmeta.
Esperanto has developed the ET-Maxion cores, which aredesigned to deliver high single-thread RISC-V performance.
The company is working on an AI chip that is projected tocontain more than 4,000 64-bit processor cores on 7-nm
manufacturing technology.
www.esperanto.ai

24Eta Compute Inc.

Westlake Village, California

E
F

Eta Compute Inc., a fabless chip company founded in 2015,
claims to have developed the world’s lowest-power microcontroller IP, with a Cortex-M3 processor core that operates down to 0.25 V. The company has turned its technology into the Delay Insensitive Asynchronous Logic (DIAL)
technology as a first step toward enabling intelligencefor embedded systems and devices. Eta Compute has aseries of low-power ICs based on this technology, including
an Arm-based microcontroller and an ASIC that includes
pre-trained machine-learning speech-recognition andkeyword-spotting applications.
www.etacompute.com

Exo Imaging Inc.
Exo Imaging Inc. was founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneur Janusz Bryzek with a plan to develop a handheld ultrasound imager. The company is developing a piezoelectric
micromachined ultrasound transducer (pMUT) that it plans
to marry with advances in ultrasound imaging algorithms
and deep-learning processors as well as cloud and fog
computing.

Redwood City, California

www.exo-imaging.com

Ferroelectric Memory
Company GmbH
Dresden, Germany

Ferroelectric Memory Company GmbH, founded in 2016as a spin-off of NaMLab at Technical University of Dresden,
is developing embedded non-volatile memory based on
the ferroelectric effect in hafnium dioxide. Hafnium dioxide
is the classical high-κ metal-gate (HKMG) material used intransistors, and there is no roadblock for FMC’s technology
to be applied to 22-nm FD-SOI, 1x-nm FinFET, and beyond,the company claims. FMC raised €4.6 million in July 2018.
www.ferroelectric-memory.com

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G

Flex Logix
Technologies Inc.
Mountain View

Flex Logix Technologies Inc., founded in March 2014 andsupported by Lux Capital soon afterward, was started tobring a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) architecture to market as a licensable fabric for inclusion in system chips. The architecture, EFLX, is available for the mostpopular process nodes and is being ported to additional
process nodes based on customer demand. Flex Logix is amember of the TSMC IP Alliance.
www.flex-logix.com

Flosfia Ltd. is a spin-out from Kyoto University that isworking with Denso on a power semiconductor device
expected to reduce the energy loss, cost, size, and weightof inverters used in electrified vehicles. Professor Shizuo
Fujita at Kyoto University has pioneered the applicationof corundum-structured gallium oxide (α-Ga2O3 ) for use
in semiconductors to provide a wide bandgap of 5.3 eVand high electric breakdown field strength to withstandhigher-voltage applications. Flosfia was founded in 2011 tocommercialize the technology through film formation by
mist chemical vapor deposition (mist CVD). The company
claims that gallium oxide can replace today’s current siliconand silicon carbide power semiconductors.

Flosfia Ltd.
Kyoto, Japanwww.flosfia.com

Graphcore Ltd.
Bristol, England

Graphcore Ltd. was founded in 2015 as a spin-out fromXMOS Ltd. to develop a processor for machine learning
based on graph theory. In 2017, it raised a second roundof funding of $30 million, bringing the total invested in thecompany to $60 million. It calls its architectural implementation an intelligence processing unit (IPU). The first IPU
was codenamed Colossus partly because of the size ofthe die. IPUs are designed into a specific Dell server andhave been used as an optional way to run Microsoft’s Azure
cloud computing service.
www.graphcore.ai

26

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H

Groq Inc.

Mountain View

Groq Inc. was founded by Douglas Wightman and JonathanRoss, former Google executives who worked on the TensorFlow processing unit, and venture capitalist Chamath
Palihapitiya. They have formed a fabless semiconductor
startup for cognitive computing that raised $10.3 million
at its incorporation in September 2016. Groq launched its
tensor streaming processor in November 2019.
www.groq.com

Gyrfalcon Technology Inc. was founded in 2017 byveteran Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to move cloud AI tolocal devices with greater performance and efficiency.
Gyrfalcon has designed and implemented the Lightspeeur
2801S AI processor, which provides 2.8 TOPS while consuming 300 mW (9.3 TOPS/W). Lightspeeur is the first
instantiation of Gyrfalcon’s APiM architecture, which uses
memory as the AI processing unit.

Gyrfalcon
Technology Inc.
Milpitas

www.gyrfalcontech.ai

Hailo Technologies
Ltd.
Tel Aviv, Israel

Hailo Technologies Ltd. was founded in 2017 by engineers with backgrounds in the Israel Defense Forces
and commercial engineering. The company claims tohave a revolutionary processor architecture to accelerate neural network processing that will provide a PPA
point suitable for processing high-resolution sensory data at the edge and in real time. Hailo launched its
Hailo-8 processor in May 2019. The processor is being designed to run embedded AI applications on edge
devices that are installed in autonomous vehicles, drones,
and smart home appliances such as personal assistants,
smart cameras, and smart TVs.
www.hailotech.com

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27

H
I

Hanking Electronics(Liaoning) Co. Ltd.
Shenyang, China

Hanking Electronics (Liaoning) Co. Ltd., founded in April
2011, is a privately funded microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) company and a subsidiary of the Hanking
Industrial Group. Hanking Electronics focuses on developing, fabricating, and marketing MEMS products andrelated electronic components. It provides customers withdesign and development, fabrication processing, volume
manufacturing, MEMS foundry services, MEMS sensors,
MEMS actuators, ASICs, MEMS technology, and application
consulting.
www.hankingmems.com

Horizon Robotics Technology Co. Ltd., founded in 2015,
targets autonomous driving, smart life, and smart surveillance, with a view to equipping terminal devices with perception, interaction, comprehension, and decision-making.
The company has attracted investment from Morningside
Venture Capital, Hill House Capital, Sequoia Capital, andGSR Ventures and has released the Sunrise and Journey 2
AI processors.

Horizon Robotics
Technology Co. Ltd.
Beijing

en.horizon.ai

InnoPhase Inc.
San Diego

InnoPhase Inc., founded in 2013, claims it has developed
an approach to processing RF signals that reduces theenergy consumed compared with previous approaches.
The fabless semiconductor company’s products are built
around a specialized hardware architecture known as anonlinear radio processing unit (nRPU). Various RF
protocols are implemented in software that executes on
the nRPU. The result is a hardware platform capable ofrunning multiple radio standards at low levels of power.
The company has launched its Talaria Two multiprotocol
wireless chipset for battery-based IoT equipment.
www.innophaseinc.com

28

InnovizTechnologies Ltd.
Rosh Haayin, Israel

I
Innoviz Technologies Ltd., a 2016 startup developing
LiDAR sensors for autonomous vehicles, raised $9 million
in a Series A financing round and then extended a Series
B financing round to $73 million in October 2017. Backers
include Samsung Catalyst and SoftBank Ventures Korea.
The company was founded by former members of theIsraeli Intelligence Corps who went on to work for multiple
startups and multinational corporations.
www.innoviz.tech

INT Tech Co. Ltd., founded in June 2016 with a vision to
enable high-bandwidth 5G and the delivery of ultra-highresolution content, has developed a proprietary glassbased deposition process to deliver red/green/blue
active-matrix organic LED (AMOLED) displays at pixel
densities above 2,200 ppi. The company is seeking
partners to create joint ventures for particular productdevelopments, such as its formation of UltraDisplay back in2017 with AMOLED driver IC manufacturer UltraChip. Since
then, UltraDisplay has become an AMOLED driver IC design
house for AMOLED manufacturers.

INT Tech Co. Ltd.
Hsinchu, Taiwan

www.int-tech.com.tw/en/

Iota Biosciences Inc.
Berkeley, California

Iota Biosciences Inc. was established in 2017 to commercialize the “neural dust” technology invented at the
University of California, Berkeley and thereby change
the monitoring and treatment of disease. The technology is based on swarms of implantable communicating
electronic ICs to provide a platform for the future ofbioelectronic medicine.
www.iota.bio

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29

I
J

Irresistible
Materials Ltd.

Birmingham, England

Irresistible Materials Ltd. is a spin-out from the University ofBirmingham working in alliance with Nano-C Inc. to develop materials for application in semiconductor lithography.
Since its 2010 launch, IM has developed a patent portfolio
covering resists for extreme-ultraviolet and electron-beamlithography and hard-mask materials.
www.irresistiblematerials.com

Jeeva Wireless Inc.
SeattleJeeva Wireless Inc., founded in 2015, is introducing
passive Wi-Fi technology based on backscatter theory to
improve the range/power consumption tradeoff for mostpower-constrained IoT and wireless sensing devices.
www.jeevawireless.com

JITX Inc.
Berkeley

JITX Inc. uses AI to automate the design of circuit boards asa service, producing designs faster and at a lower cost thanwhen designed by engineers, the company claims. JITX wasfounded by CEO Duncan Haldane in 2016.
www.jitx.com

30

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L

Kneron Inc.
San Diego

Kneron Inc., a developer of neural processing units foredge devices, was founded in 2015 and completed a
Series A financing round worth more than $10 million in
November 2017. Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund andCDIB Capital Group are the lead investors, and Himax
Technologies, Qualcomm, Thundersoft, Sequoia Capital,
and CYZONE are co-investors.
www.kneron.com

Kyulux Inc.
Fukuoka, Japan
Kyulux Inc., founded in 2015, is developing OLED technology for use in displays and lighting based on research
conducted at Kyushu University. Professor Chihaya
Adachi, the inventor of thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) technology, is a co-founder. Kyulux investors
include Samsung, LG Display, and Japan Display.
www.kyulux.com

Lightelligence Inc.
BostonLightelligence Inc. was spun out of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2017 to commercialize
optical processing as an approach to AI. Lightelligence hasreceived seed funding of about $10 million from Baidu
Ventures and a group of U.S. semiconductor executives.
www.lightelligence.ai

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31

L

Lightmatter Inc.
BostonLightmatter Inc. is an MIT spin-off founded to commercialize optical processing through waveguides on siliconapplied to neural networking architectures. The company,
formed in 2017, announced it had received $11 million in
Series A funding early in 2018.
www.lightmatter.co

Lumiode Inc. is a semiconductor company that develops
and manufactures microLED-based displays for headworn, high-brightness, and augmented-reality systems. The
claim is that the Lumiode microdisplay is 10× brighter and10× more efficient than other technologies. The company
has been investigating both visible light and non-visible
light applications such as depth scanning and 3D printing.
The company received a two-stage SBIR grant to develop
prototype LED arrays and advanced silicon circuitry to control the arrays and methods to achieve full-color displays.
It was founded in 2012 and is backed by IP Group, Applied
Ventures, and M Ventures.

Lumiode Inc.
Bronx, New Yorkwww.lumiode.com

Lumotive LLC

Bellevue, Washington

Lumotive LLC was founded in 2017 to develop solid-state
LiDAR for the automotive industry based on metamaterials deployed with semiconductor chips. The liquid crystal
metasurface allows an incident laser beam to be reflected
in a programmable direction, depending on the electronic
configuration of the metamaterial elements on the surfaceof the chip. The company is backed by Bill Gates.
www.lumotive.com

32

L
M

Lunewave Inc.
Tucson, Arizona

Lunewave Inc. is a 2017 startup developing antenna andradar sensor technology for use in self-driving vehicles
and other applications. Lunewave uses 3D printing to create a Luneburg lens antenna as a spherical sensor with a
360° field of view. Lunewave has ties to the University of
Arizona and claims that its technology has applications inaerospace and wireless telecommunications.
www.lunewave.com

Menlo Microsystems Inc. was founded in 2016 to bringto market work on MEMS switches originally started atGeneral Electric’s Global Research Center. GE’s research
led to an understanding of failure modes and the development of patented metal alloys and processing techniques that enable reliable operation with high performance. Menlo Micro’s Digital-Micro-Switch (DMS) platform
is applicable to 5G mobile networks, industrial IoT markets,battery management, home automation, electronic vehicles, and medical instrumentation. Menlo Micro is backed
by GE Ventures, with investments from Corning, Microsemi
Corp., and Paladin Capital Group.

