CMOS image sensor start-up cuts six months off design time
“The technical intelligence we get from Chipworks helps us maintain a competitive edge and leapfrog new technologies. Chipworks is an essential part of our ‘best practices’ approach to business.”
- Vice President Product Management
Situation
A fabless CMOS image sensor start-up intended to stun competitors and steal market share virtually overnight. Without the clout needed to secure space in large foundries, it needed design insights on commercially-available image sensors in order to design components that smaller foundries could produce successfully.
Challenges
- Secure insight into competing products, manufacturing processes, and technology roadmaps
- Devise ground-breaking components within the capabilities of smaller, niche foundries quickly and inexpensively
- Build a best practices library for commercially successful CMOS image sensors using specialized foundry lines
Chipworks Solution
- Delivered Circuit Analysis and Process Analysis reports on the image sensors from two leading companies
- Detailed manufacturing designs for commercially successful image sensors, specifically for data path designs
- Helped the start-up adapt industry best practices to its own standards and manufacturing capabilities
Results
- Designed, fabricated, and won its first camera phone socket within six months of receiving the Chipworks reports
- De-risked the development effort for less than three percent of the new product’s development budget
- Saved eight times the company’s investment in Chipworks just in R&D costs
- Generated revenue 1000 times its Chipworks investment in two years
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