Chip design and manufacturing firm eSilicon is making a major expansion in Europe with the hiring of up to 50 engineers at its design centre in Romania.
The US firm opened its Bucharest design centre in February with a specialisation in low power ICs.
"They're very good at low power design and die size reduction techniques," said Jack Harding, chairman, president and CEO at eSilicon.
The European team will be expanded to "at least" 30 engineers in the next 12 months, maybe 50, said Harding, depending on the availability of good designers.
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Harding: "I didn't do this to have a
$100m business." |
eSilicon is one of the more significant of the outsourcing firms that have sprung up over the last few years. It boasts around 40 customers and in the year to March 2005 had revenues of $91m.
"What we're trying to be is the new breed of manufacturing firms," Harding explained to Electronics Weekly. "We always ship silicon to the customer."
Harding said around two-thirds of the projects it takes on involve the physical design of the chip as well as the manufacturing, for which the firm uses TSMC 90 per cent of the time.
"Have one fab that really loves you, rather than two that think you're OK," Harding noted.
The demand for outsourced physical design and manufacturing is growing as the complexity and cost of advanced processes rise. Harding estimates that at 90nm and below, there might be only 50 companies that can really afford to do their own physical design and manufacturing."
"People need this [outsourcing] as they move to finer geometries - it's getting too hard," he said. "You have to view the world from netlist to prototype, one process."
This means building chips with yield management in mind, a process that starts during the design phase.
Harding has ambitious plans for eSilicon. "Long term, we're serving a $20bn market. There's no reason why we can't be a billion dollar company in a relevant timeframe... perhaps seven years. I didn't do this to have a $100m business."
www.eSilicon.com