Menlo
Microsystems Inc.
Irvine, California

www.menlomicro.com

Metawave Corp.
Palo Alto, California

Metawave Corp., founded in 2017, is working on wirelesscommunications and radar sensing using metamaterials
and AI, with a focus on building a better beam-steered radarfor autonomous driving. Metawave claims that its radars
will be capable of 4D point-cloud imaging, non-line-of-sight
object detection, and vehicle-to-vehicle communication. In
parallel, Metawave is developing smart antenna platforms
for fixed wireless and 5G cellular networks.
www.metawave.co

Silicon 100: The Class of 2020

33

M

Mindtech Global Ltd.
Kings Langley, England

Mindtech Global Ltd. is an AI processor startup formedin August 2017 by executives formerly with Imagination
Technologies. Target markets are visual processing in
automotive, unsupervised machines, retail, and security.
The original founder of Mindtech was Sir Hossein Yassaie,previously CEO of Imagination. The company’s first productis a synthetic data generator for training AI systems. The
company is working on an AI engine intended to blend traditional and AI algorithms. It will then produce integrated
AI processors. The processor roadmap covers IoT sensor
fusion and visual processing.
www.mindtech.global

Minima Processor Oy was founded in April 2016 to develop sub-threshold-voltage processors based on technology
developed by VTT Technical Research Centre and the
Universities of Aalto and Turku. Minima was a founding
partner in the RISC-V Foundation. Minima’s techniques canbe used to optimize processor voltage and frequency operating points dynamically, although the company also advocates the use of sub-threshold-voltage operation. Minima’s
clocking is adaptive-synchronous rather than asynchronous, and the company provides a middleware stack with
its hardware that provides compatibility with dynamic
voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) regimes.

Minima Processor Oy
Oulu, Finland

www.minimaprocessor.com

Morse Micro Pty. Ltd.
SydneyMorse Micro Pty. Ltd. is a fabless semiconductor startup
developing Wi-Fi HaLow chips for the IoT market. The company was founded in 2016 by Andrew Terry and Michael De
Nil, who had both worked on Wi-Fi for Broadcom.
www.morsemicro.com

34

Movandi Corp.
IrvineMovandi Corp. was formed in 2016 by a brother-andsister team that was previously with Broadcom. It is thedeveloper of a millimeter-wave module for 5G networks.
Movandi’s BeamX module is an RF front end that comprises
the antenna array through to the baseband interface. It targets 28- and 39-GHz 5G systems, including base stations
and receivers, as well as use in indoor gigabit, fixed wirelessaccess, and satellite networks. Movandi sampled eight- and16-antenna modules for 28 GHz at the end of 2017 andannounced the 39-GHz version early in 2018.

Mwww.movandi.com

Movellus Inc.
San Jose
Movellus Inc., formed in April 2014, has launched itself on
the market with a focus on the use of digital design andverification tools to implement analog circuit functionality.
In April 2019, Movellus announced $6 million in a funding
round that brought total investment in the company to$10 million.
www.movellus.com

Mythic Inc.
Austin, Texas

Mythic Inc., founded in 2012 as Isocline Engineer Corp.,
is adopting a processing-in-memory approach to neuralnetwork implementation based on a hybrid mix of digital
and analog computation. The company raised $9.3 million
in a Series A funding round in 2017 and accepted Steve
Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Shahin Farshchi
of Lux Capital to the board of directors.
www.mythic-ai.com

Silicon 100: The Class of 202035

N

NavitasSemiconductor Inc.
El Segundo, California

Navitas Semiconductor Inc. was founded in 2013 by ateam of power semiconductor veterans with experience inmaterials, devices, applications, systems, and marketing.
Its process design kit enables monolithic integration oflateral GaN FETs with logic and analog circuits. Navitas GaN
power ICs enable power for mobile, consumer, enterprise,and new energy markets. More than 25 Navitas patents are
granted or pending.
www.navitassemi.com

NeuroBlade Ltd.
Hod HaSharon, Israel
NeuroBlade Ltd. was founded in 2017 by Elad Sity, CEO,and Eliad Hillel, CTO, to address the AI processor opportunity. It raised $4.5 million in seed capital while in stealthmode from StageOne Ventures and Grove Ventures. A$23 million Series A round in 2019 brought the total raised
by NeuroBlade to more than $27 million.
www.neuroblade.ai

NovuMind Inc.
Santa Clara

NovuMind Inc. was established in 2015 by Ren Wu,
formerly a distinguished scientist at Baidu, with 50 people,
including engineers in the U.S. and in Beijing. NovuMindis testing what Wu describes as a minimalist approach to
deep learning. In 2018, the company benchmarked its
NovuTensor processor, which comes as a 28-nm chip or on
a PCIe short card that can plug into a server.
www.novumind.com

36

Nuvia Inc.
Santa Clara

Nuvia Inc. was founded in early 2019 by the former
chief CPU architect at Apple and two former staff members from Google on the promise of reimagining silicon
design for high-performance computing environments. The
company is focused on blending compute performance,
power efficiency, and scalability. In November 2019, Nuvia
announced that it had raised $53 million in Series A
funding.

NO

www.nuviainc.com

OnScale Inc. has raised seed funding of $3 million tolaunch its solver-as-a-service company for complex engineering calculations that require high-performance computing. OnScale combines computer-aided engineeringwith high-performance computing to offer online solutions for tasks such as finite element analysis (FAE) andcomputational fluid dynamics (CFD) for applications in
5G, IoT, biomedical, and autonomous driving. The company was founded in 2017 as a spin-off from constructionengineering consultancy Thornton-Tomasetti, where someof the CFD and FEA technology originally resided.

OnScale Inc.
Redwood City

www.onscale.com

OxfordPhotovoltaics Ltd.
Oxford, England

Oxford Photovoltaics Ltd., formed in 2010, is a spin-out
from Oxford University that has developed stable perovskite solar cells in recent years. At the end of 2018, thecompany announced that it had achieved a record-breaking 28% conversion efficiency in a 1-cm2 tandem solar cell. A
complete line for the manufacture of perovskite-on-siliconsolar cells is due to start production by the end of 2020.
www.oxfordpv.com

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37

P

Palma Ceia
SemiDesign Inc.
Santa Clara

Palma Ceia SemiDesign Inc. is a provider of modem
chips, transceivers, systems, and IP for emerging IoT andmachine-to-machine (M2M) Wi-Fi and cellular RF markets.
Founded in 2012, PCS offers modem chips for LTE NB-IoT
and Wi-Fi HaLow.
www.pcsemi.com

Paragraf Ltd.
Paragraf Ltd. is a 2015 spin-out from the gallium nitridegroup of Professor Sir Colin Humphreys at the University of Cambridge. Paragraf is developing 2D materials,
starting with graphene, and applying these to a range ofelectronic, energy, and medical devices. The company hasreceived backing from Cambridge University, Amadeus
Capital Partners, and IQ Capital Partners, among others.

Somersham, England

www.paragraf.com

Pivotal Commware
Inc.
Kirkland, Washington

Pivotal Commware Inc. formed as a spin-off fromIntellectual Ventures Management LLC in 2016 tocommercialize the use of metamaterial structures forholographic beamforming in communications applications.
It raised $17 million in Series A.
www.pivotalcommware.com

38

PragmatIC
Printing Ltd.

Cambridge, EnglandP
PragmatIC Printing Ltd. was founded in 2010, when it
acquired the printed-electronics business of Nano ePrint
Ltd., including that company’s patented technology forplanar nano-electronic devices that can be fabricated in asingle layer of semiconductor via single-step imprint patterning. PragmatIC has extended this imprinting process
to allow a range of device and circuit architectures to beprinted in transparent, flexible semiconductors at micronand submicron scale.
www.pragmatic.tech

Prophesee SA
Prophesee SA, a startup company founded in 2014 as
Chronocam, develops machine-vision sensors and systems based on asynchronous pixel sensor technology andsparse data models. The architecture creates an image
sensor that is close to a biological model, and a methodof reporting image changes reduces off-chip bandwidth
requirements and system power consumption. Prophesee
has received investment from Robert Bosch Venture Capital and CEA Investissement.

Pariswww.prophesee.ai

proteanTecs Ltd.
Haifa, Israel

proteanTecs Ltd., founded in 2017, has developed acloud-based platform that combines data created in chipembedded software agents with machine learning topredict faults before they become failures. Insights canbe gained during chip design, chip production, and system production, as well as after deployment. The level of
Universal Chip Telemetry (UCT) is determined by the coverage and variety of agents integrated. It is applicable to chipdevelopers, system builders, and service providers.
www.proteantecs.com

Silicon 100: The Class of 2020

39

P

PsiQuantum Corp.
Palo Alto

PsiQuantum Corp., founded in 2016, aims to create aphotonic quantum computing platform. The company was co-founded by Jeremy O’Brien, previously a professor of physics and electrical engineering at the U.K.’s
University of Bristol and the director for the Centre forQuantum Photonics there, and Terry Rudolph, a professor at Imperial College London. The company raised $230
million in a round of equity financing in 2019. Investors
include Playground Global, founded in 2014 by Andy Rubin,a former senior executive with Google.
www.psiquantum.com

PureLiFi Ltd.

Edinburgh, Scotland
PureLiFi Ltd., a 2012 startup, has gone to market with aproduct that allows LED lighting to be used as an alternative to a Wi-Fi router. The company raised $18 million in a
Series B financing round in 2019.
www.purelifi.com

Qromis Inc.
Santa Clara

Qromis Inc., formed in March 2015 as Quora Technology
by a couple of former BridgeLux employees, is focused on
developing wide-bandgap semiconductor materials anddevices in pursuit of energy efficiency. Quora Substrate
Technology (QST) enables the use of 6-inch, 200-mm, and
300-mm silicon wafers with GaN surface layers in thicknesses varying from a few microns to bulk and in supportof both discrete components and integrated circuits. The
process is said to be compatible with existing silicon wafer
fabs. The markets that Qromis is aiming to serve include
power electronics, LEDs, displays, and RF electronics.
www.qromis.com

40

Rain Neuromorphics
Inc.
Redwood City

Rain Neuromorphics Inc., founded in 2017, is reported tohave a “memristive nanowire neural network” (MN3) chiparchitecture that is able to train larger, more powerfulneural networks than any commercial chip currently on
the market. The processor is suitable for use both in thedata center and at the edge of the network. The company
reportedly is to use TSMC for manufacturing. Rain Neuromorphics claims that it can build and train neural architectures with more than 1 billion neurons, bringing theindustry closer to true brain-scale intelligence.

Rwww.rain.ai

Rigetti Quantum Computing Inc., founded by Chad
Rigetti in 2013, is developing quantum computer hardwareand cloud software. The company’s business model is tobuild a cloud quantum computer and provide access to it
through an application programming interface (API) called
Forest. Forest, which is in public beta testing, emphasizes aquantum-classical hybrid computing model, integrating
directly with existing cloud infrastructure and treating thequantum computer as an accelerator. Rigetti has raised$64 million across Series A and Series B funding rounds.

Rigetti Quantum
Computing Inc.
Berkeleywww.rigetti.com

RoboSense

Shenzhen, China

RoboSense, also known as Suteng Innovation Technology
Co. Ltd., is a LiDAR developer founded in 2014. RoboSense
has two product lines, including MEMS-based solid-state
LiDAR and mechanical LiDAR systems. Customers include automotive OEMs and Tier One suppliers. To date,
RoboSense LiDAR has been used in self-driving logistics
vehicles, buses, and passenger cars.
www.robosense.ai

Silicon 100: The Class of 2020

41

R
S

Royole Corp.

Fremont, California

Royole Corp. was founded in Silicon Valley, Shenzhen,
and Hong Kong in 2012 by three Stanford University andTsinghua University engineering graduates. The company produces flexible AMOLED displays at a resolution
beyond 3,000 ppi as well as flexible sensors. In Q4 2015,
Royole began building a flexible display production line inShenzhen with a projected final capacity of more than
50 million flexible display units per year. Royole’s Series
D funding included $240 million of equity financing and$560 million of debt financing.
www.royole.com

SambaNova Systems Inc. was founded in November 2017
and raised $56 million in Series A funding to develop a
computing platform for distributed machine learning. The
technology is based on work conducted in hardware andsoftware labs at Stanford University. In April 2019, SambaNova announced a $150 million equity financing round
led by Intel and GV (formerly Google Ventures) to take thecompany into “unicorn” territory. SambaNova said that it
would use the money to recruit engineers and accelerate
the buildout of its vertically integrated computing platform.

SambaNova
Systems Inc.
Palo Altowww.sambanovasystems.ai

SemiBlocks B.V.

's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands

SemiBlocks B.V. is developing a CMOS solution to allow
self-compensation for frequency errors due to temperature variations in crystal oscillators and eliminate theeffects of hysteresis. The SemiBlocks solution works witha low-cost crystal. No further external components are
required, enabling integration in other functions. The company was founded in 2017, and first products are expected
to be for small base stations in the 4G/5G radio communications market.
www.semiblocks.com

42

S

Senbiosys SA

Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Senbiosys SA is a 2017 spin-off from École PolytechniqueFédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). The company has developeda chip that can measure heart rate and oxygen levels using
both photoplethysmography (PPG) and time-of-flight (ToF)signals. The chip also measures ambient light.
www.senbiosys.com

Shanghai Zhaoxin Semiconductor Co. Ltd. is a state-owned
fabless chip company established in 2013 and headquartered in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, with R&D
centers and domestic branch offices in Beijing, Wuhan,
Shenzhen, and Xi'an. Zhaoxin is a developer of x86 processors with included GPU and is getting a handle on 7-nm
manufacturing process technology. The company plans to
introduce a 7-nm KaiXian KX-7000 in 2021. The processor will be based on a new CPU architecture with up to 32
cores and will support 64 threads.

