SEMICONDUCTOR TIMES AUGUST 2020 / 1 ® AUGUST 2020 FOCUSED ON EMERGING SEMICONDUCTOR COMPANIES VOL 25, ISSUE 8 Trex processor is the first in the industry recognition streams simultaneously Startup Profiles focused on latency optimization ground- while consuming only 45W. This perfor- up, according to the company. mance demonstrates 13x performance DinoPlusAI improvement and 1/6x energy consump- DinoplusAI was founded in October The DinoplusAI processor platform tion reduction compared to Nvidia’s 2017 to develop latency-optimized AI is highly consistent and predictable, Tesla V100, according to the company. processors to enable future’s real-time and has achieved the industry’s lowest and ultra-low latency applications. The latency at low batch size, according to The DinoplusAI processor platform company has raised $6.5M. the company, which is critical in AI ap- combines the SiFive RISC-V E34 plications. DinoPlusAI has verified Trex Management Core with a proprietary VR headset users will experience nausea chipset performance against a large set AI engine from DinoplusAI. In addition, when the latency between users moving of deep learning models, ranging from SiFive’s Custom SoC Division will their eye position to video showing up is popular CNN models to LSTM models provide RTL-to-physical design. SiFive over 20 ms. Ideally, VR latency should for speech recognition. The DinoplusAI will integrate DinoplusAI AI IP blocks be no more than 7 ms, if not zero. Ul- processor, with superior DeepBench into its 16nm FinFET design platform tra-low latency, ideally at single-digit LSTM performance, enables more than based on the SiFive RISC-V E34 man- ms, also significantly benefits manufac- 4,000 real-time audio streams with a agement core to deliver a complete turing, remote operation and medicine. computation latency of less than 1ms silicon solution. Sub 1ms ultra-low latency is essential for Rokid’s acoustic model, an indus- DinoplusAI has received $8M in LOI for very fast control loop in manufac- try leading cloud speech recognition POs from customers Ford, Inspur, turing, according to an experiment by algorithm. Rokid, Perceptin, and Megvii. Ericsson together with the Fraunhofer The processor is able to shorten the Institute for Production Technology. Dr. Sam Heidari, Executive Chairman latency to 1/100x and lower power con- Autonomous driving also requires (previously Chairman and CEO of sumption by 1/6x, compared to Nvidia’s low latency as road conditions need to Quantenna) be captured, sensed and processed in V100 series, when processing Resnet-50 real-time. model at 70K images per second. It is able to process 5,000 frames per second DinoPlusAI is developing latency- at INT8 precision with batch 1 inference IN THIS ISSUE optimized AI processors with upper for SSD Mobilenet V1 model, com- Startup Profiles ........................... 1 bounded ultra-low latency, in addition pared to only 34 frames per second for People ......................................... 6 to throughput performance and low Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X system. Funding ...................................... 8 energy consumption. The company’s It is also able to process 4,000 speech Mergers & Acquisitions ............. 9 SIA Global Sales ($B) SEMI’s N. American Equipment Billings 40 Business & Financials ............... 11 3000 30% 35 Market Research ...................... 12 2500 20% 30 Emerging Trends ...................... 13 25 2000 10% 20 Products .................................... 14 1500 0% 15 Dollars (Millions) Dollars Y/Y Growth (%) Growth Y/Y Licensing & Partnerships ......... 16 1000 -10% 10 Design Wins .............................. 17 5 500 -20% 0 Company Earnings ................... 18 0 -30% 5/19 6/19 7/19 8/19 9/19 10/19 11/19 12/19 1/20 2/20 3/20 4/20 5/20 Jun-19 Jul-19 Aug-19 Sep-19 Oct-19 Nov-19 Dec-19 Jan-20 Feb-20 Mar-20 Apr-20 May-20 Jun-20 (final) (prelim) Billings Y/Y Growth % APAC-Other China Japan Europe America Stock Charts .............................. 19 Copyright © 2020, Pinestream Communications, Inc. Tel 781.647.8800 www.pinestream.com [email protected] 2 / AUGUST 2020 SEMICONDUCTOR TIMES device integration of UW-developed with NLM materials, in a small footprint Startup Profiles EO materials. and at very low energy consumption. (Continued from page 1) NLM-enabled Plasmonic Bio-Sensors Jay Hu, Founder and CEO (previously Today’s commercially available will allow bio-sensors to be made Architect & Founder at cNeuron electro-optic materials are typically smaller and less expensive, to the point Technology and Senior Principal crystalline compounds such as lithi- of being disposable. Engineer at Cadence) um niobate, which are power hungry, Tong Wu, Founder & CTO (previous- physically large and