ASICs & Design Centers

Tekmos is announcing a new program to partner with independent design centers to produce low cost ASICs for use in medical, industrial, and consumer products. This collaboration combines Tekmos’ skills in ASIC design and manufacture with the design centers knowledge of the user applications. This allows Tekmos to develop the ASIC in parallel with the system design, resulting in an overall faster time to market.

ASICs provide an alternative to systems utilizing standard products when there are economical, electrical, or mechanical constraints. Economically, ASICs are justified when the manufacturing savings equals the NRE after 6 months of production. This typically occurs for volumes that exceed 250K units per year. ASICs are also justified when there are electrical performance or mechanical restrictions in the application. For example, a biomedical product that must be swallowed has a size constraint that cannot be waived. And some applications require analog measurements that cannot be made with a processors built-in ADC. For these applications, an ASIC is the only solution.

Most larger semiconductor manufacturers are driven by manufacturing volume. This leads to minimum sales volume requirements for doing business with them. These requirements result in customers with production volumes between 100k to 5m being unable to take advantage of the benefits of ASICs. This is where the partnership between Tekmos and independent design centers comes into play. At these volume levels, many of these customers utilize independent design centers to create the electrical portions of their end product. Yet many of these design centers may not have made the investment in the design tools necessary to create a successful ASIC.

Tekmos has the required ASIC tools and experience. Combining this with the design center’s application knowledge allows for the creation of a cost effective solution for the end customer.

Date

2020-07-15