Kilopass Technology was founded in Feb. 2001 to develop and market advanced non-volatile memory (NVM) technology, manufactured in standard commercial CMOS logic processes.  Kilopass developed fundamental patents for anti-fuse technology.  It has 54 patents granted or pending on 1T, 2T, and 3.5T bit cell technologies. Its bit cell architecture is compatible with standard CMOS logic, has the same reliability as the foundry's process, scales easily with the process technology, and reduces overall SoC product cost. Data programming is shorter than for other NVM technologies, and data is impervious to detection because no voltage, electronic or magnetic fields are stored.

The company chose the IP business model to capitalize on its technology.  The firm's revenues are derived from NRE, licensing, and royalty fees.  NRE costs are typically $400K to $600K and cover development of products, test chips, and qualification at a particular node in a foundry.  Typically, one to five percent royalty fees are paid by customers (dependent on wafer pricing).  Patent licensing is offered selectively to large customers, such as IBM.

The company considers its key markets to be

• Analog: audio tuners, clock chips, PMU, LED lighting
• Automotive: DSP, I/O connectivity, micro sensor systems
• Mobility: PA, RF transceiver, baseband, DDI, CIS
• Consumer: media & app processors, PC multimedia

The company acquired its first round of venture capital funding from Nokia Venture Partners, InveStar Capital and iGlobe Partners during the 2002 to 2003 timeframe. Total funding received was about $6.7 million.  A second round of financing was closed in October 2005 totaling about $8.8 million.  Later in September of 2006, $7.75 million was raised from lead investor Pitango Venture Capital,  along with US Venture Partners, BlueRun Ventures and iGlobe Partners.  To date, Kilopass has raised $35 million -- not a bad fund raising scorecard for an IP company.

The startup was founded by Jack Peng, also the inventor of the technology.  Peng has more than 23 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, with 15 years specialized in the field of Flash, EPROM, and FPGA development. Before founding Kilopass, he held senior technology development positions at Actel, Gatefield, and AMD, where he was in charge of developing ERPOM, Flash, EEPROM, PLD and Flash-based FPGA technology.

Bernie Aronson joined Kilopass from his CEO post at Synplicity in Oct. 2004 as president and COO reporting to CEO Peng. Prior to joining Synplicity and taking the company public in 2000, Aronson was senior VP and co-GM of the EPIC Technology Group at Synopsys. Before Synopsys, he was president of EPIC Design Technology, where he took the company through a successful initial public offering in 1994.  Eventually, Aronson became CEO at Kilopass

Charlie Cheng

After four years on the job, Aronson retired and Charlie Cheng was recruited as the new CEO (October 2008).  Cheng has 20 years industry experience, 10 of which are specifically in semiconductor IP. Prior to Kilopass, He held VP positions at Faraday, in general management and marketing, with the main responsibility of expanding global business. Before Faraday, He was the founder and CEO of Lexra, an embedded RISC CPU IP company. Cheng began his technology career at General Electric and IBM, and has worked at Iomega, Zycad, Viewlogic, and Aspec Technology.

The other executives on the management team include:

• Lee Cleveland, VP of Engineering (joined  8/2009, ex-Sipex, AMD, Spansion)
• Harry Luan, CTO (joined 2002, ex-AMD, Hynix, Cypress Semiconductor, Winbond)
• Lin Hong, VP of Marketing (joined  4/2009), ex-LSI Logic, Sun Microsystems)
• Jeff Ball, VP of Corporate Development (joined 5/2009, ex-JP Morgan)
• Tracy Mah, Finance Controller (joined 9/2008)

Until about a year after the arrival current CEO Cheng, Kilopass was primarily focusing its activities on low-density NVM anti-fuse embedded memories.  In 2006, Kilopass has divested its FPGA activity and new company, SiliconBlue Technologies was spun out.

With the exception of Harry Luan, Cheng has assembled new team to manage the company as it morphs to its next phase which primarily revolves around its recent development of high-density NVM memories and future thrusts in the direction of higher densities and more features. 

The top sales executive function seems to have been a problematic organizational issue for the firm.     In March 2009, industry veteran Bill Cibulski was brought in  to replace Chales Ng, the company's original sales and marketing VP who left to pursue other interests.   Seven months later, Cibulsky was out and was replaced by Juan Chapa who was recruited from a similar post at Tensilica.  Currently, the company does not have a sales VP and the role is handled by CEO Cheng.

