eSilicon

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eSilicon is a fabless semiconductor company founded in 2000 in San Jose, California. eSilicon designs and manufactures digital CMOS and finFET ASICs. In addition, eSilicon designs market-specific semiconductor IP platforms and provides custom IC manufacturing services. eSilicon is considered a pioneer of the fabless ASIC model. They focus on developing and managing the manufacturing process of complex finFET-class chips, 2.5D packaging solutions and advanced semiconductor IP for customers in the high-bandwidth networking, high-performance computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G infrastructure markets.

Locations[]

eSilicon's headquarters is in San Jose, California. eSilicon has offices in Allentown, Pennsylvania; Shanghai, China; Penang, Malaysia; Bucharest, Romania; Singapore; Taiwan and Vietnam (one design center in Ho Chi Minh City and another in Da Nang).

History[]

Since its founding in 2000 eSilicon has received a total of $86M in venture capital.^[2] In 2002 eSilicon became widely known as the supplier of a key Apple Inc. iPod ASIC through PortalPlayer.^[3] 2004 revenues reached $91M largely driven by ASICs for the iPod. In 2006 Apple announced that they were changing their iPod ASIC strategy and eSilicon no longer supplies ASICs for the iPod.^[4] Following the loss of the iPod business eSilicon diversified its customer base and announced in May 2008 that they were profitable and shipping ASICs to over 50 customers.^[5] In January 2008 eSilicon acquired the assets of Swedish-based Ethernet networking switch supplier SwitchCore AB and announced that they would seek further acquisitions.^[6] Rumors of eSilicon preparing to file for an IPO have circulated on and off since 2003.^[7][8][9]

In 2011, eSilicon started the MoZAIC™ “Modular Z-axis Integrated Circuit” 2.5D ASIC program to analyze new approaches that would provide more bandwidth for customers. This includes the development of an HBM PHY in 28nm and finFET technologies as well as the study of 2.5D packaging. eSilicon has completed seven test chips to date that verify the HBM PHY IP and assemble a supply chain ecosystem in support of 2.5D integration — design, verification, test and reliability. eSilicon has multiple 14/16nm finFET 2.5D ASICs in design, with several entering production in the first half of 2018.

Products[]

eSilicon provides physical design, design for test insertion, traditional and 2.5D package design, product qualification, IP licensing, and manufacturing services for digital CMOS and finFET ASICs. eSilicon has announced products in .25 um, .18 um, .13 um, 90 nm, 65 nm, 40 nm, 28 nm and 14 nm process technologies. In 2017, eSilicon announced tapeout to production of one of the first 2.5D ASICs, developed on Samsung 14LPP technology. ^{[10] [11]} Customer ASICs have been announced in a wide range of applications including high-bandwidth networking, high-performance computing, digital cameras, hearing aids, portable multimedia players and inkjet printers.

eSilicon specializes in a high-performance, high-bandwidth IP + 2.5D solution that targets networking, high-performance computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G wireless infrastructure applications by offering specialized memories with 2.5GHz worst-case operation with more than a billion searches per second along with the 2.5D integration of 1024 Gbytes/sec data rate high-bandwidth memory (HBM2). Memory and I/O products in this category include ternary content addressable memory (TCAMs), fast cache, multi-port and asynchronous register files and HBM2 PHY.

Manufacturing[]

As a fabless company eSilicon outsources all semiconductor manufacturing to merchant foundries. Since eSilicon's founding it has had a relationship with TSMC as its primary foundry partner.^[12] eSilicon also partners with Samsung Foundry. eSilicon outsources all package assembly and test.

Milestones[]

2000–2007

•Pioneers fabless ASIC and the value chain producer (VCP) model, based on industry megatrends
•Adds design teams coming primarily from Bell Labs (Murray Hill, New Jersey and Allentown, Pennsylvania)
•Adds Netlist engagement model
•Patents eSilicon Access® 24x7 production management tool
•Creates GlobalDesign™ private cloud-based hosted design environment
•Adds GDSII engagement model 
•Establishes engineering center in Romania through acquisition of Sycon Design

2008-Current

•Establishes manufacturing operations center in Penang, Malaysia
•GSA (Global Semiconductor Alliance) announces VCP as an official market segment, creates a board seat
•Acquires Silicon Design Solutions (SDS) with two engineering centers in Vietnam (170 full-time employees) for its custom IP business
•Launches MoZAIC™ “Modular Z-axis Integrated Circuit” 2.5D packaging research program
•Launches eSilicon® STAR online tool suite: Navigator, Optimizer, Explorer and Tracker
•Patents SKOPE knowledge base and design optimization technology
•Announces tapeout of 14nm 2.5D finFET ASIC for production

References[]

External links[]

• eSilicon homepage