Shanghai Zhaoxin
Semiconductor
Co. Ltd.
Shanghaien.zhaoxin.com

SiFive Inc.

San Mateo, California
SiFive Inc. was founded in 2015 by creators of the free
and open RISC-V processor architecture as a reaction to
the end of conventional transistor scaling and escalating
chip design costs. SiFive provides IP cores, processors, andboards.
www.sifive.com

Silicon 100: The Class of 2020

43

S

SiLC Technologies Inc.
Monrovia, California

SiLC Technologies Inc., a silicon photonics startup foundedin 2018, has launched an integrated frequency-modulated
continuous-wave (FMCW) LiDAR-on-chip designed to operate at 1,550-nm wavelength.
www.silc.com

SkyWater Technology
Foundry LLC
SkyWater Technology Foundry LLC was formed in 2017 byprivate equity firm Oxbow Industries LLC through the purchase of a 200-mm wafer fab in Bloomington from Cypress
Semiconductor. The foundry is a trusted supplier for U.S.
defense microelectronics and provides process development support. It has made chips ranging from quantum
circuits to microfluidic chips for DNA sequencing.

Bloomington, Minnesota

www.skywatertechnology.com

Smartsens
Technology Co. Ltd.
ShanghaiSmartsens Technology Co. Ltd., founded in 2011, is a
supplier of CMOS imaging sensors. It has R&D teams in
Silicon Valley and Shanghai and an ISO-certified supply chain
infrastructure to supply CMOS image sensors for security
and surveillance, consumer, automotive, and other massmarket applications. The company signed a license agreement with IBM in 2018.
www.smartsenstech.com

44

S

Spark Microsystems
International Inc.
Montreal

Spark Microsystems International Inc. was founded in 2016
to work on a low-power radio for IoT with an order of magnitude better energy efficiency and latency than BLE or Zigbee and supporting faster data rates. Applications may befound in high-end audio distribution and hearing aids.
www.sparkmicro.com

Synsense, formerly aiCTX AG, has created an asynchronous, event-driven neuromorphic processor for always-on,
real-time dynamic vision applications. The DynapCNN
chip measures 12 mm2 and is fabricated in a 22-nm manufacturing process technology that houses more than
1 million spiking neurons. It is suitable for implementing
convolutional neural networks for use in vision processing.
The company is a China-backed startup spun out of theInstitute of Neuroinformatics at the University of Zurich in
March 2017.

Synsense
Zurichwww.aictx.ai

Syntiant Corp.
IrvineSyntiant Corp., a startup formed in 2017, is developing
analog neural networking processors that remove data
movement penalties by performing neural network computations in flash memory. The company has received an
undisclosed amount of backing from Intel Capital and other venture capital firms. It has an agreement to marry its
neural decision processors with the microphone technology of Infineon Technologies AG (Munich, Germany).
www.syntiant.com

Silicon 100: The Class of 2020

45

T

Tenstorrent Inc.
TorontoTenstorrent Inc., founded in 2016, is creating highperformance processor ASICs engineered for deeplearning. Tenstorrent’s processor is designed to excel
at both learning and inference while being softwareprogrammable. The processor’s architecture scales frombattery-powered IoT devices to large cloud servers. The
Tenstorrent team comprises alumni from hardware companies such as Nvidia and AMD. The company is backed by
Real Ventures and Eclipse Venture Capital.
www.tenstorrent.com

UltraSense Systems Inc. was founded in 2017 by Mo
Maghsoudnia, former vice president of technology andmanufacturing at InvenSense. The company has come up
with an ultrasound actuator/sensor that can be attachedto the inside surface of an enclosure to create a touch userinterface on the outside. Smartphones and automotive
dashboards are applications in which the company believes
it can do well, although the technology is of more generalapplicability in industrial applications, medical equipment,
and white goods.

UltraSense
Systems Inc.
San Josewww.ultrasensesys.com

Unispectral Ltd.
Ramat Gan, Israel

Unispectral Ltd., founded in 2016, is developing a hyperspectral image sensor that not only can be used for spectrometric analysis of materials such as foodstuffs but canalso capture images in low light. The sensor is suitable forwearables, digital health, medical imaging, IoT, industrial,
and agricultural applications. The company is reported to
be in negotiations with smartphone manufacturers for the
inclusion of its sensor on next-generation phones.
www.unispectral.com

46

U

Untether AI
TorontoUntether AI was founded in February 2017 and claims tohave developed a neural network inference engine basedon bus-free near-memory computing and enabled by software capable of pre-placing data. The architecture is said
to be scalable from mobile devices to data centers.
www.untether.ai

Upmem SAS
Upmem SAS, founded in 2015, develops processor-inmemory chips for use on DRAM modules to improve performance of data-intensive applications in the data center.
The technology consists of integrating processing units
into the DRAM modules so that the main processor can
offload functions to coprocessors sitting close to the data.
For some applications, the approach can improve performance by a factor of 10 while yielding lower system-level
power consumption.

Grenoble, France

www.upmem.com

USound GmbHGraz, Austria

USound GmbH is a fabless MEMS company that was
founded in 2014 with the mission of producing audio systems based on MEMS piezo-actuators. USound claims thatits MEMS speakers exceed the performance of voice coilspeakers for in-ear applications. Its products include audio
amplifiers, audio codecs, and passive components and may
be suitable for smartphones and wireless in-ear systems.
www.usound.com

Silicon 100: The Class of 2020

47

V
W

Vayyar Imaging Ltd.
Tel Aviv

Vayyar Imaging Ltd., founded in 2010, provides a radar-onchip sensor for applications ranging from breast cancer
screening to detecting water leakage to safety monitoring.
Vayyar’s chip covers imaging and radar bands from 3 GHz
to 81 GHz with 72 transmitters and 72 receivers. Enhancedby an integrated DSP with internal memory, Vayyar’s sensor executes complex imaging algorithms without the needfor an external CPU.
www.vayyar.com

VueReal Inc.
VueReal Inc., founded in 2016, makes microLED displays
and is developing microLED arrays with resolution densities of up to 30,000 ppi. VueReal will offer two types of
microLED displays: one with submicron pixels for AR and
VR micro-display applications and another for larger displays with pixels structured and pitched only a couple ofmicrons apart.

Waterloo, Ontario

www.vuereal.com

Weebit Nano Ltd.
Hod HaSharon

Weebit Nano Ltd., founded in 2014, has an R&D agreementwith Rice University (Houston) and has licensed seven patents on the silicon oxide resistive random access memory(ReRAM) technology being researched there by Professor James Tour. The company has moved rapidly down
through nodes and is now targeting both CMOS bulk andfully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) manufacturing
processes. Weebit’s technology is being adopted by at least
two Chinese semiconductor manufacturers. The company
has also demonstrated a 40-nm 1-Mb memory array.
www.weebit-nano.com

48

Wiliot Inc.
San Diego

Wiliot Inc., founded in 2017, is a fabless semiconductor
company developing passive SoC platforms for the IoT
market. The company is aiming at battery-less operationand seamless connectivity as the baseline enabler of IoT
growth.

W
X
Y

www.wiliot.com

XTX Technology Ltd.
Shenzhen
XTX Technology Ltd., formerly known as Paragon Technology, sells flash memory chips. The company was foundedin 2014 and by 2016 had achieved annual sales exceeding$20 million. XTX also provides a system-in-package assembly service.
www.xtxtech.com

Yangtze Memory
Technologies Co. Ltd.
Wuhan, China

Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. Ltd., partly funded by
Tsinghua Unigroup, was formed by the takeover of Wuhan
Xinxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (XMC) in July
2016 with a plan to spend $24 billion to establish a memory chip company to rival market leaders Samsung, SK Hynix,
Toshiba, and Micron. Yangtze describes itself as the main
entity to implement China’s national memory base project.
YMTC acquired a 100% stake in XMC, a volume producer of
NOR flash and image sensors that had broken ground on
a wafer fab for the production of 3D NAND flash memory.
Simon Yang, previously CEO of XMC, was appointed CEO of
YMTC in October 2016. The company had introduced its
Xtacking 3D NAND process.
www.ymtc.com

Silicon 100: The Class of 2020

49

Z

Zhuhai Eeasy
Technology Co. Ltd.
Zhuhai, China

Zhuhai Eeasy Technology Co. Ltd., founded in 2016, focuses on proprietary IP research and development for AI
acceleration, high-definition display and audio-visual coding and decoding, and high-speed mixed-signal circuits.
Eeasy Tech launched its first test chip in 2017 and has completed a tape-out of its edge AI chip.
www.eeasytech.com

50

Video interview of Peter
Clarke, technology journalist
and curator of Silicon 100

Silicon 100: The Class of 2020

51

Startups in
the SpotlightTen Silicon 100 Companies
Recommended for Deeper
Analysis
By Peter Clarke
Freelance electronics journalist and curator of the Silicon 100

Analog, AI, MEMS, memory, short-range RF, 5G,

iOS chips from A7 to A12X, left the company in

LiDAR, quantum computing, and displays fromFebruary 2019 to set up Nuvia, and Apple was notaround the world, including California, Canada,

happy. Apple filed a lawsuit, alleging that Williams

the U.K., and France.

had broken his employment contract while setting
up his next company. Nuvia is focused on blending

1. An analog Arm?

compute performance, power efficiency, and scala-Agile Analog Ltd. (Cambridge, England), founded inbility in the data center and is a potential competitor

August 2017, is seeking to change the way analog

to Graphcore Ltd. (Bristol, England) and SambaNova

circuits are designed, with the intention of becom-

Systems Inc. (Palo Alto, California). Nuvia announced

ing a leading analog IP company. The company is anthat it had raised $53 million in its Series A funding

inheritor of the legacy of one of the best startups ofround in November 2019.

recent decades: Arm, now part of SoftBank Group.
Agile Analog includes Arm alumni at the top of the

3. Do it again

company and on its board of directors. It claims that

UltraSense Systems Inc. (San Jose, California) is a

it is able to design analog circuits faster than pre-MEMS-based company and is one of those likely toviously possible, to a higher quality, and for imple-

succeed because the team is on the carousel for amentation in almost any silicon process.

second time. When TDK Corp. bought InvenSense,a pioneer of integrated inertial measurement sen-

2. Child of FANG

sors, for about $1.3 billion in 2017, one executive

Nuvia Inc. (Santa Clara, California) is a poten-

did not transfer with the company. That was Mo

tial poster child of the artificial intelligence era. It

Maghsoudnia, previously vice president of technol-

could also represent a backwash from verticallyogy and manufacturing.

integrated companies to disaggregated companies
because the founders were drawn from promi-

Maghsoudnia had an idea for a sensing andnent positions in hardware teams at Apple andhuman interface technology based on ultrasound,

Google. The founding team is so experienced andso he formed UltraSound Systems and developed

so well-connected, they surely have a head start inan actuator/sensor that can be attached to thethe race to AI success — well, maybe.

inside surface of an enclosure to create a touch userinterface. The MEMS-based technology operates

Gerard Williams, lead designer of Apple’s custom

at megahertz frequencies. It sends and receives

Startups in the Spotlight53

pressure-wave signals through about 5 mm of

5. Open for NVM businessaluminum, glass, or other rigid materials. It can

Weebit Nano Ltd. (Hod HaSharon, Israel) seems

detect strength of tap and avoids the need forto be making progress in the non-volatile memory

cutouts or openings in the enclosure — good forfield, where many have been in development for

smartphone manufacturers and others. Maghsoud-many years without conspicuous success.

nia has attracted some former InvenSense executives to join him, and they are ready to “do it again.”

Weebit was founded in 2014, has an R&D agreement with Rice University (Houston), and hasInterestingly, InvenSense was founded by Stevelicensed seven patents on silicon oxide resistive

Nasiri, who grew the company and took it throughrandom access memory (ReRAM) technology. It is

its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stockjust one of numerous startups that have tried to

Exchange. Nasiri subsequently left InvenSense andcreate a solid-state non-volatile memory to outper-

became a venture capitalist, angel investor, and phi-form and out-scale NAND flash, which struggles tolanthropist. One of his investments is 2012 startup

get below 28-nm process nodes.

