Arm record numbers; RF GaN-on-Si; security partnerships; new AI chips; Broadcom acquires VMware

Catching up on some of the news from the last twenty days or so, let’s start with Intel: the company’s shareholders have reportedly rejected compensation packages for top executives, including a payout of as much as $178.6 million to CEO Pat Gelsinger.

Advances to Real Intent’s Meridian DFT

Real Intent has announced advances to its “Meridian DFT” multimode DFT static sign-off tool with root cause analysis. Meridian DFT now presents the results as tables, with detailed coverage reporting for violating registers, design instances with the most uncovered faults, and selected test points per test mode. It also annotates coverage debug attributes per test mode for controllability, observability, and stuck-at-0/1 faults. Additionally, the new version includes tables with hyperlinks for cross-probing of nets and instances to the schematic or source code viewer. Real Intent has also made additions to Meridian DFT’s rules, including specialized rules for sequential capture through loops and deep sequences of flip-flops without scan collars, controllability and observability through memories, and advanced connectivity checks.

Arm record numbers

Arm’s 2021 total revenues were up 35% to $2.7 billion. Licensing (non-royalty) revenues increased by 61% to $1.13 billion, while royalty revenues grew 20% to $1.54 billion. Adjusted EBITDA were up 68% year on year to $1 billion, giving an adjusted EBITDA margin of 37%. In fiscal year 2021, the number of Arm-based chips shipped climbed to a record 29.2 billion, including nearly 7.8 billion in the fourth quarter.

Micron memory roadmap

At its recent Investor Day (May 12^th), memory maker Micron revealed it is planning to ramp in manufacturing both 1-beta (next node) DRAMs and 232-layer NANDs before the end of 2022. The company plans to introduce EUV lithography in 2024; until then, it will continue using multiple patterning. Micron plans to invest over $150B in Capex and R&D globally over the next decade. Company’s executives also pointed out that DRAM and NAND revenue is growing faster than the broader semiconductors, with an estimated total available market of $330 billion in 2030.

RF GaN-on-Si advancements

STMicroelectronics and Macom (Lowell, Massachusetts) have announced the successful production of radio-frequency Gallium-Nitride-on Silicon (RF GaN-on-Si) prototypes. According to the two companies, GaN can offer superior RF characteristics and significantly higher output power than LDMOS (laterally-diffused metal-oxide semiconductor) for RF power amplifiers. RF GaN-on-Si combines performance with a competitive cost, being less expensive than the alternative RF GaN-on-SiC technology.

Security partnerships

STMicroelectronics has revealed details of its collaboration with Microsoft to strengthen the security of emerging IoT applications. ST is integrating its ultra-low-power ST M32U5 microcontrollers with Microsoft Azure RTOS & IoT Middleware and a certified secure implementation of Arm Trusted Firmware -M (TF-M) secure services for embedded systems. The project has produced a TF-M based, Azure IoT cloud reference implementation.

QuickLogic has partnered with Intrinsic ID, a provider of Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) security IP, to provide security options for devices incorporating embedded FPGA (eFPGA) technology. These options range from secure key generation based on SRAM PUF to full security solutions including bitstream encryption, key wrapping, authentication tags, key verification, and data encryption/decryption for storage within the device or for board or system-level communications.

Andes Technology and London-based Crypto Quantique have entered into a global partnership to develop security solutions for Risc-V IoT devices. The two companies will cooperate on quantum-driven semiconductor root-of-trust IP, quantum-driven semiconductor hardware IP, and the company’s chip-to-cloud IoT device security management platform, QuarkLink.

Silex Insight, a Belgian provider of cryptographic IP solutions, has entered into a partnership arrangement with British IoT security company Zaya, which delivers a secure OS containerization technology for microcontrollers, called “Zaya μ Containers”. The Zaya μ Containers can be added to Silex Insight’s eSecure Root of Trust module, running custom security extensions isolated from the rest of the application.

