The NVM Insider, Issue 15 - Page 2 - Executive Opinion

Executive Opinion:
Attaining Acceptance in the Semiconductor IP Marketplace

Tom Schild, Vice President Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Sidense

Sidense recently licensed its OTP IP for its 200th customer design, a significant milestone for an IP company developing non-volatile 1T-OTP memory as its only product. During the past quarter, we announced licensing of our 1T-OTP macros to two new customers, Aptina and Toumaz Microsystems. We've also been successful licensing our 1T-OTP to many of the top 25 semiconductor companies, as ranked by iSuppli for 2010.

There are several metrics IP vendors can use to gauge their success. Revenue and profit, naturally, are near the top of the "successful" list. However, broad industry acceptance - as measured by the breadth and diversity of its customer base - is also very important. With our customer base continuing to grow, Sidense has shown that its 1T-OTP products are in demand by a lot of companies for applications such as code and encryption key storage, analog trimming and calibration, device configuration and device IDs. The number of customer designs show that many of our customers have done more than one design using our OTP, a good indicator of their satisfaction with Sidense and our OTP.

Appealing to and winning customer approval of our 1T-OTP is due to several factors. First, we have developed our OTP for a wide range of foundries, process nodes and process variants. This allows our customers to use an OTP macro that has been proven for their particular process. We work closely with the top silicon foundries and selected IDMs to have our OTP meet their stringent qualification requirements; this gives our customers confidence that they are getting a reliable and proven OTP product. We offer industry-leading benchmarks in the terms of our macros' silicon area, providing a ROI for the initial IP purchase that engineering managers and VPs can easily justify, especially when coupled with the additional advantages of fast time to market, flexibility and customization that 1T-OTP can provide during the engineering process. Finally, we can provide the support a customer needs during the integration and design phase to assure their success.

Revenue and its growth are critical to the long-term success of any IP company. However, these other parameters are also factors to consider when judging the overall success of an IP vendor and they go a long way in assuring that a vendor will continue to provide the products and services demanded by and needed by its customers.