NextInput Inc. (Mountain View, California), which ispioneering a form of force-sensing technology. A

Weebit Nano, working with French research insti-

sensing and human-machine interface duel in thetute CEA-Leti as a development partner, seems tomaking?

be making real and rapid progress toward com-

4. Quantum unicorn:
photons versus electrons

mercialization of its technology. And we know thispartly because Weebit is a public company. In 2016,
when venture capital firms were reluctant to invest

PsiQuantum Corp. (Palo Alto, California) hasn’t

in hardware startups, Weebit engineered a reverse

done much yet — except raise $230 million to fundtakeover of Australian firm Radar Iron Ltd. to raiseplans to create a photonic quantum-computing

funds. Radar Iron was traded on the Australian Stockplatform. But that is reason enough to delve deeper.

Exchange, and one of the terms of the deal was that
Radar Iron would change its name to Weebit Nano

The company was founded in the U.K. in 2016 byonce the takeover was completed.

Jeremy O’Brien, previously a professor of physics
and electrical engineering at the University of Bris-

One consequence is that, as a public company,

tol and the director for the Centre for Quantum

Weebit Nano is compelled to disclose material

Photonics there, and Terry Rudolph, a professor atdevelopments in R&D and business partnerships.

Imperial College London.

There has been plenty of good news, and there is
the prospect that silicon oxide ReRAM could provide

O’Brien has been pursuing quantum computing

a significant alternative to embedded and discrete

from his student days in Australia in the 1990s andmagnetic RAM.

throughout a relatively brief but illustrious academic
that photonics-based quantum computing is vastly

6. Representing theGrenoble cluster

superior to electronic versions and thus is the way

Aledia SA (Grenoble, France) is the longest-serving

forward.

member of the Silicon 60/Silicon 100, having been

career. PsiQuantum is pressing forward in the belief

on the list since v15. The company was founded in54

2011 to capitalize on six years of research at the CEA-

transceiver aimed at the internet of things. For short-

Leti research institute in the creation of 3D GaN-on-

range applications, up to about 100 meters, Sparksilicon nanowire LEDs. The company is now using

claims that its UWB transceiver can achieve energythat base to create emissive displays with greater

efficiencies of 1 nJ/bit — a factor of 30 below Blue-

battery life, better outdoor readability, improved

tooth Low Energy — along with megabit-per-second

image quality, and higher resolution. After sevendata rates. The system also has low latency, open-

years at the Minatec campus in central Grenoble,

ing up duplex applications, and has great inherent

the company has invested €20 million to build aimmunity to electromagnetic interference.

4,000-square-meter facility in Échirolles, in the Grenoble metropolitan area. The site will support R&D

9. Upon reflection

and include advanced manufacturing equipment toJeeva Wireless Inc. (Seattle) is being highlighted

launch LED display production.

for its highly innovative technology. However, bearin mind that customer pull usually beats technology

7. LiDAR dreams

push. Back in 2014, researchers at the University of

SiLC Technologies Inc. (Monrovia, California) has

Washington used RF signals as a power source fora small chip that could be changing LiDAR but

relatively long-range communications using a sys-also has applications away from autonomous driv-

tem called ambient backscattering; in the process,ing. The company was founded in 2018 and has

they opened up the prospect of battery-less IoT.

launched

frequency-modulated

In 2017, the researchers demonstrated transmis-

continuous-wave (FMCW) LiDAR on a chip designed

sion of data across distances of up to 2.8 km. They

to operate at a 1,550-nm wavelength.

also started to put effort into a company that had

anintegrated

formed in 2015 to commercialize the technology by
Many 3D vision solutions use 905-nm-wavelength IR
light and time-of-flight detection, and while this has

linking it to Wi-Fi. What about the impact of Wi-Fi 6?

been good for vehicle trials, it is SiLC’s contention

10. Go analog or go homethat eye-safety concerns have restricted their range

Syntiant Corp. (Irvine, California), a startup formed

and that multi-user crosstalk will most likely hamperin 2017, is developing analog neural networking

their widespread usage. If a transition to FMCW at

processors that perform the neural computations

a 1,550-nm wavelength is a must, then SiLC is wellin flash memory to remove data movement penal-

positioned to benefit.

ties. This development hits a lot of hot buttons ofmodern processor thinking, but can the company

8. Not your parents’spark-gap transmitter
Spark

Microsystems

Internationalbe the best at executing and going to market?
Inc.

The startup has received an undisclosed amount of(Montreal) has innovative RF technology that could

backing from Intel Capital and other venture cap-

displace incumbents such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

ital firms. It has an agreement to marry its neuralfor some IoT applications. The company wasdecision processors (NDPs) with the microphonefounded in 2016 to develop a specialized low-pow-

technology of Infineon Technologies AG (Munich,er, short-range, ultra-wideband (UWB) wirelessGermany).

Startups in the Spotlight55

Changing
the Analog IP
Dynamic

Agile Analog

Cambridge, England
Creation: 2017www.agileanalog.com

Agile Analog automates analog IP development tostreamline chipset design.
By Jennifer BaljkoIt’s been a long time coming, but engineers may

itself more as a software company than a hard-breathe easier knowing there’s a way around theware one — automates the design and delivery ofbottleneck called analog chip design.

analog IP for microchips and uses its rules-based AI
as a standout way to replicate the behavior of real

Taking a page from well-established models foranalog engineers.

acquiring and using digital intellectual property(IP) cores, Agile Analog aims to change the slow

“Companies like Arm, Imagination, and Synopsys

and manual analog design processes that have

have transformed the digital space to make pur-remained largely unchanged for the last 60 years.

chasing IP a really easy process,” said Agile Analog

The Cambridge, England, startup — which fashions

CEO Tim Ramsdale. “The fact that you can lay out
blocks automatically means you
can pick any silicon process andyou’re good. On the analog side,
it doesn’t work that way. Whatwe were finding as we spoke
to customers was that they all
have common challenges. They
couldn’t find the [analog] IP theywanted. They would find IP withfeatures they didn’t need or IP
that had been engineered forother customers, and it was never on the right silicon process.”

56

Agile Analog CEO Tim Ramsdale, non-executive director

Agile Analog was founded in

Sir Hossein Yassaie, and chairman Pete Hutton use their longtime

2017 out of this “frustration withindustry experience to change the way analog IP is delivered.

the quality and availability of(Image: Agile Analog)

analog IP in the market,” Rams-

dale added. “I realized what we needed to do was tofor Wi-Fi HaLow and cellular NB-IoT applications. In a

automate the development of analog IP.”deal announced in May 2020, Palm Ceia will use Agile
Analog’s data converter and power management IP

That vision led to creating programmatic, systemat-

for its next-generation Wi-Fi and cellular IoT products.

ic, and repeatable processes and developing moreverifiable and reliable analog IP products — such as

For now, Agile Analog sees the internet of things

computer-generated, configurable analog-to-digitaland consumer electronics as its sweet spots. But in-(ADC) and digital-to-analog (DAC) data converters —creasing demand for electronic components in thethat reduce the time engineers spend on this partthe automotive, enterprise, health-care, industrialof the chip design.

automation, and smart-home digital-assistant markets presents other near-term opportunities.

Agile Analog’s executive team and board members
are longtime industry veterans hailing from Arc, Arm,

“There’s more analog design to be done in the

Broadcom, Cadence, Imagination, and Wolfson, andworld than there are analog designers. That’s thetheir collective experience is steeped in analog,

niche we’re trying to fill in the market: [to] provide

digital, EDA, mixed-signal SoC, RF, and application

the analog IP you need in your SoC,” said Ramsdale,

processor product development. The company cur-acknowledging that while many companies will still

rently has 28 employees and has raised $8 million toassign their highest-performance designs to theirdate in what Ramsdale called a Pre-A funding round,in-house engineering team, other analog gaps will

attracting Delin Ventures, firstminute Capital, andexist. “There’s no real benefit to doing everything

MMC Ventures as its primary investors. While Rams-

in-house. What we’re trying to do is to relieve thedale declined to disclose annual revenue numbers,pressure on all of that other stuff that people needhe said that 2020 is expected to be a strong year for

to make their products work.” ■the startup based on its order bookings.
Jennifer Baljko is a contributing
One customer that has signed on is Palma Ceia Sem-

writer for EE Times.

iDesign, a provider of communication chips and IP

Startups in the Spotlight57

Nuvia: Reimagining Silicon
Design for the
Nuvia Inc.
Data Center
Santa Clara, California

By Jeff Dorsch

Creation: 2019www.nuviainc.com

Nuvia is all about a new approach to silicon design.
The growing, well-funded startup is based in

Jon Carvill joined Nuvia late last year as vice pres-Santa Clara, California, a prime locale in Silicon

ident of marketing. He previously worked at Intel,

Valley, not far from Intel’s headquarters. The com-

where he was vice president of technology leader-pany was founded in 2019. Before the end of lastship marketing.

year, Nuvia received $53 million in
Series A funding from Capricorn

Nuvia is developing a custom

Investment Group, Dell Technol-

instruction-set architecture forogies Capital, the Mayfield Fund,

hyperscale data centers. Whileand WRVI Capital, with participa-

Nuvia has yet to introduce itstion by Nepenthe LLC.

product, the company has given
some general guidance on what

The company used the money to

it is up to.

expand its workforce, opening an
office in Austin, Texas, and anoth-“Our focus is really on reimagining

er in Toronto. While Crunchbase

the way silicon is built for the data

estimates Nuvia’s employee countcenter,” Carvill said. “We’re build-at 51 to 100, the actual head-

Jon Carvill (Image: Nuvia Inc.)

count is about 150 and increasing,ing a server-class SoC from theground up with the architecture

according to the company. There are dozens of job

to serve the needs of that market and to deliver anlistings on the company’s website.

experience that is going to be, when it’s a chip, bestin-class for performance, energy efficiency, and total

The startup’s three founders have working back-cost of ownership.

grounds at Apple and Google, along with Advanced
Micro Devices, Arm, Broadcom, and other compa-“That’s kind of where we are right now in our ex-

nies. The trio consists of Gerard Williams III, CEO;istence — doing well and weathering things pretty

Manu Gulati, senior vice president of silicon engi-

well during the pandemic. It certainly helps whenneering; and John Bruno, senior vice president of

you’re working remotely. We don’t have working sil-system engineering.

icon back from the fab yet. We haven’t settled on afoundry yet.”58

pandemic. “During the Covid-19

Paradigm Shift in CPU Performance Leadership

period, there are also challenges
just with onboarding, because

5-year CPU Performance Improvement
7000

we’re onboarding people while6000

we can’t actually meet them first,”

5000

he said. The ability to get people

4000
3000

to integrate with their team, to2000

do some initial team building,

1000
0
2014

2015

2016
X86

Leading ARM SoC

2017

2018

presents two challenges in a2019

virtual world.

Rest of ARM SoCs

6

*The CPU performance for ‘Leading ARM SoC’ for year 2019 is projected as a moving average of its past years perf

“The only other challenge on that
The CPU performance for Leading Arm SoC for 2019 is projected as

was, as you move all your sys-a moving average of its past years’ performance. (Image: Nuvia Inc.)

tems to virtual, you want to makesure you’re not doing too much

In addition to the existing offices, Nuvia is hiring

to disrupt your development environment, because

people to work remotely from the United Kingdom

you don’t have the ability to have a ton of people inand different parts of the U.S., according to Carvill.

the office to really make changes as needed, so you
want to make sure that development environment

Like most startups, Nuvia faces a number of chal-is stable. That’s more of a Covid situation, and we’ve

lenges, even with significant financial support.

done that, so those are probably the challenges; forthe company overall, it’s hiring and expansion, get-“Our No. 1 priority is hiring,” Carvill said. “We haveting new offices open, and really putting ourselves

set a very high bar for the caliber of talent wein the position that we can bring on all the talentwant at Nuvia. You have to go out there pretty

we need to meet our technology milestones andaggressively to pursue those people, because mostroadmap. That’s priority one for us.”of [them] are not submitting job applications. They’recoming in from people we’ve known, or we’ve worked

Carvill continued: “With silicon design, it may be 10

with in the past, that we have to really target, [with]or 12 people that do a particular function globally;

the proposition that Nuvia would be a great fit for

you’re looking for a very precise function. And that’sthem. Hiring is definitely top of mind for us. Beyond

not always easy to find! You really have to do pretty

that, these other challenges go to the point of putting

aggressive search and analysis to find those people,

the infrastructure in place so as to make the compa-

to reach out and engage them, and to get them tony capable of offering options to the best of our abil-want to look at a change, because generally, thoseities. We are a startup, but we also want to have re-people are also fairly well-adapted by their current

sources; we want to have things like benefit packages

employers. I’m proud of the work we’ve done there,

and otherwise that still put us in a very strong place.”but there’s still a lot more for us to do.” ■Carvill, who is in charge of recruiting in addition

Jeff Dorsch is a veteran editor who

to marketing and other responsibilities, described

has covered Silicon Valley for a variety

the difficulties of growing the company during aof industry publications.

