VentureBeat

As consumer electronics devices get smaller and smaller, chip makers find they have to squeeze a lot of memory on top of their processing chips. The problem is that the memory isn’t as easy to make as the processor part of the chip and it consumes more power.

But Novelics, a chip start-up on Aliso Viejo, Calif., is unveiling today a technology that can cut the size of embedded Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) inside the newest system-on-a-chip (SOC) designs.

An SOC is essentially everything that a complete system such as an answering machine needs to function electronically. By embedding memory onto an SOC, designers can speed up system performance. But the memory usually lags in terms of efficiency versus other parts of the SOC. That’s a problem because embedded memory is now often more than half of the transistors on an SOC. Novelics tackled that problem with its 40-person team over three years.

By cutting the size of the 1-transistor SRAM memory in system chips by 20 percent, the company says it can reduce costs, cut power consumption, and enable new kinds of consumer electronics products. It can also make the 6-transistor SRAM memory more efficient as well.

Moreover, Cyrus Afgahi, CEO of Novelics, says that customers can use a standard CMOS manufacturing process to make their chips, allowing the SRAM memory in a system to keep up better with the processor technology in the rest of the chip.

The company is licensing its technology to Synopsys, the large chip design automation company which will offer customers the Novelics technology along with its design tools.  Afgahi, who started the company along with two fellow Broadcom engineers, says the company has raised more than $5 million in angel money. He expects it will be profitable by the end of the year and is not currently seeking a new round.

Synopsys is using Novelics to enter the market for memory intellectual property, said Joachim Kunkel, vice president and general manager of the Solutions Group at Synopsys in Mountain View, Calif.

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