Page 37 - HSP Annual Report 2022

The advanced ASIC leader
World-leading HBM & die-to-die IP
A leading provider of customized IC design services
Daniel Chien, CFO Global Unichip Corp.
An investee of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Global Unichip Corp. (GUC) specializes in IC design services. Under its business model, the company collects NRE fees from customers for chip design (30% of revenue) and turnkey fees (70%) on the basis of chip output after mass production gets under way.
A unique business model: comprehensive services from design to manufacture
Upon inception, GUC has adopted this unique business model that centers on provision of chip design services. The customer is free to present chip specifications while GUC will draw on its long design experience and both proprietary and external IP to assist in the swift completion of chip development. Moreover, GUC’s chip design is fully aligned with TSMC’s production processes, thus sparing the need for customers to spend time on verifying the viability of production processes if and when another contract manufacturer is to be engaged. This one-stop solution surely makes an irresistible appeal to potential clients.
chips that call for advanced process technologies continue to increase, GUC has made a major discovery: advanced packaging is able to bring down the cost of SoC manufacture. In fact, the company’s rigorous development of niche IP for die-to-die chips over the past three years has started to pay off. Meanwhile, the company has succeeded in launching advanced packaging design services for customers in the areas of high performance computing and multifunction integration. Of the world’s chip design services providers, GUC is the first to have integrated proprietary HBM3 and advanced packaging in 5nm chip design that has found its way to data center applications.
Persist with innovation and create an ecosystem for chip design services
Thanks to the diversity of its clientele, GUC managed to keep up impressive revenue growth despite sluggish demand for consumer electronics in 2022. This achievement, CFO Chien says, is derived from the company’s years of persistence
Emerging applications such as 5G and AI have made it both harder and more expensive to design advanced logic chips. Demand for customized chip design has thus increased significantly, in turn giving a solid boost to GUC. As TSMC’s technological prowess continues to grow, GUC has also further built up its capacity for designing chips that call for 7nm or more advanced process technology.
Move toward new focus on designing chips with advanced packaging
As the costs of designing and manufacturing
with cultivating talent, developing proprietary IP, and adopting a prudent approach toward implementing special projects.
GUC is quite positive about the prospects for such emerging applications as autonomous driving, metaverse, and AI, and will continue to invest in their R&D accordingly. Given a shortage of chip design talent in Taiwan, the company will also resort to outsourcing in Japan and India, thereby creating a cross-border ecosystem for comprehensive chip design services to assist customers in innovation. GUC is set to remain a shining star on the global stage of chip design services in 2023.
35
3 Score Success via Innovative Empowerment