CONNECTCOLLABORATECREATE

Efabless / X-FAB October 2020

Custom SoCs for MEMS Products

GET TO SILICON https://efabless.com

Hiring engineers to build and verify the IC design. Drawback: Engineers with the needed skills are scarce and expensive.

Engaging a design services firm. Drawback: These firms charge an upfront fee that can run several hundred thousand dollars or more. Some firms include manufacturing services and require a minimum volume to justify the project.

Using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) circuits. Drawback: COTS ICs can’t be integrated with sensors and analog circuitry, increasing product footprint and decreasing battery life. What’s more, COTS products often include unneeded functions, increasing costs—and lack desired features, limiting the product’s market potential.

Using field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Drawback: Compared to ASICs, FPGAs generally cost more on a per-part basis, consume more power, are slower, and support few if any analog functions

Challenges of Custom SoC Design for MEMSUntil now, options for building the integrated circuit (IC) were limited to:

A New Approach: Community-Contributed Design

Custom SoCs for MEMS productsNow companies of any size can rapidly generate a custom Arm-based system on chip (SoC). Visit the Efabless website to select a configurable reference design. Enter options to see their impact on costs, die area, and power consumption. When you have the right configuration, Efabless automatically generates the SoC design.

For example, imagine a small medical device manufacturer developing a micro electro-

Efabless applies the software world’s open-source model to hardware design. Designers from around the world contribute their IC designs to the Efabless Design Marketplace, enabling companies to bring MEMS products to market faster, at lower cost, and with just the right feature set.

The IC designs, or templates, are configurable reference designs with silicon-proven IP to

mechanical system (MEMS)—a rapid glucose-testing product. Say the company has developed the sensor and analog circuitry and now wants to add digital functions for alerting and detecting improper sensor usage. The team decides on the Arm Cortex-M0 processor because of its low cost and energy efficiency.

Samples in hand from X-FAB in 20 weeks for as little as $70K

jumpstart your design. You pay nothing for the templates, IP, or design environment until you have ordered and received sample dies.

You pay nothing for the templates, IP, or design environment until you have ordered and received sample dies.

GET TO SILICON https://efabless.com

Visit the Efabless Design Marketplace and search for a design meeting the product requirements. The medical device manufacturer in this example selects the Raptor design template—based on the Arm Cortex-M0, designed by Efabless, and manufactured by the X-FAB Foundry

Generate a custom IC design by completing a web-based template. Use drop-down menus to specify core and memory, peripherals, I/O configuration, power, and other options.

Modify, compile, and simulate the design. As new options are selected, Efabless immediately shows the effect on licensing costs, part costs, die area, and power consumption.

Experiment with different choices and combinations to generate the final specification for your application. Then click to save the configuration.

Complete the final design internally (“roll your own”) or work with Efabless design partners for partial or complete design services. Efabless provides samples and initial volume services for fabrication through X-FAB.

1

2

3

4

5Sample MEMS product developed on Efabless Raptor

SoC reference design

Configuration estimates are updated as you select options.

How It Works

GET TO SILICON https://efabless.com

Faster time to market. Efabless automatically generates the design, software drivers, and verification tests. Receive 50 sample dies from the X-LAB foundry in as little as 20 weeks.

Up to 5x lower costs. Avoid the costs of recruiting and onboarding specialized engineers by leveraging existing silicon-proven designs. Efabless also eliminates or defers licensing costs. Many designers don’t charge for licenses, and those that do charge don’t require payment until you order parts beyond initial samples.

Integration. The Efabless service includes integrating analog IP with community-contributed IC designs. Select one or more designs to acquire the features needed to meet the market need—no more and no less.

Less risk. All designs in the Efabless Design Marketplace have been validated and tested, providing assurance the IC will behave as expected. Designs are improved continually based on community input, giving Efabless customers early access to innovation

Efabless Advantage for MEMS

Raptor for MEMS based on the Arm Cortex M0 processorOne of several designs on Efabless, Raptor SIP is a full SoC reference design for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The design is targeted for the X-FAB XH018 process.

Pricing for X-FAB Customers Includes50 sample dies

Electronic design automation (EDA) tool cost

Scheduled foundry multi-project wafer (MPW) shuttles-on-demand shuttles are available for an additional fee

Options for design services: full (turnkey), partial, or none

Cortex M0 CPU Core AHB-Lite and APB buses

Up to 32 APB peripherals Up to 8 AHB peripherals

Analog peripheral options include: ADC, DAC, Comparator

Digital peripheral options: SPI, GPIO, I2C, UART, PWM/Timer

8, 16 or 32KB internal SRAM memory

QSPI XIP memory controller for booting and executing from external serial Flash memory

GET TO SILICON https://efabless.com