Virage to base royalties on OEM savings

Virage to base royalties on OEM savings
By Jeanne Graham, EBN
July 13, 2001 (10:40 a.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010713S0032

Virage Logic Corp. is betting its royalty fees that its embedded self-test and repair (STAR) memory system will cut costs and increase yields of customers' system-on-a-chip (SoC) devices.

With the complete STAR memory test and repair function included on-chip, Virage can eliminate the need for automatic test equipment and laser repair tools, according to Krishna Balachandran, director of product marketing at the Fremont, Calif., company. But instead of a royalty structure based on the number of SoCs its customers sell, Virage will charge a fee based on the manufacturing cost reductions its OEMs expect to realize. "Unless we save the customer money, they pay us no royalty," Balachandran said. "They share a portion of their savings with us."

The STAR feature is a combination of three IP blocks used to create self-repairing embedded memories. In addition to using redundancy to replace defective bits, the system has a dedicated test-and-repair processor. The STAR processor automatically accesses each memory location on the SoC, and uses a patented self-repair and redundancy allocation algorithm to test and repair the memories, Balachandran said.

The repair data, or signature, is stored in the STAR fuse box, or special registers in the memories themselves, and can be executed either at wafer sort or at system power-on, the company said. The processor and fuse box support STAR SRAM embedded memories, which are designed for high-bandwidth SoC applications such as communication and networking products for Internet infrastructures, Balachandran said.

"Memory is kind of like a defect magnet," he said. "As you add more and more, the chance that yields will go down is higher and higher."

Because of this phenomenon, the ability to self-test and repair will become more important as embedded memory continues to occupy a greater percentage of SoC dice, according to observers. Memory covered 20% of an SoC's die area in 1999, but is forecast to co ver 52% by 2002, Balachandran said, quoting data from the Semiconductor Industry Association and International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors 2000 project.

"Built-in self-test has been the aim of the embedded market for some time," said Sherry Garber, an analyst at Semico Research Corp., Phoenix. "Part of the importance of the Virage system is that they can make embedded memory cost-effective. It's not necessarily the cheapest solution, but if it provides a solution that works really well, it will pay for itself."

The STAR memory system is available with licensing prices starting at $170,000. Royalties are determined for each customer based on anticipated cost savings, according to the company.