Back in March of this year, we announced that we had teamed up with SkyWater Technology to port our eFPGA technology to their 90 nm RH90 radiation hardened process. As noted in our press release at the time, this rad-hard version of our technology can be embedded as an eFPGA IP core in ASIC or SoC devices or can be implemented a standalone, custom rad-hard FPGA for mission critical applications. This technology gives end customers all the flexibility benefits offered by FPGAs combined with the ruggedness of a rad-hard solution for a wide range of commercial and defense uses.
SkyWater, you might recall, was formed specifically to “on-shore” semiconductor foundry operations for critical military/aeronautical/space applications. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Federal Government is extremely supportive of the company’s efforts, as they view semiconductor fabrication as a vital strategic interest for the country. This perspective has been strengthened by the global pandemic with its resulting supply chain problems as well as other geopolitical challenges.
Yesterday, SkyWater announced that they had secured $27 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) “…to further develop intellectual property (IP) for its 90 nm Strategic Rad-Hard by Process (RH90) FDSOI technology platform.” (As a side note, that’s the same process node to which we’ve ported our IP.) They continued stating, “This is the latest agreement between SkyWater and the DoD to ensure a reliable and trusted source of U.S.-made chips for use in strategic defense and space applications.”
Clearly SkyWater has the government’s attention and now they have significant additional funding. All of that bodes well for QuickLogic, as the first FPGA vendor to port its IP to the SkyWater’s process. In fact, SkyWater noted our technology porting in an earlier progress call with analysts, and how our efforts were expanding the ecosystem for rad-hard solutions – so obviously they view our efforts as significant as well.
We are excited and pleased to participate in the initiative to ramp up the availability of semiconductors built in the United States and look forward to delivering our low-power, high performance rad-hard FPGA technology to customers in the years ahead.