AI chips updates: Deepx, Salience Labs, Axelera AI

South Korea-based Deepx has recently introduces its series of four SoCs integrating neural processing units. The startup claims “the world’s highest” energy efficiency and processing performance. The scalable NPU can range from 0.1 TOPS for ultra-small sensors to tens of POPS for AI servers. The four SoCs will be launched sequentially from the second half of this year to the first half of next year.

Salience Labs has raised a seed round of $11.5 million to develop an ultra high-speed AI multi-chip processor combining photonics and electronics. The round was led by Cambridge Innovation Capital and Oxford Science Enterprises. Salience Labs was spun-out of the University of Oxford and the University of Münster in 2021. Its technology is capable of stacking up to 64 vectors into a beam of light. Other distinctive features include the use of a broad bandwidth of light to execute operations; a proprietary amplitude-based approach to photonics, resulting in dense computing chips clocking at tens of GHz; and a novel ‘on-memory compute’ architecture, with the photonic processing mapping directly on top of the SRAM.

Axelera AI (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) has successfully tested and validated its first chip, the Thetis Core, an in-memory computing engine delivering 39.3 TOP/s with an efficiency of 14.1 TOPs/W at an INT8 precision in less than 9 square millimeters. Performance declared by the company in the case of high-sparsity activations include a peak energy efficiency of 33 TOPs/W. By increasing the nominal clock frequency, the peak throughput reaches 48.16 TOPs. Axelera AI was incubated by the Bitfury group and Belgian research institute Imec.

MIPS’ first Risc-V IP cores

A Risc pioneer in the 80s, MIPS has recently announced its entrance to the Risc-V market, previewing the first products in its eVocore multiprocessor IP cores lineup. The eVocore P8700 combines a deep pipeline with multi-issue Out-of-Order (OOO) execution and multi-threading, and is optimized for high computational throughput. The eVocore I8500 combines in-order execution, multi-threading and a triple-issue pipeline, and is optimized for power efficiency.

Broadcom’s 50G automotive Ethernet switch

Broadcom has delivered what it claims is the world’s first 50G automotive Ethernet switch, the BCM8958X, designed to address the growing bandwidth need for in-vehicle networking applications and facilitate the adoption of software defined vehicles (SDV). The BCM8958X features 16 Ethernet ports of which up to six are 10 Gbps capable, as well as integrated 1000BASE-T1 and 100BASE-T1 PHYs, providing greater flexibility and switching capacity needed to support automotive zonal electronic control unit (ECU) and central compute ECU architectures. Additionally, the switch is equipped with an advanced rule-based packet filter engine that can adapt to different vehicle operation modes to enhance driving safety.

Acquisitions

Rambus has signed an agreement to acquire Canadian electronic design company Hardent. Among the reasons for the deal, accelerating the development of CXL processing solutions for next-generation data centers.

MaxLinear – a provider of radio frequency, analog and mixed-signal ICs – will acquire Silicon Motion, a provider of NAND flash controllers for solid state storage devices, in a cash and stock transaction that values the combined company at $8 billion.

Marvell has announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Tanzanite Silicon Solutions (Milpitas, CA), a developer of advanced Compute Express Link (CXL) technologies, in an all-cash transaction. The move aims at strengthening Marvell’s data center and cloud silicon solutions.

ColdQuanta, a quantum technology company, has acquired Chicago-based Super.tech, a quantum software company.

Broadcom will acquire all of the outstanding shares of VMware in a cash-and-stock transaction that values VMware at approximately $61 billion. Server virtualization pioneer VMware is now a hybrid cloud and digital workspace leader. Following the closing of the transaction, the Broadcom Software Group will rebrand and operate as VMware, incorporating Broadcom’s existing infrastructure and security software solutions (from previous acquisitions of CA Technologies and Symantec’s security division) as part of an expanded VMware portfolio.

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