From 2005 through 2008, the company's strategy has been to license and work with Taiwanese foundry supplier, TSMC, almost exclusively.   The demand for Kilopass small density NMV IP was large, but the low density arena had very competitive IP offerings.  Diversification began in 2009 with development of high-density NVM IP and, at the same time, the company addressed customer demand for alternative foundry sources.   In addition to its long-time foundry partner,TSMC, Kilopass has qualified foundries at Samsung, Global Foundry, SMIC, IBM, UMC, Tower Semiconductor and Dongbu.

Kilopass business strategy

In 2010, Kilopass launched its new business initiative to address the large embedded code storage market. The company announced Gusto in June, the industry's first and only 4M-bit one-time programmable (OTP) NVM IP in June.  Gusto is the only NVM IP large enough to store the firmware and boot code traditionally stored in external serial-flash and EEPROM chips. It is ideal for cost-, power- and form factor-sensitive applications, including mobile application processors and multimedia processors, as well as for high-security applications such as mobile banking and conditional access. Kilopass has successfully taped out Gusto 40nm test chips at three leading foundries -- IBM, TSMC, and UMC. Initial silicon data is available now, and qualified proven silicon will be available later this year.

As part of its new strategy, Kilopass is seeking to transform two high volume market segments:

1. applications using embedded Flash memory
2. applications which require external memory to store the code

Kilopass applications strategy for Gusto

Gusto claims to eliminate the limitations of traditional embedded NVM technology, including poor scalability to advanced processes and capacity limitations of less than 128Kb. Moreover, it does not require the complex manufacturing technology changes generally required by today's traditional embedded NVM. Instead, using standard CMOS manufacturing processes, Gusto scales to meet embedded NVM size and complexity challenges that grow exponentially as SoCs migrate to 40nm, and soon 28nm.

With the new 4x increased capacity NVM memory, Kilopass should be able to expand its available market served with is current XPM product family from $100 million to almost $500 million.  The company estimates that about 30% of the $5 billion worth of serial flash and EEPROMs shipped in 2009 were used in applications requiring higher densities up to 4M-bits.

One of the company's particular unique features is the security certification on its embedded memory technology.  This is particularly useful for mobile banking applications, as well other commercial and military uses.  Kilopass claims that, to date, its XPM embedded memories withstood all attempts at hacking (180nm to 45nm nodes).

In addition to Gusto, Kilopass offers its legacy XPM family (1K-bit to 1M-bit) OTP NVM embedded memory IP.  An XPM memory register (16-bit to 64-bit) family of IP is also offered.  XPM register is typically used for calibration, trimming, and configuration including chip ID or turning features on and off.  The company supports it IP products with foundry and node engineering services to port its IP to numerous foundries and process technologies.

Kilopasss is believed to have about 80 licensed customers for its technology with 250+ design wins and more than 500K wafers shipped -- equating to about one billion units shipped by customers.  After a difficult recessionary year, said it doubled its bookings and cash in 2009.

Employee count has declined from about 45 several years ago to 35 presently.  All R&D work is done at its Santa Clara headquarters.  About 80% of the staff are involved in some form of development and R&D.

A legal dustup is blowing between Kilopass and its chief NVM IP rival, Sidense of Ottawa, Canada.  In May 2010 Kilopass filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Sidense alleging infringement of Kilopass' one-transistor anti-fuse technology.  Sidense, for its own part, said that the suit is without substance or merit -- further adding with a statement in the press from its CEO saying that "given our success in the market and our expanding customer base, we can only speculate as to the motivation behind these unproven allegations."  Both Kilopass and Sidense have about the same number of patents issued. 

Kilopass started out its life with a fairly low-key PR presence in the market and with a bare bones cost structure.  It has navigated through choppy waters as it went through several phases of management changes and some soul searching to find its product strategy direction.  In the past year, significant headway was made to set course for a new direction and in June 2010, the company official launched its Gusto product, its flagship innovation.

Contact:
Kilopass Headquarters
3333 Octavius Drive, Suite 101
Santa Clara, CA 95054
Tel: (408) 980-8808
Web: www.kilopass.com