difficult to inte- NLM has joined the 5G Open Inno- ly Senior Technical Lead at Cisco grate directly on chips. According to vation Lab (www.5GOILab.com), an / Insieme Networks and software NLM, these materials also have very ecosystem for developers, enterprises, development engineer at Lab126 ) little room for improvement. NLM’s carriers, and technology leaders focused Patrick Ang, VP of Business Develop- organic electro-optic (OEO) materials on helping startups utilize 5G to develop ment (previously Executive Director can achieve > 10x the performance of new capabilities, products, and market at Infinitedge Partners, VP of Market- lithium niobate. categories. NLM will work closely with the Lab’s founding partners, including ing at Quintic, EVP at UniRAM and NLM’s platform allows major chip and Intel, T-Mobile, and others. Specifically, CEO at PicoNetics) computer manufacturers to integrate NLM brings their optical computing 48371 Fremont Blvd, #103 low-power, high-speed optical comput- materials platform for enabling high Fremont, CA 94538 ing components into existing production speed and energy-efficient 5G tech- Tel: 510.573.3776 lines. Prototype devices using NLM nology in a shift away from traditional dinoplus.ai materials already run 100x faster than conductor computing. standard microprocessors and use 1000x less power than what is consumed in Nonlinear Materials To commercialize the technology, running existing infrastructure. Nonlinear Materials (NLM) was NLM has assembled a core team of founded in August 2018 to develop The company’s initial target is optical research scientists, technology startup electro-optic materials and production transport in datacenters. Beyond that, leaders, and strategic advisors. NLM methods for cloud computing providers, the company will target optical chip in- has high-performance EO materials semiconductor companies, and telecom terconnects by introducing electro-optic available today, with even higher-per- equipment manufacturers. NLM has an materials into CMOS semiconductors, formance EO materials in development. exclusive license for key electro-optic with interconnections between the CPU, Polariton (see July 2020 issue), a (EO) material patents from the Uni- GPU and memory chips. Electro-Optic developer of plasmonic electro-optic versity of Washington. The patents materials can also be combined with modulators, uses NLM HLD materials. were licensed to NLM by CoMotion, electronics within CPU and GPU chip NLM. offer organic electro-optic mate- the collaborative innovation hub at the designs. The ultimate vision is optical rials for sale and licensing, consulting University of Washington (UW). processing featuring all-optical chip on materials integration and process designs encompassing GPU, CPU, and development, R&D of novel nonlinear The new EO materials were developed memory. materials, and joint development with by the research groups of Professor Lar- device manufacturers and fabrication ry Dalton and Professor Bruce Robinson The company expects NLM-enabled facilities. in the Department of Chemistry at UW multi-Tb/s transceivers to operate at based on over 20 years of research at least 10X faster than current technology, Paul Nye, Chairman and President (35 UW, both within those groups and in while also being less expensive, smaller, years technology startup experience; the 2002-2012 UW-led National Science and having lower energy consumption. Partner at Triad Venture Foundry; Foundation Science and Technology The global optical modulator market Co-founder & CEO of Information Center on Materials and Devices for was $2 billion in 2017 and is expected Optics, a high-speed optical memory Information Technology Research (NSF to reach $22.6 billion in 2024 driven by company) STC-MDITR). UW researchers have the availability and cost effectiveness of Gerard Zytnicki, Co-founder & CEO collaborated with researchers at ETH THz modulators. (30 years technology experience Zurich, Karlsruhe Institute of Technol- including 27 at Microsoft in senior ogy, KU Leuven, Purdue University, Arrays of plasmonic MZI devices can level product and engineering roles) Virginia Commonwealth University, be assembled in large logical arrays to US Air Force Research Laboratory, perform high speed neural net functions, Lewis Johnson, Ph.D., Co-founder & and other institutions on testing and enabled by the THz speeds achievable Chief Scientific Officer (Research Copyright © 2020, Pinestream Communications, Inc. Tel 781.647.8800 www.pinestream.com [email protected] SEMICONDUCTOR TIMES AUGUST 2020 / 3 Scientist in the University of Wash- the benefits of graphene. Paragraf Serving the sensor, energy harvesting ington Department of Chemistry) claims to be the first company to de- and semiconductor markets, Paragraf