Avera Semi aims to leverage deep ties with GF to deliver ASIC offerings on 14/12nm and more mature technologies, while providing clients new capabilities and access to alternate foundry processes at 7nm and beyond.
With more than 850 employees, annual revenues in excess of $500 million, and over $3 billion in 14nm designs in execution, GF says Avera Semi is well positioned to serve clients developing products across a wide range of markets. This includes wired and wireless networking, data centres and storage, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and aerospace and defence.
The new company is led by Kevin O’Buckley, a leader in the ASIC business since joining GF as part of the acquisition of IBM Microelectronics in 2015. Previously, he spent nearly 20 years at IBM in a variety of roles spanning both technical and executive leadership positions.
“I couldn’t imagine a better time to launch a new venture focused on delivering custom ASIC solutions,” O’Buckley said. “Data traffic and bandwidth demands have exploded, and next-generation systems for cloud and communications must deliver more performance and handle more complexity than ever before. Avera Semi has the right combination of expertise and technology to help our clients design and build high-performance, highly optimised semiconductor solutions.”
“Arm has a long history of collaborating with the team building Avera Semi to enhance PPA and bring innovative solutions to market,” commented Drew Henry, senior vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm. “As the needs for compute requirements
continue to evolve and diversify, we look forward to joining Avera’s capabilities and technologies with Arm Neoverse solutions and physical design IP to deliver unique value to a broad customer base.”
“Synopsys’ longstanding partnership with GF has enabled us to deliver a broad portfolio of high-quality DesignWare IP on a range of GF processes,” added John Koeter, vice president of marketing for IP at Synopsys. “We look forward to continuing this success with Avera Semi to provide designers with the necessary IP for their next-generation, high-performance SoC designs on advanced FinFET processes.”