The Lingyange is a high pavilion built in the Tang Dynasty to honor the 24 heroes who made great contributions. Therefore, it has become synonymous with the concept of making achievements.
In the domestic chip design industry, there is also a "Lingyan Pavilion" - Zhuhai Lingyan Pavilion Chip Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Lingyan Pavilion). According to the information, the company was established in Hengqin in June 2020. Based on advanced IP, EDA and DTCO technology platforms, the company provides high-end process chip design services, IP development, chip mass production services, and promotes chip applications through system solution integration.
Lingyan Pavilion's appearance at the 2023 China IC Design Industry Annual Conference and Guangzhou IC Industry Innovation and Development Conference (ICCAD 2023) showcased its comprehensive layout of IP, EDA tools and advanced system solutions in the application field of "high computing power and high efficiency, automotive-grade high reliability". It also demonstrated innovative technologies such as high-reliability automotive MCU development platform and 3D ToF+RGB multi-sensor fusion solution on the spot, attracting the attention of many guests and exhibitors.
DTCO methodology helps domestic advanced chips to be launched
Mr. Albert Li, CEO of Lingyange, said in an interview with Semiconductor Industry Insights, "Lingyange is a place where Li Shimin of the Tang Dynasty displayed portraits of 24 heroes. The company chose this name in the hope of contributing to the domestic chip industry. As a cutting-edge design service industry, we hope to combine chip design services with supply chain support to provide customers with comprehensive industrialization empowerment."
This year's ICCAD focuses on "enhancing the competitiveness of chip products". In this regard, Mr. Albert Li said that the DTCO (Design Technology Collaborative Optimization) concept and practice that Lingyange has always adhered to have been widely applied in the industry more than ten years ago, and are still the best way to optimize resources in the domestic chip market. Lingyange, and uses advanced design methodology to enhance the competitiveness of customer chip products.
It is understood that the DTCO platform of Lingyan Pavilion includes a series of technologies such as independently developed IP and EDA tools, which can provide comprehensive technical empowerment to help customers optimize chip performance and improve production yield. Mr. Li Hongjun said, "Lingyan Pavilion hopes to explore the performance limits of the manufacturing process through advanced design service processes, and use customized IP and design methodologies to help customers achieve or even exceed the product performance of the next generation manufacturing process."
Lingyange hopes to accompany and achieve long-term development of customers," said Mr. Albert Li . "Chip design service providers are born to solve various problems that occur during the chip production process for Foundry and Fabless. Chip design services are actually a series of methodologies accumulated over a long period of experience. After integrating IP and EDA, the effect of 1+1>2 is achieved, enabling chips and stimulating potential."
Mr. Albert Li also said that the high-performance and high-reliability IP and chip design services and design technology collaboration (DTCO) technology platform of Lingyange have received widespread attention from the industry during this year's ICCAD. He was very excited to see that many EDA companies are advocating the design concept of DTCO.
"As a design service company with EDA tool development capabilities, we will certainly deepen collaboration with more industry partners in the future, leading the widespread application and development of DTCO in design services, and living up to the name of Lingyan Pavilion," he said.
Advancing in three major fields
Currently, Lingyange focuses on three major fields: high-performance computing, automotive electronics, and biomedical chips.
In 2020, Lingyange completed the development of the first high-performance computing chip; subsequently, it has carried out the development of high-end process Design Technology Collaborative Optimization (DTCO) EDA tools and IP; in 2022, it assisted customers in completing the development of advanced process AI SoC chips.
At this year’s ICCAD, Lingyange also presented the latest AI acceleration board, which was developed in collaboration with Blue Ocean Intelligence. It is also the world’s first AI acceleration computing solution based on a GPU chip with a Chiplet architecture. This solution includes an innovative Chiplet system architecture design, ultra-low power consumption, high-speed serial interfaces, and support for OpenCL and mainstream AI framework models. At the same time, this acceleration board has significant energy-saving advantages, providing system requirements with about 1/3 of the overall cost of HBM2 and 80% of the energy consumption. Currently, this board has been applied to tumor diagnosis, providing low-cost, high-performance AI acceleration with reduced HPC data analysis time. This product has been promoted and used in multiple domestic universities and research institutions, providing platform support for research teams to develop high-performance applications.
In the automotive electronics segment, Lingyange’s first 40nm automotive MCU chip was successfully lit up last September. Based on this, a self-developed and rare high-reliability IP design scheme has been developed for automotive chips, aerospace, and biomedical applications.
At this year’s ICCAD, Lingyange also presented a 40nm RISC-V automotive microprocessor reference design platform. It features modular design, high-specification analog IP, and compliance with automotive regulations. This is also a “star product” at this year’s ICCAD 2023. By adopting open-source RISC-V technology, it also implies an inherent demand for product autonomy and controllability;
In the field of biomedical chips, Lingyange stated that this is the design service direction for the company’s long-term market布局in the future, and it will conduct industry-university-research cooperation with cutting-edge biomedical application research teams. In the chip design industry, many customers are planning dedicated chips for health or medical applications. It is foreseeable that this is a gradually growing target market. Lingyange hopes to apply its speciliazed high performance and high reliability design services to customers’ innovative designs and accelerate the commercialization of customers’ products. Starting last year, Lingyange has cooperated with the research team of the State Key Laboratory at the University of Macau to establish a joint laboratory in Hengqin, aiming to conduct collaborative research on biomedical applications and expand the application prospects of innovative chips in the field of biomedicine. It is understood that the joint laboratory has already achieved preliminary results in high-performance biological signal processing applications. This field with development potential has a promising future.
Creating a prosperous era
Founded just three short years ago, Lingyan Pavilion’s product line has already taken shape at ICCAD. This is due to Lingyan Pavilion’s strong self-research capabilities. When discussing this point, CEO Li Hongjun expressed his pride: “This of course owes to our technical team, who all have 15 to 20 years of analog design experience and experience in large-scale chip design.”
We believe that in the future, Lingyan Pavilion will continue to prioritize technological innovation, implement the concept of “chip design service providers are heroes”, and create a Tang Dynasty-level heyday for China’s chips along with numerous customers.
Article from: Semiconductor Industry Observer