Startups in the Spotlight59

UltrasoundSensor Turns
Any Surface Intoa Touch Button

UltraSense
Systems Inc.

San Jose, California
Creation: 2017www.ultrasensesys.com

By Anne-Françoise Pelé
What if any surface — home door, car dashboard,

InvenSense for $1.3 billion in May 2017, Goehl

oven glass — could be turned into a user inter-

stayed for another 15 months. Maghsoudnia, how-face? Mechanical buttons would disappear andever, left to pursue ultrasound in medical. “He foundelectronic devices would be waterproof. That’sthat it would take a while to take off and came up

the ambition of UltraSense Systems (San Jose,

with the idea of using ultrasound as a touch user

California), a newly formed company whose ultra-interface,” Goehl told EE Times. “That really was thesound sensor technology aims to create new touchgenesis of UltraSense.”

experiences in the internet of things era.
Created in April 2018, UltraSense is now emerging
UltraSense introduced what it claims is the smallest

from stealth mode. And because the smartphone

ultrasound sensor-on-chip for touch and gestures

market is a high-growth market, it has made mobile

through any material and any material thickness.

handsets its primary focus. “Adoption is relative-

Dubbed TouchPoint and TouchPoint Z, its initial

ly quick, and we are hitting the market at the rightproducts are sampling now and are expected to betime with the launch of 5G technology, in particularincorporated into several consumer and industrial

millimeter-wave 5G,” said Goehl.

devices in 2020.

Removing mechanicalbuttons
UltraSense brings together former InvenSense
executives: Mo Maghsoudnia, a co-founder and theCEO of the new company, and Dan Goehl, chief busi-(Image: UltraSense Systems Inc.)

ness officer, worked together for about six years at
InvenSense and saw that company rise to IPO. At

As part of the process, the entrepreneurs went

the time, Maghsoudnia was vice president of tech-through their list of contacts, leveraged their net-

nology and worldwide manufacturing, while Goehl

work, and started pitching their concept. “All phone

was vice president of worldwide sales.

makers were receptive, but they said the firstthing they want to do is replace the mechanical

When TDK Corp. completed the acquisition of60

buttons,” said Goehl. It’s a request that makes even

more sense with the advent of 5G, he added: “Foragainst the surface material, and the air goes away.

millimeter-wave 5G technology, the industrial design

The harder we press, the more contrast we see.”of the phone is going to have to change because
there are going to be 24 antennas in the phone justWhat if users carry their smartphone in their pock-for 5G.” And those antennas will have to be able toet? Could they trigger the sensor by accident? There

work under glass and metal.

is little risk, Goehl said, because “we are able to un-

Sensing through all materials

derstand the input material and reject that.” In thecase of a fabric, “we designed our ultrasound sig-

A shift has recently occurred in the way that users

nal to dissipate in air, so when the phone is in yourinteract with their smartphones, smart home appli-

pocket, and it is rubbing against the cloth material,

ances, and other devices that have penetrated their

we can reject that pattern.”daily lives. Digital has been replacing mechanical,
and the move to virtual buttons and surface ges-

Sampling nowtures is accelerating.
Immune to sensing through moisture, dirt, oils, andlotions, UltraSense’s sensor is claimed to enable
touch sensing through any material and any material thickness, including metal, glass, wood, ceramic,
and plastic.
Asked about any physical barriers, Goehl said thelimit would be air and power. “We have designed
our first products to be power-efficient. We focus
on the mobile environment, and we can go through(Image: UltraSense Systems Inc.)

5 mm of aluminum, 5 mm of glass, or 2 mm of stainless steel, the densest metal. Theoretically, with

No bigger than the tip of a pen (1.4 × 2.4 ×

what we have and some other products coming up

0.49 mm in an optical LGA package), UltraSense’s

next year, power is not an issue. We can go throughTouchPoint is described as the smallest ultrasound

20 mm of solid aluminum without any issue.”sensor-on-chip. Consuming less than 20 µA of power in always-on mode, it can operate independently

Moving to the ultrasound technology itself, Goe-of a product’s host processor, with all the algorithmhl said: “We are transmitting an ultrasound beamprocessing embedded in the sensor. It can be usedthrough the material, and we are looking for a

as a standalone power button for wake-on-touchchange in acoustic impedance at the surface. As it

sensing, by powering on the entire product with areflects back into the sensor, we can see and inter-

simple touch, and as a multi-functional user inter-

pret it as a medium or a heavy touch.”face using a series of taps, holds, and swipes.

With a light touch, he explained, “there is still air

Basically, the sensor-on-chip is composed of anwithin the ridges of your fingerprints, but as you

ASIC and a microelectromechanical system (MEMS)

press harder, the ridges of your fingerprint deform

transducer. The ASIC, Goehl specified, includes theStartups in the Spotlight61

microcontroller, low-dropout regula-instance, “we can work with othertor, memory, and analog front end.

materials and provide larger touch

The MEMS transducer is a piezoe-

areas.”

lectric micromachined transducer(PMUT). “The recipe to do it is ours,

UltraSense is not entering virgin ter-but we can use both GlobalFound-ritory. A handful of companies suchries and TSMC to fabricate the trans-

as strain-gauge sensor supplier Sen-

ducer and the whole sensor-on-

tons and force-touch sensor sup-chip,” Goehl said.

Dan Goehl, UltraSense

plier New Degree Technology have

(Image: UltraSense Systems Inc.)

been around for several years, “butSampling now, the TouchPoint

our technology is very different,” said

sensor-on-chip is ready for mass production. “We

Goehl. Whereas strain-gauge, force-touch, and sur-have several design wins going on today where

face-acoustic-wave solutions have industrial andphone makers have designed phones around ourmechanical design restrictions (e.g., material thick-products to prove out the concept,” said Goehl. “We

ness, integration complexity, and production cali-see some of those going into production in the sec-bration time), UltraSense claims that its TouchPoint

ond half of 2020.”

solutions provide for minimal integration effort andExecuting on plans
Looking two to three years ahead, Goehl said hemere seconds of production calibration. “The nicething is the market is ripe today,” said Goehl. “Maybea couple of years ago, it wasn’t the right time.”sees strong traction in selling not just a sensor but
a multi-functional user interface to go along with it.

Today, UltraSense employs just over 20 people,

Starting in the mobile and consumer space, Ultra-

but Goehl said it is in hiring mode. “We will be

Sense sees prospects in the automotive sphere with

ramping up production next year and in 2021,“a lot of proofs of concept going on with several au-

and we have some great vision for our producttomotive suppliers for various types of applications.”

roadmap. We need engineers to be able to executeon our plans.” ■In automotive, other avenues could be pursued

62

and synergies found between UltraSense’s tech-Anne-Françoise Pelé

nology and other touch interfaces, including haptic-

is editor-in-chief

enabled touch interface systems, he said. Forof eetimes.eu.

PsiQuantum Hiring AllHands-on-Deck Teamto Build the First Useful
Quantum Computer
By Jeff Dorsch

PsiQuantum Corp.

PsiQuantum, which is developing a quantum computer, grabbed headlines in April when it announced

Palo Alto, California$215 million in Series C funding, bringing its total

Creation: 2016private funding to $508.5 million over four rounds.

www.psiquantum.com

The startup was founded in 2016 by Jeremy O’Brienand Peter Shadbolt. O’Brien, PsiQuantum’s CEO, isa professor at the U.K.’s University of Bristol. Shad-

On its website, PsiQuantum says that it is making

bolt, the company’s chief strategy officer, holds a“the first useful quantum computer,” but there’s

postdoctoral position at the Centre for Controlled

not much more information. The company is hiring;

Quantum Dynamics at Imperial College London.

it’s looking for systems architects, programmers,
applicationengineers,quantum

physicists,

Among PsiQuantum’s investors are Atomico, Baillie

photonics experts, and engineers in semiconduc-

Gifford, BlackRock, Founders Fund, Horsley Bridge

tors, systems, and software. It is working on quan-

Partners, M12, Pitango Venture

tum bits (qubits) made with silicon

Capital, Quantum1 Group, andphotonics that could be produced

Redpoint Ventures.

in a regular wafer fabrication facility. The goal is a general-purpose

Many companies, big and small,quantum computer.

are developing quantum computing

technology.

Google,O’Brien published a paper of

Honeywell, Intel, and IBM areusing photons to make qubits. He

among the tech behemoths pur-set a goal of producing 1 million

suing the field. On the smaller side

qubits to achieve the scale need-

are Rigetti Quantum Computing,ed for his startup’s quantum com-

D-Wave Systems, IonQ, QC Ware,puter.

Cambridge

Quantum

Comput-ing, Atom Computing, IQM, andJeremy O'Brien, PsiQuantum

Robert Niffenegger, a researchRiverlane.

CEO (Image: PsiQuantum Corp.)

scientist at MIT’s Lincoln Labo-

Startups in the Spotlight63

tolerant system,” he added. “During this time, thescientific consensus has moved in our favor. No
applications have yet been discovered that give a
useful speedup without error correction, and manygroups are starting to believe that error correction (and, therefore, a million qubits) is, in fact, required for useful applications. Many quantum computing projects have struggled to escape from lab
A stack of silicon wafers in a test stand at

environments due to a need for exotic materials,

PsiQuantum's facility (Image: PsiQuantum Corp.)

nonstandard manufacturing processes, or extreme
operating environments. Thanks to the unique man-ratory, said of PsiQuantum’s concept, “By setting

ufacturability of the photonic approach, we havea goal of a million qubits, they emphasize thatbeen able to graduate to a 300-millimeter processscale and integration are the only path forward

in a Tier One semiconductor fab.”

and flaunt the fact that existing nano-photonics
based on CMOS fabrication technologies is able
to fabricate thousands of optical components ona single chip. However, even if they had very highperformance photonics on a single photonic chip
the size of a wafer, that would at best get you maybe
thousands of qubits.”
What kinds of challenges has PsiQuantum faced,and how did it overcome those issues?

A closeup image of PsiQuantum chips ona silicon wafer (Image: PsiQuantum Corp.)“We have long said that there are a million ways tomake a qubit but only one way to make a million

The startup sees “huge potential for quantum com-

qubits,” said Shadbolt. “Conventional wisdom hasputing to be a world-changing technology that will

historically been that a quantum computer can-address humanity’s most pressing challenges,” henot be built using photonics, because photons do

added. “We will address meaningful problems that

not interact. Prior to the existence of the company,

no supercomputer can. This includes drug discov-none of the architectures proposed to overcome

ery; uncovering new catalysts to scrub CO2 from thethis lack of interaction were truly practical. Histor-

atmosphere; designing new materials for the en-

ically, some people have been motivated to think

ergy, aerospace, construction, and other high-techthat error correction might not be required andindustries; and enabling advances in genomics,

they could perhaps build a quantum computer with

communications, finance, agriculture, and more.

only a few hundred noisy qubits.”“As a result, we believe there will be an enormous

64

PsiQuantum has “remained singularly focused onmarket for a large-scale, error-corrected, use-developing a useful quantum computer, which

ful quantum computer and the computational

means focusing on building a million-qubit, fault-

advances it will unlock.” ■Optimistic Weebit
Nano Closer to ReRAM
Commercialization
Focus remains on embedded market as discrete
ReRAM efforts ramp up.
By Gary Hilson

Weebit Nano Ltd.

Weebit Nano is one of just a handful of emerging
memory companies making some headway in the
non-volatile memory field, where others are stuck

Hod HaSharon, Israel
Creation: 2014
www.weebit-nano.com

in development.
The Israeli company is getting closer to commer-

the end of 2020. Hanoch said that temporary fabcializing resistive random-access memory (ReRAM).

closures due to the coronavirus might delay someOne factor in its favor is that ReRAM can be man-company activities for a few months, though “inufactured using existing manufacturing methods.

general, we’re continuing to make very good pro-

The company is also traded on the Australian Stockgress.” In a recent business milestone, Weebit Nano

Exchange, and keeping investors happy is arguably

signed a letter of intent with SiEn Integrated Circuits

a good motivator for any company to hit its mile

to deploy SiOx ReRAM technology in the Chinesestones.

company’s semiconductor products.

CEO Coby Hanoch, who took the reins after the com-

On the technology front, last year, Weebit Nanopany had already begun trading, said that there’s a

confirmed test results in collaboration with Frenchbenefit to being a public company with a board ofresearch institute Leti, showing that it’s possible todirectors — “luminaries” who guide the company

produce its ReRAM technology as an embedded

forward. The most critical differentiator for Weebit

memory using two, or possibly only one, additionalNano, however, is that its ReRAM is silicon oxidemask. That’s an improvement over the seven to 10(SiOx)-based and doesn’t require novel materials.

additional masks normally needed by flash mem-That appeals to potential customers and partners,

ory, making ReRAM a viable replacement for NOR.

he said, and “really enables us to move much faster

The company also attained external verification

than our competitors.”

from memory chip manufacturer XTX Technology inChina four months ahead of schedule.

