The following article is by Ms. Linh Hong, vice president of marketing at Kilopass Technology, Santa Clara, CA, and first appeared in the Jan. 9 issue of EDA Weekly.
Starting its second decade in business under current CEO Charlie Cheng, Kilopass Technology Inc. continues its successful growth driven by two major movements. The first comprises market forces where consumers are demanding greater functionality from their mobile smart devices beyond audio and video to include environmental data that will eventually provide life care for the consumer. The second involves technology forces that continue to deliver more transistors per silicon area for each new semiconductor process generation, now at 28nm going to 20nm.
The widespread adoption of Kilopass’ unique standard logic CMOS anti-fuse, one-time programmable (OTP), non-volatile memory (NVM) intellectual property (IP) is reflected in the growing number of Kilopass foundry and IDM partners. Among foundries signing new agreements are UMC, SMIC, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Dongbu and TowerJazz, that join long-standing Kilopass partner TSMC, the first to offer Kilopass IP at 28nm. The key to success for an IP company is silicon enablement and Kilopass IP is available on process nodes from 180nm down to 28nm at its major foundry partners to provide solutions to customers across many markets. Among major Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) inking deals with Kilopass are the major suppliers of image sensors, display drivers, and gaming chips.
To understand how this successful start-up is being driven by evolutionary technical and market forces, an explanation of the company’s patented anti-fuse NVM IP and how it compares with alternative NVM solutions is the place to begin. Next, a description of how this anti-fuse NVM IP has symbiotically evolved with the steady progression of each new generation of standard logic CMOS processes, currently at 28nm and moving to 20nm and beyond, is in order. Finally, a discussion of how the anti-fuse NVM IP uniquely serves the four high-volume applications where it is being incorporated will detail how market forces are driving the company’s ongoing success.
