SureCore moves towards design services
SureCore states that its design service is targeting system-centric low-power design and can provide design and layout, technology porting, low-power verification and characterization. The design work is suitable for process technologies from 55nm to advanced nodes but no mention is made of near- or sub-threshold design.
“One of the trends driving the re-birth of ASICs is that off-the-shelf devices do not deliver system-level differentiated functionality. We’re seeing this to be particularly true for low-power ASIC design, particularly those that involve mixed-signal functionality,” said Paul Wells, sureCore CEO.
Having developed SRAM IP the company now claims it can design most commonly used analog and mixed-signal circuit blocks including: ADCs, DACs, amplifiers, regulators, LDOs, phase-lock loops, crystal and RC oscillators, bandgap references, comparators and programmable current mirrors.
Process porting and custom layout services are offered across multiple foundries and process nodes and includes bulk CMOS, FDSOI and FinFET nodes.
Intriguingly SureCore’s direction of travel would appear to be the reverse of many aspiring IP companies that start with design services to gain some revenue but move as quickly as possible to a product based service. An issue with design service is that business scales linearly with the amount of design work done and the number of engineers employed, which is not seen as an ideal business model.
In 2018 SureCore started offering IP customization which represents a sort of half-way house between product IP licensing and design services.
Related links and articles:
News articles:
SureCore offers SRAM IP customization
Former ARM executives at helm of analog IP startup
SRAM IP operates below 0.7 volts on TSMC process
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