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What DOLPHIN Strategy?
1. Long in the waiting
Dolphin Integration was founded in 1985
with Venture Capital, as a DESIGN CENTER for custom Integrated Circuits.
Based on this positioning, DOLPHIN have developed a unique blend
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- Designing robust schematics for Analog Memory
and Logic circuits enabling safe migration from one fabrication process to another
- Accelerating fab-process migration at the layout level for multiple sourcing, thanks to a thorough mastery of CMOS rules - bulk and SOI – and of EDA solutions
- Mixing and simulating analog and logic signals thanks to a proprietary
electronic simulator
SMASH enabling realistic Virtual Test and Diagnostics
- Assessing robustness and reliability before silicon and demonstrating a rigorous "Index of Quality" – the IQ of IP - benchmarking its "Virtual Fab" process
- Providing bug free Virtual Components as multi-level deliverables with objective "Figures of Merit": Soft (in RTL format) - Firm (in Netlist format) - Hard (in GDSII format) for hierarchical design of large IC's
- Turning a fixed macrocells into flexible kits and generators
for custom configurations ensuring an optimal match with each users' needs.
The founders prepared for ten years, awaiting the expected but belated Deverticalization of the Microelectronics Industry: it started happening in 1995 as a consequence of the DESIGN GAP caused by accelerated growth of market demand as well as fabrication capacity, versus the stalled design capability - stalled by the lack of hierarchical design practices, notwithstanding their promotion by VSIA, the celebrated Virtual Socket Interface Alliance. It is thus natural that DOLPHIN would campaign for hierarchical SoC Integration through its imaginative offering of Missing EDA Links forming the MEDAL line of Solutions.
DOLPHIN then augmented its know-how with:
- Actively contributing to the mixed signal working group of the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance VSIA, for the best of both Analog and Logic
- Productizing Silicon IP
into full-fledged Virtual Components (ViC) for SoC's per VSIA standards augmented by experience
- Supporting System-on-Chip (SoC) integration from architecture down to silicon testing for a hierarchical design flow providing relevant ViC data and required support
- Consultancy experts for servicing customers at any stage of their SoC development, as part of the Line of Services in Delegation.
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The DOLPHIN Group, with a subsidiary in Duisburg, NRW, Germany and a dedicated design team in Sophia Antipolis, has developed into an established provider on the most balanced of bases, that of a tripod:
2. Our market
Since 1995, Silicon Intellectual Property or SIP has emerged as the solution to the Design Gap, with the fast growth offering of Virtual Components (ViC), at which the DOLPHIN specialists are world-expert Providers. Reference customers in three categories: Equipment Makers or OEM, traditional IC Fabricators or IDM and Fabless Suppliers. Two other categories are growing: Silicon Foundries and System-on-Chip Integrators.
The DOLPHIN charter is neither that of "application value-add opportunities", nor "block-based product opportunities", like current actors in Silicon Intellectual Property (SIP). Indeed the Group's core competencies are positioned not with a product goal, but with a base of Know-how and with Enabling Technologies: mixed signal / fab-process retargeting / instantiation tools like generators...
Consequently the corporate charter must be primarily labeled as "Mixed signal SoC Enabler", leading to that of IP Provider as a consequence. The other consequence is that of Hierarchical Design Advisor!
DOLPHIN's focus is not pretending though to offer a full ViC catalog for completely supplying every SoC, but rather striving for whatever may be externally supplied while providing a real advantage for users in some "IP exclusivity" with adequate "Enabling Technology". DOLPHIN have placed emphasis on Patents for sustainability of their offering.
The DOLPHIN differences thus stem from targeting SoCs instead of ICs, which entails mostly a hierarchical design flow relying on well-productized Virtual Chip Sets or "SoC Kits": to make it happen imposes dedication to providing consistent Kits of Logic, Analog and Memories for SoC: under the KLAMS™ brand name. These must enable complete Mixed Signal solutions, like a Transponder, a Smart-Card or even an MP3 kit, e.g. with its algorithms in the ROM of some µP, interfaced with a CODEC… Such a project typifies "Virtual SoC Kits". Above all, KLAMS serves to proclaim that the abbreviation AMS as in VERILOG-AMS or VHDL-AMS has been emptied of any worth by those players who mean to exclude the full Logic contents of these languages and related designs.
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So the market keeps demanding that DOLPHIN proceed through a continuous innovation process with:
- "Line extensions" as from 16 bit CODEC to 20 bits and now 24 bits, or else lowering voltage supply from 1.8 V to 0.9, etc.
- but also "Rolling Generations" as from .25 µm ROM through .13 µm towards 65 nm
- and "Range Extensions" as from the 8-bitter Flip8051 to the more extensive 16-bitter Flip80251 of growing popularity…
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Hyperconnection is the crux of the DOLPHIN approach to growth, based on an open-ended variety of cooperations for developing synergies, both between their varied product lines and with partners as exemplified in Press
Releases.
