SUNNYVALE CA--(Marketwire - June 16, 2010) - eSilicon Corporation, the largest independent semiconductor Value Chain Producer (VCP), today announced that it will provide turn-key semiconductor production operations and logistics services to Ember and Pixim.
"eSilicon has been building toward this type of turn-key offering since we founded the company ten years ago," said Jack Harding, Chairman, President and CEO of eSilicon Corporation. "Forward-thinking companies today have realized that the internal, backend engineering and logistics activities from netlist to end-of-life are not core to their strategies. Customers of ours, like Ember and Pixim, are making the intelligent choice -- they are focusing their internal resources on innovation and measurably improving their control and visibility over their supply chain by selecting eSilicon to manage their production operations and logistics."
Through this service, customers gain flexibility to scale production and receive packaged, tested chips. As an additional benefit, customers decrease their total cost of ownership by leveraging eSilicon's patented operations infrastructure and well established and growing base of supply chain relationships.
"It is reassuring to know that eSilicon will ensure we have full visibility and control over the production operations for our EM250 SoCs and EM260 Network Co-processor, which are the most deployed ZigBee chips in the industry," said Robert LeFort, CEO of Ember. "This enables us to focus our internal resources on our newest family of ZigBee SoCs -- the ARM® Cortex-M3 based EM300 Series SoCs."
"eSilicon has a patented tool and infrastructure called eSilicon Access® that is excellent for managing a complex supply chain requirement such as ours, at the same time providing us 24/7 visibility to where deliverables are," said Chris Adams, CEO of Pixim. "This, combined with eSilicon's expertise and role as a value chain producer, allows them to manage our product cost, quality, capacity scheduling and delivery schedule, freeing us to focus on the design aspects of our next-generation video image processing chipsets."
"The focus on core new product development and introduction engineering makes perfect sense for fabless semiconductor companies and OEMs alike," said Rob Lineback, senior market research analyst with IC Insights. "Over the last several years, I have seen that companies have lost leverage and control over large portions of their supply chain. Too many operations teams have become unbalanced -- spending more than necessary to run existing operations because they lack the economies of scale and scope. Companies need to focus on innovation to create shareholder value."
The outsourcing of production operations and logistics functions by Fabless Semiconductor Companies (FSCs) represents an incremental $4 billion serviceable available market opportunity for eSilicon. eSilicon has set aside $10 million for its "eSilicon Investment Fund I" which is dedicated to expanding eSilicon's customer base for this market-changing service. In addition to Ember and Pixim, eSilicon plans to announce a number of other customers over the coming months.
Please contact Patrick Soheili, vice president of marketing and business development, at psoheili@esilicon.com for more information about eSilicon Operations Strategy services.
About Value Chain Producer
A Value Chain Producer (VCP) is a company that collaborates with foundries, IP and service providers, EDA suppliers, package, assembly and test operations in designing and producing chips for fabless IC, IDM and OEM companies. VCPs optimize the economics of customer value chains and enable customers to focus on their product differentiation and market growth. A VCP earns revenue by shipping packaged, tested products with the customers' logo. The term was created by eSilicon and was adopted by the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) as a new category in October 2009.
About eSilicon
eSilicon, the largest independent semiconductor Value Chain Producer (VCP), provides a comprehensive suite of design, productization and manufacturing services, enabling a flexible, low-cost, lower-risk path to volume chip production. The company delivers application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to system original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and fabless semiconductor companies who serve a wide variety of markets including the consumer, computer, communications and industrial segments. eSilicon - Enabling Your Silicon Success™. For more information, please visit www.esilicon.com.
About Ember
Ember Corporation develops wireless mesh networking technology -- chips, software and tools -- for Smart Energy, connected homes, and many other monitoring and control applications enabling greener living and work environments. The Boston-based company is a promoter of the ZigBee Alliance with an IC design center in Cambridge, England, an office in Hong Kong and sales channels and distributors worldwide. For more information, visit www.ember.com.
About Pixim
Pixim Inc. has developed unique imaging technology that revolutionizes the way video cameras capture and process images. Unlike traditional image capture technologies, where each pixel cannot adjust to highlights and lowlights in the same scene, Pixim's patented Digital Pixel System® technology empowers hundreds of thousands of pixels to act like individual cameras constantly self-adjusting. This all-digital system enables Pixim-powered cameras to efficiently capture the whole picture, regardless of lighting condition or application -- thus securing the widest dynamic range, natural color, and clarity, while automatically eliminating image-compromising visual noise (e.g., glare, reflections). The result is more than superb image quality; it is accurate, actionable information that gives users the strength of certainty.
Pixim chipsets are incorporated into millions of security cameras installed in more than 100 countries worldwide. Visit http://www.pixim.com/pixim-powered-cameras for a complete listing of Pixim-based cameras. For general information, visit www.pixim.com or call Pixim's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., at (650) 605-1118.
eSilicon is a registered trademark, and the eSilicon logo and Enabling Your Silicon Success are trademarks, of eSilicon Corporation. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Contact Information:
For more information:
Susan Cain
Cain Communications
503-538-2747