Until the Covid-19 pandemic struck, Weebit Nano
was on track to deliver its SiOx-based ReRAM mem-That verification is a key driver for what was prob-

ory modules for a South Korean company before

ably the company’s biggest news in 2019. Weebit

Startups in the Spotlight65

Nano time and lower its risk.
Longer term, the company stillsees opportunity for its ReRAM
technology to support neuromorphic computing. Currently,
research institutes are permitted to use Weebit Nano’s
ReRAM for their research, said
Hanoch.
In the meantime, the embedded market remains the
Weebit’s ReRAM cell consists of two metal layers with a siliconcompany’s main focus. “Theoxide layer between them, comprised of materials that canshortest path to revenue forbe used in existing production lines. (Image: Weebit Nano Ltd.)us is the embedded market,” Hanoch said. “We’re reallyputtingtheemphasis

Nano’s strategy had been to establish itself in thethere so that we can get revenues, because

embedded market first to generate revenue before

especially as a public company, everyone’s waiting

ramping up efforts on discrete ReRAM, said Han-

to see that.”och. But it closed out the year by announcing that
it would accelerate its program to develop discrete

Aside from the pandemic, getting an initial

ReRAM memory technology in response to interest

memory module out the door to realize revenue isfrom customers, including XTX.

a key challenge, followed by integrating a selector
with its ReRAM module. “We need to show them

A critical enabler of the discrete memory program

working together,” he said. “As soon as we do that,is the company’s ongoing collaboration with Leti,

we’ll be in a much stronger position in terms of ourwhich will play a key role in developing the neces-confidence in this technology.” ■sary selector. For embedded devices, a transistor issufficient, he said, because although it’s large, theGary Hilson is a general contributing

size of the memory array is less important. But a

editor with a focus on memory anddiscrete ReRAM device requires a selector to isolate

flash technologies for EE Times.

the memory cells so that only the specific cells that66

should be modified are changed and all the other

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Weebit Nano Ramps Up Discrete ReRAM

is not something that can be created quickly, Han-

Development

och said, but because Leti has already had one in

Is ReRAM Ready to Leave the R&D Phase?

development for the past five years to fulfill a vari-

Are Emerging Memories Finally Emerging?

ety of purposes, that collaboration will save Weebit

Researchers Explore Emerging Memories for AI

FMCW LiDAR Chips
Take Machine Vision to
4D and Beyond
SiLC Technologies
By Jeff DorschInc.

Monrovia, California
Creation: 2018

SiLC Technologies is developing light detection andwww.silc.com

ranging (LiDAR) chips for autonomous vehicles,
biometrics and security, and industrial systems
and robotics. The Monrovia, California-based silicon photonics startup touts its product as the 4D+

The founders — Mehdi Asghari, president andVision Chip.

CEO; Jonathan Luff, vice president of research anddevelopment; and Wayne White, vice president of“We’re taking machine vision beyond 3D,” said Ralf J.

fab operations — all have extensive business andMuenster, the company’s vice president of businesstechnology experience. Asked about challenges

development and marketing. The veteran Texas

that the startup faced, one was getting to the point

Instruments executive joined SiLC last year andwhere the founders no longer had commitments toworks out of the startup’s new office in Silicon Valley.

other companies where they worked, according toMuenster.

“We are different fromother LiDAR compa-

While most LiDAR chip suppliers offer time-of-flightnies,” he added. “We

sensors to help vehicles and other applications

are more of a semi-“see” their surroundings, SiLC chose frequency-

conductor company.”

modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) technology,
which it says provides more detailed and granular

While SiLC was found-images of its operating environment.

Ralf J. Muenster

ed two years ago, “the(Image: SiLC Technologies Inc.)

technology goes back

SiLC’s FMCW LiDAR

to the 1990s,” Muen-

chips

are

fabricat-ster said. Its founders were involved in Bookham

ed in Japan with an

Technology and in LightCross Inc. LightCross wasundisclosed

acquired by Kotura, which was bought in 2013ner. The process is

by Mellanox Technologies; Nvidia recently pur-owned by SiLC andchased Mellanox for $7 billion. SiLC this year raised

exclusive$12 million in seed funding from Dell Technologies

The chips represent

part-

to

SiLC.

Capital, which led the round, with participation by

Mehdi Asgharithird-generation tech-

Decent Capital, ITIC Ventures, and angel investors.

(Image: SiLC Technologies Inc.)

nology for the start-

Startups in the Spotlight69

(Image: SiLC Technologies Inc.)

up’s founders. The IC has silicon germanium

Realizing FMCW requires “a chirp-able laser,” said

photodetectors and edge-emitting lasers. The

Muenster. “It’s not truly a tunable laser. A tunable

FMCW technology enables longer-range scanning,laser would be over a wide range of wavelength.

Muenster said, adding that other LiDAR vendors[With] chirp-able, you’re tuning 0.8 nanometers, foruse spinning lasers, microelectromechanical system

example. So you’re chirping the laser, and it’s impor-(MEMS) mirrors, and optical phase arrays.

tant that it’s very linear.”

Muenster explained how the FMCW tech works:

The laser also needs to have a long coherence“What we do is chirp a low-power, continuous-wave

length, which is “inversely proportionate to the line-

beam laser. You chirp the frequency of the outgo-

width of the laser,” he said. That’s because “we’reing signal, and the returning signal is then offset by

sending out coherent photons, and when they comea frequency versus the outgoing light, just becauseback on the receiver, they still need to be coherent

you have a time delay. And that frequency offset isto the outgoing light, because what we’re going todirectly proportionate to range.

do is take a portion of the outgoing light and mix it
together with the returning photons. Since they’re“Now, if you have a radio-velocity component ofboth coherent to each other, they start mixing con-that object, you get a Doppler shift — you get

structively.

another frequency shift here. So you get an aggregate
range and velocity frequency shift. As a result, you“Basically, you get a mixing treatment. There’s achirp up or chirp down [and] get two integrations ofshot-noise limit. You get a very unique analog fea-

unknowns right away: distance and velocity.”ture here, because only coherent photons will mix,so any DC background light would mix; it’s nearly70impossible to make two lasers that are not the same

industry calendar have gone all-virtual in response

cavity-coherent. So any other LiDAR would be liter-

to the coronavirus pandemic.

ally blocked out.”
In addition to automotive electronics, the 4D+
With discrete FMCW, the cost is very high,Vision Chip can be used in augmented/virtual real-according to Muenster. SiLC brings down the costity, gaming, cobots, and security/surveillance cam-with integration.

eras, according to Muenster. The technology also
applies to access control for facilities, wind farms,

The startup went to CES 2020 in January withface detection, warehouse robots, palletization, andVarroc Lighting Systems, having integrated SiLC

metrology.

single-chip

LiDAR

with

Varrocautomotive

headlights for demonstrations at the show. That

“Machine vision is critical to robotics,” he said. “Theexhibition was the first large trade show of the year

future of vision is 4D.” ■and might have been the last; other events on theStartups in the Spotlight71

Spark Microsystems
Brings Next-Gen, ‘No
Compromise’ Wireless to
Designers
SPARK

Microsystems
International Inc.

By Jeff DorschMontreal“Wireless without compromise” is the motto of

Creation: 2016www.sparkmicro.com

Montreal-based Spark Microsystems International,a purveyor of ultra-wideband (UWB) radio chips for
short-range data transmissions.

2018. Soon after that honor, the company won the
The startup was established in 2016. A year later, theNokia Open Innovation Challenge, which came with

Canadian government invested almost $1.4 million ina $100,000 grant.

the company, a developer of ultra-low-power wireless transceivers, touted for their environmentally

The company’s initial products are the SR1010 andfriendly technology. The Canadian government later

SR1020 UWB wireless transceivers. The first mem-

added $800,000 through its Sustainable Develop-

bers of the Spark SR1000 line, the chips are said

ment Technology Canada foundation.

to be capable of data transmission
rates up to 10 Mb/s.

CEO

Fares

Mubarakjoinedthefabless semiconductor company as“Spark is in the short-range wirelessan adviser in 2017 and was namedtransmission

CEO in 2018. He succeeded co-said. “We have a chip that gives you

founder Frederic Nabki as CEO; Nabki

up to a hundred meters’ line of sightremains with the startup as chief tech-for short-range communication. It’s

nology officer. The other co-founderultra-low-power,

business,”

Mubarak

ultra-low-latency,

is Dominic Deslandes, chief science

Fares Mubarak

and much higher-performance thanofficer.

(Image: SPARK Microsystems

what currently is available.

International Inc.)

Mubarak has held senior leadership“How do I quantify that? If I compare

positions at ANSYS, TeleResults (a health-care IT com-that with Bluetooth, and in particular with Bluetoothpany), and Actel. He has also worked at Advanced

Low Energy, we are up to 40× lower power than

Micro Devices and Samsung Semiconductor.

Bluetooth Low Energy, up to 60× lower latency, andwe are 10× higher bandwidth. We can transmit andSpark Microsystems was in the Silicon 60 Class of72

receive a thousand bits in about 50 microseconds.

(Image: SPARK Microsystems International Inc.)

Our over-the-air data rate is 20 megabits per sec-

nal strength like Bluetooth and other narrowband

ond. So we’re looking in the camp here of Bluetooth,radios do it. And because we dynamically balance

Zigbee, and Z-Wave. We’re already faster than Blue-the spectrum, we can really navigate around othertooth and much, much faster than LoRa, Zigbee, andsignals, so we are very good for coexistence witheverything else. We’re not talking about Wi-Fi here.

other signals. We can dynamically shift frequencies

Our claim to fame is power, latency, and data rate.”from packet to packet.”He added: “We are not in narrowband radio; we

When it was getting its seed funding, Sparkare ultra-wideband radio. So instead of being built

employed 10 people. Its headcount is now up to

based on a carrier frequency, like most radios out

32 full-time employees, plus interns, according tothere, you have a carrier, you have a rather pre-Mubarak.

cise clock, and then you transmit over the carrier.
We transmit in impulses, so there is no setup; the“We have fully functional silicon,” he added. The

radio is on for a short period. Now, being in thecompany works with the shuttles of Taiwan Semi-

ultra-wideband spectrum, which is a regulat-

conductor Manufacturing to fabricate its chips.

ed, unlicensed spectrum, between 3.1 GHz and7.6 GHz, we can dynamically use the entire spectrum.

While the startup has had modest funding, it has

Ultra-wideband, by nature of this regulatory status,

kept costs low, having started in incubator organ-

has orders of magnitude lower electromagnetic

izations, Mubarak said. “Hiring has been relative-

interference than other narrowband radios, prob-

ly good for us. We’ve been hiring mostly in theably 100× lower than Bluetooth and 1,000× lower

Montreal area, which has a superb amount of talentthan Wi-Fi. Ultra-wideband is very precise, becausethat we could get. Our two co-founders, Fred andwe can do time-of-flight positioning instead of sig-

Dominic, are professors at the local university. A lot

Startups in the Spotlight73

of the students and graduate students have done

to slow down and that investors and VCs are goingenough research, have been involved in the tech-

to be reluctant to spend more money on new port-

nology, and we’ve been able to get them involved

folio companies,” Mubarak said. “We looked at ourand hired the best of the best when they came into

cash flow, and we really sharpened our pencils andthe industry. We’ve been growing in a fairly smooth

focused ourselves to selling what we have today,

way without too many headaches in hiring.”

to doing the development in order to sell what wehave today, and making sure our cash flow lasts us

The coronavirus pandemic has brought changes towell past the initial stage so we can be in a goodthe business, of course.

cash position to recover from this pandemic.” ■“We can safely assume that our customers are going74

Ubiquitous Battery-Free
Wireless Connectivity
Serves the Internet ofEverythingJeeva Wireless
By Jeff Dorsch

Inc.

Seattle, Washington

Seattle-based Jeeva Wireless has a “Bright” CEOCreation: 2014

and two University of Washington (UW) professors

www.jeevawireless.com

among its co-founders.
The semiconductor startup specializes in wireless

was originally developed. Joshua Smith, chairman

connectivity. It offers a low-power platform utilizingof the board, and Shyam Gollakota, president,

860-MHz to 960-MHz long-range protocols, such as

both hold doctorates from the Massachusetts

IEEE 802.15.4g. The platform comprises the Jeeva

Institute of Technology (MIT) and are UW professors.