Such partnerships result unavoidably in identifying point-products for high-volume market demand, and developing them on the KLAMS basis, for instance:
- hiCOD-95 for high quality voice AD/DA converters
- ADmir-B812 for measurement AD converters…
- The RINCON add-on to SMASH for simulations mixing Analog, Logic and HF/RF…
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3. Our Assets
The DOLPHIN heritage now results in the control of significant Value-Enhancing Differentiators:
Key patents, like the Metal-programmable ROM or the Read-protection of emulatable microcontrollers,
Key EDA solutions for Mixed Signal design, including:
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The SMASH simulator, a standard-bearer for mixed signal modeling, now leader in VHDL-AMS language,
Sole challenger to the so-called "Golden simulators", references for pure analog signals, whose monopolistic status has led to complacency, while SMASH stars further innovations and quality controls, deserving the attribute of Platinum simulator!
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Together with their Enabling Technologies GDS* for fab-process migration, both are essential solutions for the Virtual
Component business, then generators - so-called Silicon Compilers -
for retargetable regular structures of memories, sensors or mirrors, and most recently SUCCESS™ for cosimulation between SMASH and Instruction Set Simulators for any µP centered SoC.
Key flexible SIP under the FLIP™
brandname around legacy cores like the 8051 in the fast-blowing series: Breeze, Wind, Storm then Thunder, Cyclone, Typhoon, Twister and Whirl… diverse converters between analog and digital worlds, to and fro, be it Voice and Sound Codecs or sensitive sensor converters for AIRBUS…
And above all a sturdy management team, seasoned enough for dealing with the requirements of flexibility in the licensing process, mastering a unique blend of Consulting services, Services-over-Products and Products-over-patents.
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4. Our profile
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Sales Turnover hovering around 7 M€ throughout the semiconductor downturn and grown since around 12 M€
CAGR of 33 % except in the crisis year caused by the dot.com bubble.
Exports evolving in the range between 40 % and 60 %
DOLPHIN have the invaluable image of a Quality supplier for easing the Time-To-Market (TTM) challenge of customers with extra emphasis on the critical Time-To-Fab (TTF) of a state-of-the-art mixed signal design
Employees now number about 150. They originate from all horizons, adding a special openness to the corporate culture: from China, Japan, Maghreb, Russia, as well as from overseas islands…
The DOLPHIN Group is active in a number of professional associations as seen with: our memberships. |
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5. Our rationale
The DOLPHIN Group has been founded to contribute to the emergence of the Microelectronics Design Industry.
The popular search for the next success story after ARM Holdings has been mired in the mere betting on some impossible jackpot by the financial community. Greed is no substitute to entrepreneurship!
So-called Venture-Capitalists and Financial Analysts with no marketing savvy, nor social sense, tend to choose as selection criteria in any order:
A.
sheer imitation of present winners (hence they funded 64 contenders for the 32-bit microprocessor domain)
B.
fashionable buzz-words (hence mixed signal and Intellectual Property have been in vogue for a while, after the dot.com frenzy)
C.
copy of next door's financiers or of trendy Silicon Valley gurus: hence rehashing the pure-product strategy in the country more talented for managing services.
DOLPHIN thus is relying on an obsessive concern for productivity improvements of customers, not on its own, leading to innovations which - historically - are neither invented, nor easily adopted, by those who end-up benefiting from them.
Currently, concepts of "Virtual Fab" and of "Virtual Platforms" are considered as the true need for SoC Integration to ease the EDA gap, and to solve the developers' productivity quagmire. But finding for such concepts the ways and means to make them successful, is somewhat of a gamble, as well as finding the easiest path to emergence as a user-perceived need and gaining their acceptance as a new practice! Essentially, the long-entrenched habit of stodgy CAD Frameworks burdens the Microelectronics Industry with an excess of EDA conservatism…
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6. Our long-term projects
| DOLPHIN have a grand design to materialize, by extension of their reach through e.commerce, capitalizing on proprietary EDA tools,
and by replication of their unique Business Model blending Industrialization and Commercialization (I&C) with R&D extensions, both in technical scope and in geography: in Germany for Micromechatronics, in China, the USA and Israel…
Such grand design shall be developed with no haste, since it implies to partake in the progressive restructuring of design flows for supplying optimal combinations of the three basic contributors to productivity: availability of SIP,
adequacy of EDA and efficiency of consulting services. From traditional IC to new SoC design flows, introducing these three contributors entails effective hierarchization of design, innovative Virtual Platforms and realistic quality procedures.
DOLPHIN has long nurtured precisely that tripod.
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7. Our leadership
DOLPHIN is best positioned to address in a reassuring manner the major concerns of Fabs and Fabless suppliers:
- What quality does
an interactive SIP design-in process guarantee for my SoC?
- What resilience to expect from an analog ViC to disturbances from the logic rest of SoC?
- What Figure of Merit ensures the right blend of performances for market emergence?
- What reliability does Silicon IP grant
to Time-To-Market through my selected fab-processes?
- What yield should be expected for any IC turned into a SoC by such hierarchical design?
- How should test programs be developed to benefit from the piecemeal offering of Interface Detectors, BISR, Verification Components, BIST and Virtual Testbenches?
The Dolphin "Trust Commitment" and commitment to Assistance Engineering is offering unique skills for turning SoC specifications into first pass silicon with Reliability and Yield.
More focus is offered on: Ethics
for the Microelectronics Industry. |
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