
Siemens buys Cambridge-based UltraSoC Technologies
UltraSoC’s technology is designed to integrate intelligent monitoring, cybersecurity and functional safety into the core hardware of SoCs.
Siemens’ purchase of UltraSoC is due to close in the fourth quarter of Siemens’ fiscal year 2020. The terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.
Siemens intends to include the UltraSoC technology into the company’s Xcelerator portfolio as a part of Mentor’s Tessent software. The UltraSoC technology will allow Siemens to offer a unified data-driven infrastructure to enhance product quality, safety and cybersecurity. It will also assist customers to overcome key pain points including manufacturing defects, software and hardware bugs, device early-failure and wear-out, functional safety, and malicious attacks.
“Siemens’ acquisition of UltraSoC means that our customers can access not just design-for-test, but a comprehensive ‘Design for Lifecycle Management’ solution for SoCs, including functional safety, security and optimization,” says Brady Benware, Tessent Vice President and General Manager, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “By utilizing design augmentation to detect, mitigate and eliminate risks throughout the SoC lifecycle, customers can improve time-to-revenue, product quality & safety, and profitability. UltraSoC has a fast-growing business and impressive customer list and, as part of Siemens, can complement Tessent to create a truly unique offering in the market.”
UltraSoC embeds monitoring hardware into complex SoCs to provide “fab-to-field” analytics capabilities that can quicken silicon bring-up, optimize product performance, and confirm that devices are operating “as designed”. Tessent provides SoC design-for-test (DFT) solutions, with a strong reputation in automotive functional safety through the Tessent Safety Ecosystem. The two offerings combined will provide the foundation for a complete package of solutions, encompassing semiconductor design and production, functional safety, cybersecurity, and functional optimization of products in the field.
The combination of the two companies technologies benefits the full semiconductor product lifecycle, including structural, electrical, and functional capabilities of SoCs. It will also support Siemens’ digital twin through UltraSoC monitoring of the real device.
Rupert Baines, CEO, UltraSoC said, “Being part of one of the world’s foremost technology companies will allow UltraSoC to better serve our customers by accelerating R&D, leveraging a much larger pool of go-to-market resources, and an enormous global infrastructure. It has been clear since our initial meeting that UltraSoC and Siemens share a vision on how technology businesses can transform their operations end-to-end, from design conception to field deployment and we are excited to join the community.”
UltraSoC‘s products have previously been widely used in the automotive, high-performance computing, storage and semiconductor industries. The company was recently selected as a participant in the DARPA AISS (Automatic Implementation of Secure Silicon) program; and is a member of the Secure-CAV consortium, an ambitious collaborative project that aims to improve the safety and security of tomorrow’s connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs).
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