CEO Interview: Ian Lankshear, EnSilica

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Securing the semiconductor supply chain with ASICs

www.eenewseurope.com/, Mar. 21, 2023 – 

UK chip designer EnSilica is looking to capitalise on the increasing drive for car makers and large industrial companies to develop their own chips.

The pandemic highlighted the importance of the semiconductor supply chain, and this is driving a renaissance in the custom ASIC business, Ian Lankshear, CEO of EnSilica tells Nick Flaherty during Embedded World 2023.

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"In 2016 we made the decision that what we wanted to do was to scale the business by selling chips rather than time," said Lankshear. "We've been through the route of developing IP and licensing. Where you really scale is the fabless ASIC model – we are making custom chips and a lot of those chips will include some of our IP, its about differentiation and knowhow, radar, cryptography, RF, analog IP and if you come to the game with an empty toolbox you are at a disadvantage."

The world is catching up, both for control over the supply chain and for differentiation. "There is a renaissance in ASICs to differentiate your product," he said.

The company went public in May last year on the junior AIM marketplace, raising £6m for expansion.

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"Our real differentiation is we do RF. We acquired the design teams of Toumaz in Oxford, Jennic in Sheffield and a team from Blu Wireless in Bristol, and we have a team of 25 people in Brazil doing roadtags and NFC."

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"We are split into two business units, with the RF and comms working in more advanced nodes from 40nm down to 7nm, and the business and sensor business unit working from 130nm down to 28nm. Those mature nodes you have some great features with high voltage, flash memory and microcontrollers, and the tooling costs is less than $200,000.

Ensilica manages the supply chain, working with foundries such as TSMC and GlobalFoundries optimising the production and yield over time and working with test partners for security of supply and quality levels to deliver parts to customers.

The pandemic was a challenge with the changing pressures on the foundry capacity. While Ensilica is a relatively small customer, producing a few million chips a year, that actually helped, says Lankshear. A few wafers could be critical for Ensilica's customers but almost not be noticed by the larger customers.

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