Five benefits of hiring a Design Services company

Arm created the Arm Approved Design Partner Program (AADP) in 2016 to enable partners to turn their product concepts into working silicon more quickly. While the program was conceived to assist new customers, e.g. start-ups and OEMs, with their DesignStart designs, the need to get products to market earlier equally applies to Arm’s traditional silicon partners. The AADP program is a global network of design service companies endorsed by Arm which combine Arm IP, development tools and their own expertise to support partners in their specific area of expertise.

All our Approved Design Partners have a demonstrated a track record of success using Arm IP. Many come with a strong pedigree in working with major semiconductors companies including working on the most advance technologies. Each AADP goes through a thorough audit of their processes, quality standards, design flows, risk management procedures and financial stability prior to joining the program. All design partners are re-audited every three years.

Why Use an Arm Approved Design Partner?

Accelerate Custom SoC Design

For partners who are new to semiconductor production, the complex SoC/ASIC design process can seem daunting. For experienced partners, there is always more work that needs to be done before the product can be released. 

Working with one of our approved partners can accelerate your time-to-market by using their highly qualified, expert engineering teams who can augment your internal team, or can provide very specific expertise to a particular portion of the development or they can be used to provide a turnkey solution.

All of the AADP members are supported by Arm’s technical support team directly and they also get access to selected Arm IP, virtual platform tools and software development tools, ensuring they are always up-to-date with the latest Arm technologies.

Independent advice and expertise

Arm Approved Design Partner members are independent design services companies. They work on wide variety of projects learning new approaches and new techniques.  Their vast experience can assist in making the right trade-offs in technologies, time-to-market and costs to help you deliver your product to the market. 

Arm’s AADP ecosystem provides the stable architectural base enabling maximum potential innovation, as well as cost and time to market advantages. For a start-up, this sort of expertise can prove to be the difference between success and failure.

Local partners that speak your language

Arm Approved Design Partner program is global program helping companies to develop custom SoCs or who need to supplement their in-house skills. We continue to expand our global reach to offer design solutions to companies looking to build custom SoCs based on Arm. We have partners headquarted in Asia, EMEA and the Americas with most covering multiple regions:

Asia

• ADTechnologies, Korea: as a Value Chain Aggregator (VCA) of TSMC, ADT provides ASIC/SoC design services, Analog full custom design and platform-based design to final working chipset as a turnkey service.
• Argo, Korea: Argo provides value-added semiconductor design services including: spec to RTL, RTL to GDSII and production ramp-up based on 10+ design platforms and 20+ in-house IP cores.
• ASICLAND, Korea: provides design services and turnkey mass production services application that include mobile devices, digital TV, Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) networks, and IoT products. The company has strong long-term partnerships with foundry companies in Korea, Taiwan, and China
• BlackPepper Technologies, India: a spec-to-product company for Silicon and Systems with ID, DSP and algorithm capabilities. BlackPepper seamlessly integrates Sense, Compute, Secure and Network in its solutions.
• NSW, Japan: NSW offers solutions from high-level design, SoC subsystems design and verification, logic synthesis and layout design, through to manufacturing and testing. They provide low-power design and advanced process services across many different fields, including image processing and communication control.

EMEA

• Creative Chips, Germany: they focus on design and production of customer-specific semiconductor circuits, producing a wide range of mixed-signal ASICs for industrial automation, the automotive industry, consumer goods and medical electronics
• EASii IC, France: an ASIC design house and service company in Microelectronic, Electronic and Embedded Software. They provide expert services in the development of integrated circuits, electronic systems, mobile phone software, consumer electronics, security, home automation and medical.
• Elsys Eastern Europe, Serbia: Elsys is a trusted partner providing semiconductor design and embedded systems development services to technology companies across the world.
• EnSilica, UK: with world-class expertise in the design and supply of custom analogue, mixed and digital IC’s, EnSilica provides low-power processor integration, RF design, sensor interfacing and embedded security.
• HDL Design House, Serbia: Delivers leading-edge digital, analog, and back-end design and verification services and products in numerous areas of SoC and complex FPGA designs.
• Inomize, Israel: as a leading provider of turnkey ASIC and SoC designs, Inomize uses proven methodologies to achieve a first-time right design in minimal time, with the highest level of quality.
• Sondrel, UK: Sondrel is known for delivering quality highly complex IC designs to fabless and systems companies worldwide.  Their designs have appeared in hundreds of leading-edge products including those of the market leaders in mobile phones, cameras, security systems, AR/VR systems, network switches and routers, and many more.
• S3 Semiconductors, Ireland: S3 Semiconductors designs advanced custom integrated mixed signal chips and manages every aspect of supplying production devices to its customers worldwide while achieving cost economies not thought possible with custom chip designs until now.

Americas

• Silvaco, USA: Silvaco provides SoC subsystems, peripheral IP cores and related design services ideal for Design Start customers to get their Arm-based designs to market quickly.

Full SoC life cycle management from specification to working silicon and all points in between

An SoC starts with an idea. To convert that idea into working silicon, there needs to be a detailed specification. In an overly simplified way, that specification has details on the analog portion, the digital portion, the packaging and the production of the SoC. Each of these portions requires different skill sets. Often a partner will select an AADP member to provide expertise on that specific section, i.e. the analog portion. Other partners look to the AADP member to provide a complete “design and supply” model. The AADP member works with the partner on the detailed specification and then develops and produces the devices. Your SoC is then produced and delivered to you in the volumes and time frames you need.   

Getting software started before the Silicon availability

Moving software from one platform to a completely new custom platform can also seem daunting. AADP members are enabled with Arm technology to create a virtual platform of your Custom SoC. Models can be developed to provide cycle accurate performance or un-timed functional execution. The cycle accurate models can help you understand the time-critical performance of the design and answer those nagging questions of is this the right CPU, are the memories setup correctly for my software, etc. long before you commit the device to production.  In parallel, the functional models can provide a software development platform for your applications.  On the day your new SoC returns, you will see your product come to life.

Conclusion

Whether you are an experienced SoC development team or a company with a novel idea, the AADP program and its members can assist you getting your SoC to market earlier. The AADP members have been selected and reviewed by Arm’s Support Team giving confidence in their processes, design flows, security and financial stability. The AADP program member can assist in any phase of the SoC development from team augmentation to filling specific knowledge gap to providing a turnkey solution. Having the expertise of an experienced design partner accelerates the route to commercial silicon.

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