Text | Photos by Guo Ziwen | Internet From June 9th to 11th, the 2021 World Semiconductor Conference and Nanjing International Semiconductor Expo will be held at the Nanjing International Expo Center. Lin Jianhong, general manager of GUC, introduced in an interview with TechSugar

text | Guo Ziwen

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html From June 9th to 11th, the 2021 World Semiconductor Conference and Nanjing International Semiconductor Expo will be held at the Nanjing International Expo Center. Lin Jianhong, general manager of GUC, introduced in an interview with TechSugar that as a full-process customized IC design service company, GUC provides everything from tape-out verified IP solutions to complex SoC design services. With advanced solutions and experienced technical teams, Creative Electronics provides customers with cost-effective chip solutions.

Creative Electronics was established in 1998 and has a history of more than 20 years. The company provides customized IC design services and is committed to meeting customers' business and R&D needs, helping to improve product quality, reduce risks, shorten time to market, and provide customers with innovative solutions. Provide the most powerful support. According to Lin Jianhong, Creative Electronics’ business focuses on three major sectors: SoC design services, customized IC manufacturing and IP solutions.

Figure: Creative Electronics Business Distribution

Creative Electronics’ SoC design services cover the 0.5um to 5nm process and provide a wealth of chip design implementation methods, including hierarchical entity analysis, clock tree synthesis, and static chip variability (OCV). Timing analysis, formal functional verification, verification of multiple power supply areas and considering their respective on and off, crosstalk trimming and prevention and LVS/DRC, rapid prototyping, automated power supply design methods, and timing-driven design methods to reduce repetitive cycles.

In addition, Creative Electronics provides comprehensive design-for-test (DFT) services, including scan circuit synthesis, boundary scan, intelligent clustered memory BIST, scan rearrangement, low-power test pattern generation and compression, error simulation services, etc. Creative Electronics' business covers IP materialization, IP test circuits, test pattern integration, and SoC integration services, covering from specifications to GDSII, RTL to GDSII and from netlist to GDSII.

Creative Electronics' IP ecosystem can effectively improve customer productivity and shorten product development time and development risks. The IP lineup covers HBM, Glink, SerDes, and DDR, and is suitable for ASIC, FPGA, and SoC design. Following TSMC's advanced process technology, Creative Electronics has customers from 7nm to 5nm.

Figure: Creative Electronics IP solution

According to Lin Jianhong, Creative Electronics has recently released an artificial intelligence high-performance computing network platform using TSMC CoWoS technology. The technology includes 7.2Gbps HBM3 control layer and physical layer, Glink-2.5D IP, and 112G-LR SerDes artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and network CoWoS platform. This technology has been successfully designed and finalized in TSMC's 7nm process. It can achieve multi-chip interconnection with low latency, high bandwidth, and low power consumption. It can be flexibly expanded and meet signal and power integrity requirements.

With the integration and development of emerging industries such as 5G, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things in recent years, the chip industry has ushered in rapid development. On the other hand, the impact of the chip shortage is gradually expanding, and major wafer manufacturing plants continue to expand production capacity, which has also added fuel to the development of the chip design industry.

In addition, according to a Goldman Sachs research report, the number of chip company registrations has increased year by year since 2011. In 2020, the chip shortage problem has become increasingly apparent, and the number of chip company registrations has also shown a spurt of growth. Most start-up companies have immature technologies and require collaboration from upstream and downstream companies. This is also an unprecedented opportunity for IC design service companies.

In 2003, Creative Electronics received investment from TSMC, and TSMC became its largest investment shareholder. The close cooperation with TSMC gives Creative Electronics more advantages in advanced manufacturing processes and advanced packaging technologies.

Creative Electronics' technology and services are mainly oriented to the fields of networking, high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, data centers and other fields. It combines advanced technology, low power consumption and embedded CPU design capabilities, and collaborates with TSMC , conduct system integration across the entire industry chain, realize the advantages of chip products such as low power consumption, high speed, high performance, and high yield, and provide customers with better solutions.