Companion, Jeeva Endpoint, andVamsi

Talla,

chief

technology

Jeeva Gateway. The company isofficer, and Aaron Parks, vice

readying a passive backscatterpresident of product, got theirmodem ASIC that will be part of

doctoral degrees from UW. The

Jeeva Endpoint; the chip will be

fifth co-founder is Bryce Kellogg,

fabricated by X-Fab.

director of engineering, who hasbachelor’s and master’s degrees

Jeeva

Wirelesswasfoundedin engineering from UW.

in 2015 and raised just over$1.2 million in seed funding in

The backscatter technology is “theearly 2017, followed by anotherprimary focus” of Jeeva, Brightseed round totaling $3 million

said. Its energy-harvesting tech-

one year later. The company also

nology is crucial to what the com-received two Small Business Inno-

Scott Bright (Image: Jeeva Wireless)vation Research grants, totalingpany calls “ubiquitous battery-freewireless connectivity” serving the$1.8 million, from the National Science Foundation.

“internet of everything.”

CEO Scott Bright, who joined the company last year,

Bright said, “We’re a small shop; we’re a dozen en-

is leading the commercialization of the company’s

gineers. We’ll probably be opening a new roundconnectivity technology. The five co-founders all

sometime next year.” He added, “It’s an exciting

have connections to UW, where the technology

time for the company. We’ve been a long time inStartups in the Spotlight75

Companion. Companion is thesource of that RF energy. It sends
out a continuous wave, a conReflects existing signals.
Simpler, cheaper, and
1,000x less power

stant tone at a single frequency. We use that energy at the
remoteGenerates and emits signals.
Complex, expensive,
energy intensive

sensor

endpoint

tobackscatter the data from thesensor. So we’re not generating

Conventional radio

Backscatteran RF signal local to the sensor;
we’re scattering the signal that

(Image: Jeeva Wireless)comes from somewhere else.
That’s the key difference.”

the making, and we’re just now on the cusp of being
ready to commercialize the technologies. My back-The result is that “we’re lowering the power require-ground is product development. I’ve been a design

ment,” he said. “We’re sending that data from theengineer, EE, and done a lot of products in medical,

sensor very dramatically — about a thousandfold

consumer, [and the] industrial space. I’m excited

below the power requirement for even a Bluetooth

about the potential for this technology. But we need

Low Energy radio. We can send tens of kilobits of

to figure out what product it enables.”data per second, up to about a megabit per second, for less than 100 microwatts of power during

Bright said that the company has developed intel-

continuous transmission. You compare that to alectual property as it nears the day when the rubber

low-power Bluetooth signal, which is on the order ofwill meet the road for its technology. “One of the

10 milliwatts or so during transmitting. We’re three

things that I often run into is the need to differen-

orders of magnitude less power than that.

tiate between what Jeeva is doing with backscatter,
which can be easily confused with energy harvest-“When you talk about such low power, it enables

ing,” he said. “They’re two different things. In one

some rather novel things, one of them being that you

case, you’re receiving, rectifying, storing RF energy

are now in the realm of being able to power such ain order to power some sort of transducer, or tosystem through harvesting of RF energy. That’s where

power a transmitter of some sort. While we do have

our RF harvesting comes in, because it makes a lot

some IP in that area, and we do some work in that

more sense when it’s that small amount of power.

space, we’re primarily focused on backscatter, whichis in essence reflecting an RF signal and chopping“But even then, harvesting RF energy at long range isup that reflection so it looks like a standard pack ofan exceedingly difficult task. In general, if you’re go-data protocol. And that’s done in real time. There’s

ing to be under FCC constraints and you’re limited

no storing of the energy necessary. It’s a very, very

to the amount of power you’re able to radiate, andlow-power way to move data from an endpoint, a

the ISM band, that’s about a watt of power you’re

sensor interface, to a conventional standard radio.

allowed to radiate. If we were to limit ourselves tothat kind of constraint, it would short-circuit the76“What’s necessary to do that is this introduction ofmost valuable thing about backscatter, which is thata new element to the topology, a device we call theit can work at very long range.” ■Always-On Voice
Processing
BringsHands-Free
Functionality to
the Forefront

Syntiant Corp.
Irvine, California
Creation: 2017www.syntiant.com

By Jeff Dorsch“Alexa, tell me about Syntiant.”

Kurt Busch is Syntiant’s chief executive“Syntiant supplies always-on voice processors pow-

officer. He previously

ered by custom artificial intelligence silicon.”served as president
and CEO of Lantronix

Syntiant is a fabless semiconductor startup in Irvine,

and was senior vice

California. The company was founded in 2017 andpresident and gen-has raised a total of $30.1 million in private funding,eral manager of the

including a Series B round of $25 million in the fall

Kurt Busch (Image: Syntiant)high-performanceof 2018. Its investors include Amazon’s Alexa Fund,analog business unit

Applied Ventures (the venture capital arm of Appliedof Mindspeed Technologies. Pieter Vorenkamp, theMaterials), Intel Capital, M12 (formerly Microsoft

company’s chief operating officer, has held leader-

Ventures), Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, andship positions at Broadcom and Cadence Design

Robert Bosch Venture Capital. Other investors are

Systems.

Digital Horizon Capital (DHVC), Embark Ventures,and Seraph Group, an angel investor fund.

Stephen Bailey is the vice president of software
engineering, chief architect, and chief technology

The company’s product is the NDP10x line of Neuralofficer. He was the CTO at Sandburst, which was

Decision Processors, which are in production withacquired by Broadcom, and later served as Broad-

Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service firmware. The startup

com Switch’s chief technologist. Jeremy Holleman

started sampling its processors in the summer ofserves as Syntiant’s chief scientist while also direct-

2018. Orders from volume production began lasting the Integrated Silicon Systems Laboratory at the

September.

University of North Carolina, Charlotte, where he is
an associate professor.

Startups in the Spotlight77

What we do today is kindof clunky. It typically goesto the cloud from a smart
speaker or a cellphone, andthere’s kind of a delay. It’s
not a real-time sort of thing.
Our thought is that if we
had real-time voice interfaces, things like keyboards
and touchscreens could go(Image: Syntiant)away. It’s our most natural way of communicating;Syntiant currently has about 65 employees, accord-

we’re communicating now.”

ing to Busch.
Syntiant means to maximize megahertz, and that’s
The CEO described Syntiant’s mission as the “intel-

why Intel chose to invest in the company, Buschligence of things,” adding, “It could be IoT 2.0. The

said. The NDPs are not Arm-based chips or Intelidea when we started the company is that the worldprocessors.

needs a new kind of processor for machine learningat the edge. The traditional architectures that are“You can’t just go out and buy deep learning,” hein Arm’s or multicore DSPs really are not well suit-said. “You can get to market very quickly. Of course,

ed for edge and inference. Our role is that if you

there’s no such thing as a free lunch. It just does

want to make ML pervasive, we need a new kind ofdeep learning. And the reason why it can always

processor.

compete on these traits is that it just does that.
It’s not a general-purpose processor. It does deep

“When we started in 2017, if you wanted to takelearning really, really well.” Busch then added, “Theadvantage of machine learning, you had to go to theoil that runs AI, the gas that runs AI, is the data.”

cloud. But the cloud has a lot of disadvantages. If
we could put everything into the device, we could

What challenges did Syntiant face in its early

greatly improve battery life, responsiveness, reliabil-

history? “The first big challenge was in 2017; very

ity, and privacy. That was really the main mission of

few chip companies had been funded,” said Busch.

where we were: Let’s move AI from the cloud into

“When I told my friends that I was starting a chip com-the device.”pany, they said, ‘That’s really funny; no one’s started achip company since Atheros 20 years ago. Why don’t

Machine learning “really doesn’t care what the ap-

you try the SaaS thing? That’s really the way to go.’”plication is,” Busch added, so Syntiant “decided to78

build a voice application. Our thought process was

Building the data pipeline was the second big chal-kind of as follows: The keyboard was our interface

lenge, he added. “We’ve done this effort to build theto MS-DOS, and the mouse was our interface topipeline and collect the data. We did what other

Windows. The touchscreen gave us the smartphone,guys won’t, so in the future, we can do things theand I think voice is the next-generation interface.

other guys can’t.” ■BACK IN PRINT!
Get your FREE subscription to the re-

EE
Times
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thelatestnews,
articles, special
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every
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Our team of editors brings together

China Fablessto Watch

China's
Fabless Chip
Companies
Live in a
Vibrant
Ecosystem
By Echo Zhao
Since 2002, EE Times China has charted the devel-

Honorees are nominated by industry peers andopment of China’s fabless semiconductor industry

selected online by electronics engineers. The awards

and honored its innovators through the annual

committee then compiles a “shortlist” of candidates

China IC Design Awards. The 2020 China IC Design

based on those nominations, and winners areAwards, which will be held in Shanghai on June

chosen through a combination of online voting

28, will recognize outstanding design companies,and committee discretion. For the 2020 awards,

upstream service providers, modules/design solu-

voting was open to our online community fromtions, and products. A China IC Leader Summit willDec. 19, 2019, through Jan. 19, 2020. We received

be held in tandem with the awards event, whichmore than 30,000 responses. The final list is 90%

itself coincides with the release of EE Times’ Silicon

based on voter input; our editors stepped in only

100 list of global startups to watch.

to resolve cases in which, for example, candidates
received votes in more than one category.

Our list of honorees in China’s fabless IC industry
includes products, executives, and design teams.

To be selected as a Top 10 China IC Brand, a com-

To shed light on the diversity of China’s IC industry,pany’s brand must be known to most users in thein this feature, we highlight 23 companies in four

Chinese market. The honored companies provide

categories:

comprehensive information about their products▶ Top 10 China IC Brands;

and services through the internet, printed mat-

▶ Top 5 China Most Innovative IC Design

ter, and various activities. They develop break-Companies;▶ Top 5 China Most Promising IC Design
Companies; and▶ Top 3 China Outstanding Technical Support
IC Design Companies.

through products and/or technologies that change
or are changing the performance/price curve of
certain key products or technologies in electronics.
The companies have taken a leading role in business activities or management practices in areas

China Fabless to Watch

81such as product development, hardware/software

tor, which provides E2PROM chips and has landed

design, equipment or system manufacturing, hu-

design wins in cameras for smartphones from com-

man resource management, marketing, public rela-panies including Samsung, Huawei, Vivo, OPPO,

tions and media relations, sales, and/or distribution.

Xiaomi, Lenovo, and ZTE.

The Top 5 China Most Innovative IC Design

Rounding

Companies have made noteworthy technological

GigaDevice, Allwinner Technology, and ISSI. We

breakthroughs, have obtained patents, and are

were not surprised to find that our readers voted

unanimously recognized in their industry segments.

for GigaDevice and Allwinner Technology; both have

Their products are sold in the market and have hadgreat influence in China’s industry.

out

the

Top

10

are

newcomersa generally positive reception, with high customer
acceptance. They maintain a high proportion of

GigaDevice is well-known for its flash memory. The

R&D investment. Their activities have been reported

company also has a large share of the market forin internationally renowned media.

32-bit general-purpose MCUs. GigaDevice gained
attention when it rolled out general-purpose RISC-V

The same selection criteria, with the exception

MCUs. It is now testing DRAM chips, with tape-out

of market sales, apply to the Top 5 China Most

planned for 2021.

Promising IC Design Companies.
Allwinner, meanwhile, has seen its system-on-chip
The Top 3 China Outstanding Technical Support IC

designed into nearly almost all mainstream smart

Design Companies have demonstrated an ability

speakers in China, including those from Ali, Baidu,

to respond to customer inquiries in a timely man-JD, Tencent, and Xiaomi. Its SoCs integrate DSP,

ner and provide a good customer experience dur-neural processing units (NPUs), and even Arm’s

ing the sales process. They provide products or

artificial intelligence processing unit (AIPU).

technologies of excellent quality that significantly
improve reliability. They have established a service

ISSI, whose primary products are high-speed

network in China to ensure the best customer ser-and low-power SRAM and low- and medium-

vice and help their customers succeed in productdensity DRAM, has had a bit of a complicated history.

development and market acceptance.

It was a U.S.-based public company that traded on

Top 10 brands: Repeat
winners outnumber
newcomers

the Nasdaq, but it was purchased for $780 million
and taken private by a Chinese company in 2015.
Ingenic then acquired ISSI last year. Although ISSI
today is the seventh-largest DRAM company in the

It takes a while to build brand loyalty, so perhaps

world, its market share is tiny. Nonetheless, it is heldit shouldn’t be surprising that when we comparedin high regard in the global storage industry.

the Top 10 China IC Brands of 2020 with 2019’s
list, we found six repeat honorees: Unisoc, SGInnovation and promise

Micro, BYD Microelectronics, Huada Semiconductor,

Newcomers swept the categories for Top 5

VeriSilicon, and Galaxycore.

