Renesas
Canvas Category OEM : Computer and Electronic
Renesas Electronics Corporation delivers trusted embedded design innovation with complete semiconductor solutions that enable billions of connected, intelligent devices to enhance the way people work and live. A global leader in microcontrollers, analog, power, and SoC products, Renesas provides comprehensive solutions for a broad range of automotive, industrial, home electronics, office automation, and information communication technology applications that help shape a limitless future.
Assembly Line
Renesas to Acquire PCB Design Software Leader Altium to Make Electronics Design Accessible to Broader Market and Accelerate Innovation
Renesas Electronics Corporation, a supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, and Altium Limited a global leader in electronics design systems, today announced they have entered into a Scheme Implementation Agreement (“SIA”) for Renesas to acquire Altium by way of a Scheme of Arrangement under Australian law (“Scheme”).
Together, Renesas and Altium, under a shared vision, aim to build an integrated and open electronics system design and lifecycle management platform that unifies these steps at a system level. The acquisition brings together Altium’s sophisticated cloud platform capabilities with Renesas’ strong portfolio of embedded solutions, combining high-performance processors, analog, power and connectivity. The combination will also enable integration with third-party vendors across the ecosystem to execute all electronic design steps seamlessly on the cloud. The electronics system design and lifecycle management platform will deliver integration and standardization of various electronic design data and functions and enhanced component lifecycle management, while enabling seamless digital iteration of design processes to increase overall productivity. This brings significantly faster innovation and lowers barriers to entry for system designers by reducing development resources and inefficiencies.
Renesas to Acquire Transphorm to Expand its Power Portfolio with GaN Technology
Renesas Electronics Corporation (“Renesas,” TSE: 6723), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, and Transphorm, Inc. (“Transphorm,” Nasdaq: TGAN), a global leader in robust gallium nitride (“GaN”) power semiconductors, today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement pursuant to which a subsidiary of Renesas will acquire all outstanding shares of Transphorm’s common stock for $5.10 per share in cash, representing a premium of approximately 35% to Transphorm’s closing price on January 10, 2024, a premium of approximately 56% to the volume weighted average price over the last twelve months and a premium of approximately 78% to the volume weighted average price over the last six months. The transaction values Transphorm at approximately $339 million. The acquisition will provide Renesas with in-house GaN technology, a key next-generation material for power semiconductors, expanding its reach into fast-growing markets such as EVs, computing (data centers, AI, infrastructure), renewable energy, industrial power conversion and fast chargers/adapters.
Cadence Design Is Working With Renesas To Build The World’s First LLM Tool For Up-Front Chip Design
Cadence has been aggressively rolling out reinforcement learning-based tools to help chip design teams accelerate the processes of digital design, debugging, verification, PCB layout, and multi-physics optimization. Customers have been eating it up, especially the physical design optimizer “Cerebrus” and the underlying cross-platform consolidated database, “JedAI.”
Now, the company has focused on the most challenging part of designing a chip: defining the specs and creating the first clean version of the design that drives the rest of the entire workflow. Renesas and Cadence have collaborated to develop a novel approach to address the up-front design work by leveraging LLMs, significantly reducing the time and effort from specification to final design. The chip design verification, debugging, and implementation phases remain the same today. They call this accelerating “Correct by Construction” design methodology.
Using an LLM, the team can demonstrate interrogating the plan for compliance with specifications and other design and project documents, in areas such as IP connections for data, control, and test, and other requirements specified in the IP and chip level specifications. These steps of cleaning the design code can take individual engineers and the team weeks of design time and hundreds of meetings to reduce the number of bugs they encounter during the simulation and implementation stages of the project. By using an LLM, Cadence hopes to significantly streamline this process.
