SMIC and Efinix™ Quickly Deliver the First Quantum™-Accelerated Silicon Product
Quantum-accelerated products will be ready for production in 2018 to address high-volume programmable acceleration markets
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (“SMIC”) (NYSE: SMI; SEHK: 981), one of the leading semiconductor foundries in the world and the largest and most advanced foundry in mainland China, and Efinix™ , an innovator in programmable products platforms and technologies, today jointly announced that Efinix has received silicon product samples for its first Quantum™ accelerated programmable product platform built on SMIC’s 40nm process. A milestone was achieved with record breaking efficiency — going from product development using SMIC’s Physical Design Kit (PDK) to system validation of the samples in less than six months.
“This is the first time Efinix has worked with SMIC, and I am impressed by the strong support they provided. SMIC’s business and technical engagement with us created a strong foundation for our development success,” said Sammy Cheung, co-founder, CEO, and president of Efinix. “Now we can focus on our 2018 production milestones and swiftly deploy our first Quantum-accelerated product line to serve high-volume markets worldwide.”
Efinix’s Quantum programmable technology delivers a 4X Power-Performance-Area advantage over traditional programmable technologies. This disruptive advantage enables Efinix’s silicon products to compete in high-growth markets such as custom logic, deep learning, and compute acceleration.
“SMIC’s 40nm Low Leakage platform has already been in mass production for over 5-years. It has more than 220 products. We are excited to be working with Efinix to develop the Quantum programmable technology on our advanced and reliable platform,” said Sunny Hui, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing at SMIC. “FPGA programmable products are technically challenging to develop, but Efinix’s Quantum technology made it straightforward. We look forward to working with Efinix to deliver its first product line to production and to support joint development in the near future.”
“This is the first time in our industry that I have seen this level of efficiency in programmable product development,” said Bill Hata, former senior vice president of Worldwide Operations and Engineering at Altera Corporation (now part of Intel). Hata has more than 30 years of semiconductor industry experience and serves on Efinix’s Advisory Board. “This efficiency is made possible by the silicon process agnostic nature of the Quantum architecture. Unlike leading FPGAs, this technology does not require special silicon process recipes to boost performance and logic element (LE) density.”
Efinix is currently working with a few enabling customers. Details of the first phase of Quantum- accelerated product line will be released in the first quarter of 2018.