China Most Innovative IC Design Companies, Top 5
China Most Promising IC Design Companies, andAmong the newcomers is Giantec Semiconduc-82

Top 3 China Outstanding Technical Support IC

Design Companies.

support,reflecting

ourreaders’

preferences,included SMIT Group, Montage Technology, and
The top five innovators were Allystar, with its

SmartSens Technology. SMIT Group is involved in

Beidou Navigation chips; Shanghai ChipON, with its

security chip design and application, FPGA rapid

KungFu core MCU, based on internally developed

prototyping verification and simulation, system R&D

IP; General Processor Technologies (GPT), which

and application, and third-generation semiconduc-provides IP for heterogeneous computing; andtor product R&D and production, providing chip

Telink and Kangxi Communication Technologies,

solution implementation service to system houses.

which provide solutions for IoT applications. Intel
Capital invested in Telink and Kangxi, respectively,

Montage targets cloud computing and AI. Its mem-in 2015 and 2016.

ory

interfacelarge-capacity

technology
memorydelivers

bufferhigh-speed,solutionsfrom

In 2019, readers seemed to prefer well-funded AI

DDR2 to DDR4 for data center applications. JEDEC

companies when selecting the most promising

adopted Montage’s DDR4 fully buffered “1 + 9” dis-IC design houses. This year, they were more prag-

tributed architecture as an international standard.

matic, voting for companies that have done a greatjob in a specific market (such as Bestechnic, which

SmartSens Technology is a high-performance

focuses on the Bluetooth market) or focus on tech-

CMOS image sensing (CIS) chip design company. It

nologies that China lacks. The latter, rounding out

offers a suite of proprietary technologies, including

the top five, include XTX Technology and Dosilicon,

full-color night vision, DSI pixel, and global expo-

both targeting memory; Autochips, which focuses

sure built on voltage domain archi-

on automotive; and Phytium Technology, which has

tecture and stack BSI processes.

zeroed in on CPUs.
Echo Zhao is chief
Companies honored for outstanding technicalanalyst of AspenCore

China Fabless to Watch

83

Top 10 China
IC Brands
北京兆易创新科技股份有限公司

GigaDevice

www.gigadevice.com

CEO: Zhu Yiming
GigaDevice was founded in Silicon Valley in 2005
and successfully completed its IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2016. A pioneer of SPI NOR
flash memory, the company is currently ranked No.
3 in the world in this market segment, with morethan 1 billion units shipped every year. GigaDevice
provides advanced memory technology and IC solutions, including SPI NOR flash, SPI NAND flash, andMCUs for use in embedded, consumer, and mobile
communications applications.

紫光展锐科技有限公司

Unisocwww.unisoc.com

CEO: Chu Qingof applications in the wireless communication,
consumer, medical, automotive, and industrial
markets.

深圳比亚迪微电子有限公司

Unisoc, based in China, aims to be the backbone of

BYD Microelectronics

the digital world. The company says that building a

www.byd.com/en/

foremost ecosystem is the core strategy; 5G and AI

CEO: Chen Gang (President)

are the two main technological orientations. Unisoc

BYD Microelectronics has been building insulated

established three business units to support corre-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) since 2015.

sponding areas: the Consumer Electronics Business
Unit to enrich personalized experience, the Industry

珠海全志科技股份有限公司

Electronics Business Unit to enable society, and theAllwinner Technology

Connectivity Device Business Unit to empower limit-

www.allwinnertech.com

less innovation.

CEO: Mike Zhang

圣邦微电子（北京）股份有限公司

SG Micro Corp.

Allwinner Technology, founded in 2007, provides
intelligent

application

SoCs,

high-performance

analog components, and wireless connectivity ICs. It

www.sg-micro.com

is headquartered in Zhuhai, China, with other R&D

CEO: Zhang Shilong

centers and offices in Shenzhen, HongKong, Xi'an,

SG Micro Corp specializes in high-performance,

Beijing, and Shanghai.

high-quality analog IC design, marketing, and sales

84

and offers innovative solutions for a broad range华大半导体有限公司

Housing and Urban-Rural Development. Giantec's

Huada Semiconductor Co.,
Ltd.

R&D, manufacturing, marketing, and sales teams
are located in Shanghai, China, with sales branches

www.hdsc.com.cn/en/

in the U.S., Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

CEO: Dong Haoran
Huada Semiconductor Co., Ltd. is a wholly owned

北京矽成半导体有限公司

Industry Group Co., Ltd. A professional sub-group

Integrated Silicon Solution
Inc.

of the integrated circuit business, its products cov-

www.issi.com

er power devices, smart cards and security chips,

CEO: KY Han

MCUs, and high-end analog circuits.

ISSI

subsidiary

of

China

Electronic

Information

designs,

develops,

andmarketshigh-performance ICs for automotive, communications,

芯原微电子（上海）股份有限公司

digital consumer, industrial, and medical markets.

VeriSilicon Microelectronics(Shanghai) Co., Ltd.

Its primary products are high-speed and lowpower SRAM and low- and medium-density DRAM.

www.verisilicon.com

The company also designs and markets NOR

CEO: Wayne Dai

flash products and high-performance analog andFoundedin

Shanghai,

China,(Shanghai)

Co.,

vides

2001

one-stopandheadquartered

VeriSiliconLtd.
customin

Microelectronics(VeriSilicon)
siliconservices

pro-

mixed-signal ICs. ISSI targets high-growth markets
withcost-effective,

high-quality

semiconductor

products.

andsemiconductor IP licensing services leveraging its

The company has expanded its presence in thein-house semiconductor IP. Its business covers con-

Asian market by adding design groups in China,

sumer electronics, automotive electronics, computer

Korea, and Taiwan, where it now employs more thanand peripherals, industry, data processing, IoT, and80 design, product, and test engineers.

other applications. The company has five design and
R&D centers in China and the United States, as well
as 10 sales and customer service offices worldwide.

聚辰半导体股份有限公司

格科微电子（上海）有限公司

Galaxycore Shanghai
Limited Corporation
www.gcoreinc.com

Giantec Semiconductor
Corporation

CEO: Stanly Zhao
Founded in 2003, Galaxycore focuses on CMOS

www.giantec-semi.com

image sensors, AMOLED/LCD display drivers, high-

CEO: Laurence Zhang

end embedded multimedia systems-on-chip, andGiantec Semiconductor Corporation currently has

application systems.

four product lines — EEPROM, MCUs/smart cards,
VCM drivers, and OPAs — which are sold worldwide. Its main end customers include Huawei,
Haier, Hisense, Lenovo, CSOT, VTech, Foxconn,
Samsung, Sharp, AUO, and BOE, and the company isalso one of the qualified suppliers to the Ministry of

China Fabless to Watch

85

Top 5 China
Most Innovative
IC DesignCompanies
深圳华大北斗科技有限公司

Allystar Technology(Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.

Telink Semiconductor(Shanghai) Co., Ltd.
www.telink-semi.com

CEO: Wenjun ShengFoundedin2010,

Telinkdevelops

highlyintegrated

low-power

radio

frequency

andmixed-signal system chips for internet of things
applications. Its product portfolio serves markets
including smart lighting, home automation, andsmart cities and includes 2.4-GHz RF SoCs forwww.allystar.com/en/

Bluetooth Smart, Zigbee, 6LoWPAN/Thread, andCEO: Sun Zhongliang (General Manager)

Homekit. Telink has offices in California, Shanghai,

Allystar Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. is a spinout

Shenzhen, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

from the GNSS chipset designing department
established in May 2013, as a subsidiary to China
Electronics Corporation (CEC) — among the world’s
Top 500 enterprises.

华夏芯（北京）通用处理器技术有
限公司

General Processor
Technologies Inc.

康希通信科技（上海）有限公司

Kangxi Communication
Technologies (Shanghai) Co.,Ltd.
en.kxcomtech.com/en/

CEO: Peng Ping
Kangxi Communication Technologies (Shanghai)Co., Ltd (KCT) was founded in September 2014 andwww.hxgpt.com

is currently located in Zhangjiang High-tech Park. In

CEO: Keyi Li

August 2016, it became a wholly owned subsidiary

General Processor Technologies (GPT) is China’s onlyof Grand Chip Microelectronics Co., Ltd. (GCM). The

IP licensing company providing CPU, DSP, GPU, andcompany offers high-performance, high-efficiency,

AI accelerator cores for a wide range of performanceand highly integrated RF front-end IC products, aslevels, all optimized for heterogeneous computing.

well as optimized RF place-and-play solutions, for

上海芯旺微电子技术有限公司

Shanghai ChipON
Micro-Electronic Co., Ltd.
www.chipon-ic.com

CEO: Xiaobing Ding
Shanghai ChipON Micro-Electronic Co., Ltd. focuseson the research and development of high-reliability
and high-quality 8-bit MCUs and 32-bit MCUs and
DSPs based on independent IP KungFu kernel architecture. The company is headquartered in Shanghai,with branches in Shenzhen, Chongqing, and Xiamen.

86

泰凌微电子（上海）有限公司

WLAN infrastructure, 5G NR, and the IoT.

Top 5 China
Most Promising
IC DesignCompanies

for AIoT, and its products are widely used in lowpower smart Bluetooth earphones, Type-C earphones, and smart speakers.

天津飞腾信息技术有限公司

Phytium Technology Co.,Ltd.
www.phytium.com.cn

合肥杰发科技有限公司

CEO: Dou Qiang (General Manager)

Autochips Inc.

Phytium Technology Co., Ltd. is a fast-growing

www.autochips.com

Chinese IC design company headquartered in the

CEO: Pal Wan

Tianjin Binhai High-Tech Industrial Development

Autochips Inc. provides SoC and all-in-one turnkey

Area, with operations, marketing services, andsolutions for the global automotive electronics indus-

research centers in Beijing and Guangzhou, China. The

try — including in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), telematics,

company is focused on the design, manufacture,

ADAS, and intelligent cockpit. Other solutions include

and sale of high-performance and low-power IC

Body Control Module, Body Safety Module, and Vehicle

chips, while also providing secure, reliable, high-Gateway MCU.

performance, low-power CPUs, ASICs and SoCs; IP;
and total system solutions. Phytium’s customer base深圳市芯天下技术有限公司

includes government, telecommunications, banks,

XTX Technology (Shenzhen)Co., Ltd.

energy enterprises, ITS, and internet companies.

www.xtxtech.com

CEO: Mark LongXTX Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. offers NAND
MCP, EEPROM, and SPI NOR flash.

东芯半导体股份有限公司

Dosilicon Co., Ltd.
www.dosilicon.com

CEO: Cynthia Xie
Dosilicon is primarily engaged in R&D and sales ofmemory chips, including NAND and NOR.

恒玄科技（上海）股份有限公司

Bestechnicwww.bestechnic.com

CEO: Liang Zhang
Bestechnic focuses on the R&D, design, and sale ofsmart audio SoCs. It provides customers with edge
intelligence chips with voice-interaction capabilities

China Fabless to Watch

87

Top 3 China
Outstanding
Technical
SupportIC DesignCompanies

heterogeneous processing and interconnect technologies for future AI and big data applications.
Established in 2004, Montage Technology isheadquartered in Shanghai and has branches in
Kunshan, Xi'an, Macao, Silicon Valley, and Seoul,
South Korea.

思特威电子科技有限公司

SmartSens Technology Co.,Ltd.
www.smartsenstech.com

国微控股有限公司

SMIT Group (Shenzhen) Co.,Ltd.

SmartSens Technology Co., Ltd., founded in 2011,is a high-performance CMOS image sensing (CIS)

www.smit.com.cn/en

chip design company. Its products are applicable to

CEO: Huang Xueliang

security and surveillance, automotive, machine

SMIT Group Ltd. is a semiconductor holding

vision, consumer electronics (sports cameras,

company

chipdrones, automatic vacuums, smart home), anddesign and application, FPGA rapid prototyping

other application fields. The company is headquar-verification and simulation, system R&D andtered in Shanghai and has both research centers

application,

semiconductor

and sales offices in various cities around the world,

product R&D and production, and chip solution

including Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Hong Kong,

implementation services for systems houses.

Hsinchu, and San Jose, California.

澜起科技股份有限公司

SmartSens owns a suite of proprietary technologies,that

mainlycoversthird-generation

security

Montage Technology Co.,Ltd.
www.montage-tech.com

CEO: Howard Yang
Montage Technology provides high-performance
IC-based solutions for cloud computing and AI markets. Since 2016, the company has been cooperating with Tsinghua University and Intel to develop the
Jintide CPU. A high-performance Jintide server platform combining a Jintide CPU with Montage’s hybrid
security memory module (HSDIMM) has realized
real-time security-monitoring functions at the siliconlevel. This architecture also incorporates advanced

88

CEO: Dr. Richard Xu

including full-color night vision, DSI pixel, and global
exposure built on voltage domain architecture andstack BSI processes, among many others.

Co-Editors-in-Chief
Bolaji Ojo
Junko Yoshida
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