CEO Dave Dutton Talks About 2018 Success and the 2019 Forecast

Silvaco CEO David Dutton sits down with Graham Bell to discuss the growth of the company in 2018 including drivers and trends from customers and also takes a look forward to 2019.

Graham Bell: Hi. This is Graham Bell with Silvaco. I’m speaking with David Dutton, CEO.

David Dutton: Hi, Graham.

GB: David, there’s been a recent growth announcement from Silvaco. Can you give us some details about that?

DD: Yeah, we were really happy. I think we announced, this year was our fourth consecutive year of double-digit growth, and even more important that we had growing profitability on GAAP‑based revenue and profitability, so we’re very excited about that. And I think for people in the industry who’ve known Silvaco a long time, historically we’ve been a boutique company, and now we’ve really changed and become a growth company. And a lot of it has been around how you position and drive the culture. So, when about four or five years ago, we started to look at Silvaco with a great set of products, and we realized, “Oh, you know what, we need to focus on being a market leader.” Before, we were a technology company. But when you turn and focus on market leadership, it really forces you to think about, “What does the industry need? How do I orient my products for them?” And I think we’re starting to see the benefits of that shifting culture, where we’ve taken great products and now oriented them to really meet some of the challenges of the industry going forward.

GB: What were the drivers in the marketplace that really drove your success?

DD: We’re seeing a number of areas that I think make a big difference as we position forward. For us drivers, of course, [Digital] Display has been one of our leadership areas, and we’re seeing display continue to grow. And I think that is one area we’re very strong, from TCAD all the way through to the full [design] flow. Basically, any time you look at a display, Silvaco’s design tools have touched that. Another area that I think we continue to see grow is power ICs as well, where with electrification, more around even solar in those areas, power management parts and high‑power parts are becoming more critical. And we’re very strong, especially in compound semiconductors, as that’s becoming even more and more mainstream.

DD: Both of those have been growth areas. I think our vision in those is starting to turn into fruition. As well as our existing strength and analog/mixed-signal, where you’re seeing a lot more ASIC designs, and that’s driving a lot more design seats, and we’re reaping the benefits of that. And I think, lastly, Silvaco’s put even a more focus on advanced semiconductor. You’ll hear more maybe when we talk a bit, but we need more compute power with less energy, and that’s demanding new methodologies, new architectures, new materials. And you’ll find that we’re investing in all those areas for our tools. So, we’re helping our customers be able to simulate and even predict some of what they need for their R&D, to help reduce their costs going forward.

GB: What was the fastest growing area of Silvaco’s business last year?

DD: Actually, the fastest growing area was a new area for Silvaco, which was our IP. We added SIP a few years ago, and we’ve just seen it grow phenomenally. It’s been a very strong growth area for us. And I think part of it is coupled with the automotive expansion and such. And so we’re seeing… We have one of the strongest automotive IP portfolios in the industry. On top of that, we introduced first to the industry the I3C, the new interface protocol. Both of those, we’ve just seen rapid growth. Our IP grew over 50% year over year and is now becoming a double digit part of the company, where it was just a fledgling division a few years ago. Next, our TCAD area with all the positions I talked about, and even one, if you talk about automotive. Sensors are real critical, and a lot of our optoelectronics capabilities in TCAD is really helping that industry as well.

GB: David, can you give us some insight on what’s going to happen in 2019?

DD: Sure. We’re really excited about 2019. We think it’ll be another huge growth year for us. We’ll set records again, and it’ll be our fifth year of records. On top of that, we’re very excited… I mentioned display. Display Week is coming up. It’s going to be here in Silicon Valley this year. We’ve got big programs planned for that, as well as looking forward… DAC is going to be in Las Vegas, but we’ve got a whole new structure set up where we’re going to have a lot of fun down there and a lot of programs, and a host [of] the Stars of IP party, as well. And then if you look at us in general, you’ll continue to see us advance more into… Advanced CMOS areas with our atomistic TCAD capabilities.

DD: We have a whole new custom CAD that we’re starting to push into the market, totally redone so that we can really capture in how customers design in these new ASIC areas. And we’re doing a lot of programs to help around some of the challenges with… I call it AIoT, but everything from, like I mentioned, better design capabilities. We have partnerships with universities or with consortiums, in areas such as a cryogenic simulation, because that’s going to be critical to do super conducting so we can get more speed for AI learning and such. So, I think you’ll find Silvaco’s really plugged in to help solve a lot of the industry’s challenges that we see going forward, to really bring us to this massive shift that we’re seeing from mobile… kind of PC and mobile, to a whole new AIoT-driven era. And the challenges there are huge, but I think on the other side it’s going to benefit society so great, so we’re really charged up about that.

GB: David, thanks for speaking with us today.

DD: You bet, Graham. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Tags: AIoT, Atomistic CAD, DAC, Display Week, GAAP revenue, ML

Category: Silvaco

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