Krivi Semiconductors: Joined the Elite Club by Pioneering Inimitable Features Date:   Wednesday , December 02, 2015 Semiconductor IP development is an expensive and risky venture that crushes startups with behemoth of pressure. Though startups have been the major contributors to the key innovations in semiconductor arena, there is virtually no interest among investors towards these start-ups due to industry consolidation and high risk. Semiconductor IP development requires a startup to create a test-chip, fabricate, package and test that chip. Not only there is a big price tag attached to each of these items, but tragically there is no ecosystem available in India to accommodate these requirements. Nevertheless, none of these brass tacks extinguished the zeal of a few highly-motivated employees to form an innovative IP company. When ARM, the UK-based semiconductor IP Company, decided to exit from memory interface PHY business, these employees, holding over ten U.S patents to their credit, led by Nidhir (who later on became the CEO of the new company) founded KRIVI semiconductors to operate as an independent company. This laid the foundation for a competent engineering team in the new company with solid experience in state-of-the-art memory interface IP and IO pad library products. Sheer Focus on Innovation While the entire founding team came from ARM, this spared the battle of recruiting experienced engineers. But Krivi still had to accomplish the Herculean task of finding partners across the globe and ramping up local vendors to tackle the dearth of semiconductor ecosystem in India. Lack of vibrant startup scenario in India has limited the IC design activity to big MNCs who don\'t make sourcing decision. Chanting the mantra, \'Stay in game for some time and we will get going\', the Krivi team concentrated on building products with differentiated features that compete quite favourably in benchmark performance, power and area. For instance, its DDR IO pad is 30 percent smaller compared to largest selling competitor. This inimitable phenomenon along with Krivi\'s unique ability in cutting down the cost of product development to half with its low cost ecosystem, bestowed the company with top-notch customers. The company has gone through complete cycle of IP conceptualization to test chip, packaging, board design and silicon testing without local eco-system or external funding, which places Krivi in an elite league, where only a handful of Indian companies belong. Best-in-class products with Differentiated Features Its extensive software for design automation allows Krivi to reduce development cost and time to market. Krivi provides best-in-class customized DDR PHYs that help customers to optimize performance, power and area cost-effectively. Itespecially helps to reduce IC size if it is limited by DDR interface. The company also offers IO pad libraries with propriety ESD solution. In this segment, Krivi helps customers to complete the eco-system in low maintenance cost through its complete platform solution for foundries with super combo libraries. Krivi\'s all-in-one PLL that can be used for spread-spectrum, fractional or integer clocking, along with Digital Locked Loop IP, has the ability to cater to most of the ASIC and DDR clocking markets. The Distinguished Work Milieu This two-year old startup endows its people with one of the best work environments with a flat and transparent work culture, where every employee gets to be a stakeholder. Krivi is one of the few companies in India that offers the opportunity to develop best-in-class product with reasonable freedom. The tech savvy, honest and transparent management team with clear focus on establishing a successful organization with steady growth drives a product individually. Having successfully developed world class silicon proven IPs without external funding, Krivi might look out to raise external funding to develop next generation memory interfaces and ultra-low power IoT IPs. It also plans to provide a complete range of memory interface PHYs. Krivi envisions becoming the defacto provider of IO pad libraries and a major provider of memory interfaces, ultra-low power IoT clocking & power management IPs by providing first-time working silicon followed with great customer support.Creating such positive ripples, it is safe to say that the day is not too far, when the world will take a note of its unique prowess. Panel Key Management: Nidhir, Co-Founder & CEO Bringing 15 years of IP experience & 13 patents to Krivi, Nidhir has contributed to the development of DDR3 PHY with industry\'s leading PPA and has worked through full cycle of SoC design. Gyan Prakash, CTO A specialist in high speed, multi clock, and asynchronous architectures, Gyan is a gold medalist from leading engineering institute, who is credited with six successful silicon tape outs and 10 U.S. filed patents. Sivaramakrishnan Subramanian, Senior Principal Engineer Sivaram has led both design & layout teams, and has extensive experience in analog mixed signal IPs, I/O pad libraries and many more. With ten years of experience, he holds three patents to his credit. Offices: Bangalore Offerings: Memory interface PHY, IO pad libraries & Analog clocking IPs Clients: Top 20 semiconductor companies, top IP & Japanese markets Achievements: - Youngest Entrepreneur in Semiconductor Space (2013) Award from Mentors Graphics Leadership Awards - Provided silicon proven speciality IO Pad library platform with best-in-class features to one of the largest foundries in their latest 28nm technology - Developed industry\'s leading DDR3/LPDDR3 combo PHY working at 2.1Gbps in wire-bond package - Gone through complete cycle of IP conceptualization to test chip, packaging, board design and silicon testing without local eco-system or external funding