Renesas to Acquire Cellular IoT Technology Leader Sequans Through Tender Offer
Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723, “Renesas”), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, and Sequans Communications S.A. (NYSE: SQNS, “Sequans”), a leader in 5G/4G cellular IoT chips and modules, today announced that the two companies have entered into a memorandum of understanding (the “MoU”). Pursuant to the terms of the MoU, Renesas will, following consultation of the Sequans’ works council and favorable recommendation by the Sequans Board, commence a tender offer to acquire all outstanding ordinary shares, including American Depositary Shares (ADS) of Sequans for $3.03 per ADS (each ADS representing four ordinary shares) in cash. The transaction values Sequans at approximately $249 million, including net debt, and is expected to close by the first quarter of calendar year 2024, subject to confirmation of tax treatment from relevant authorities, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
Upon closing of the transaction, Renesas intends to integrate Sequans’ breadth of cellular connectivity products and IP into its core product lineup, including microcontrollers, microprocessors, analog and mixed signal front ends. The acquisition will allow Renesas to immediately expand its reach to the Wide Area Network (WAN) market space encompassing a broad range of data rates. It will also enhance Renesas’ already rich portfolio of Personal Area Network (PAN) and Local Area Network (LAN) connectivity products.
Renesas and Wolfspeed Sign 10 Year Silicon Carbide Wafer Supply Agreement
Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723, “Renesas”), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, and Wolfspeed, Inc. (NYSE: WOLF, “Wolfspeed”), the global leader in silicon carbide technology, today announced the execution of a wafer supply agreement and $2 billion (USD) deposit by Renesas to secure a 10 year supply commitment of silicon carbide bare and epitaxial wafers from Wolfspeed. The supply of high-quality silicon carbide wafers from Wolfspeed will pave the way for Renesas to scale production of silicon carbide power semiconductors starting in 2025. The signing ceremony of the agreement was held at Renesas’ headquarters in Tokyo between Hidetoshi Shibata, President and CEO of Renesas, and Gregg Lowe, President and CEO of Wolfspeed.
Yield Is Top Issue For MicroLEDs
Early test results indicate yield issues at chip transfer, array-to-driver bonding, and other relatively new processes. High cost for this immature technology is keeping microLED displays from making the prototype-to-production leap. And because probers are not well suited to testing thousands of microLED pixels in densely packed arrays, DFT with self-testing is employed, which enables lifecycle testing — at ATE, post-assembly test, and in the field.
For instance, Dialog Semiconductor, a Renesas Company, developed a testing scheme for a white adaptive headlight module containing a 20,000-microLED array with 40µm pitch. “It’s a very good example of how a DFT circuit is not just overhead and cost to buy quality,” said Hans Martin von Staudt, director of Design-for-Test at Renesas. “Instead, it serves a valuable function over the lifetime of the chip. So we needed a DFT scheme with high-diagnostic coverage of the assembly process for pinpointing process weaknesses while enabling in-field monitoring.”
Inspection and testing methods are improving in their ability to identify and segregate out-of-spec product. Mass transfer methods that remove microLED die from wafers or film carriers and position them on IC drivers (for small AR/VR, watch and headlights) or TFT PCBs (for TVs), must easily separate known good die (KGD) from failures and underperforming die.
Yield targets for most microLED display apps are high (see figure 1) because the human eye can quickly spot missing pixels. To put yield targets in perspective, an 8K TV contains 99 million microLED chips. So if the defectivity rate is 0.5%, 520,000 devices must be removed and replaced. Top Engineering estimates this process would take 144 hours, making it cost-prohibitive until repair cost (removal and replacement of individual microLEDs) can be accelerated.
AI chip company Syntiant raises $55mn
Syntiant, a provider of deep learning solutions, has announced that it has closed $55 million in new funding, bringing the total investment to more than $100 million since the company was founded in 2017. Renesas Electronics, Millennium Technology Value Partners and Mirae Asset Capital are among five new investors. Existing investors also participated in the raise. The new funds will be used for enhancing software capabilities, as well as accelerating deployment of the company’s third-generation Syntiant Core 3 architecture, which Syntiant expects to introduce in 2023.
In July last year, Syntiant and Renesas announced a collaboration for a voice-controlled multimodal solution with Renesas’ RZ/V Series MPUs and Syntiant’s NDP120 Neural Decision Processor (NDP) that enables low-power contactless operation for image processing in vision AI-based IoT and edge systems.