Former Tesla Rožnov, optics for ASML or Apple supplies. What are chip companies operating in the Czech Republic?
Tropical square
Czech startup Tropical square is the chip he wants to make the standard in securing hardware wallets. That is why the initial capital came from the local company SatoshiLabs, which develops the Trezor wallets. Later, the Swiss fund Auzera joined one hundred million.
With this background, Tropic Square is preparing a tape-out for this year, ie the production of the first demonstration models. The four-pin, four-millimeter 24-pin chip will be manufactured using a 55nm process at UMC in Taiwan. “We will produce in the lower units of millions. As our customer, SatoshiLabs predicts certain consumption, moving in the hundreds of thousands a year. We are targeting the first batch of one and a half million chips, “said Tropic Square CEO Evžen Englberth.
Among other things, the TROPIC01 chip relies on openness. This should make it possible, for example, to carry out audits. Although not all of the licensed technologies will open everything, principles such as key storage and the like will be available.
Codasip
Brněnský Codasip develops its own processor cores based on the open RISC-V standard, which can be seen as an alternative to ARM. RISC-V is promising in a number of ways, including politics and various embargoes swarming around chips.
In the USA, SiFi is the main player in the RISC-V, and in Europe Codasip is striving for that. Its customers include Intel (Mobileye Autonomous Vehicle Section) and memory manufacturer Rambus. Microchip or Chinese technology companies can also be mentioned.
Codasip has attracted large investors from the USA, Europe and China and is gradually building an experienced international team. For example, he opened chip development in Cambridge (where ARM is based) and the French semiconductor hub.
He became the CEO Ron Black, which is a former director of Rambus or Imagination Technologies, one of Apple’s suppliers. Among other things, Black led a consortium that wanted to invest £ 300 million in the takeover of Britain’s Newport Wafer Fab semiconductor plant. In the end, the Chinese wonwhich caused political upheaval in Britain.
The founder also spoke more about Codasip in an interview with Lupa Karel Masarikwhich has moved into a strategic role.
Onsemi
Company Onsemi was formerly known as ON Semiconductor and is a very important player on the Czech semiconductor market. It follows the history of the socialist enterprise Tesla and produces chips in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. It produces about ten million every day.
Onsemi was formed by the merger of Tesla Sezam and Terosil. The first of the companies focused on the production of chips, the second on the processing of silicon. After acquiring these assets, the Americans began investing billions of crowns in Rožnov, with further investments worth two billion currently underway. Onsemi wants in the field of silicon-carbide chips.
In 2020, Onsemi reported a gain of 3.7 billion crowns in the Czech Republic with a net profit of almost 130 million. It employed over two thousand people. The parent company was expected to bring in $ 6.7 last year and is worth over $ 24 billion on the Nasdaq. It specializes in chips for cars, military and aerospace industries, power chips and the like.
NXP semiconductors
Dutch NXP semiconductors is another important entity operating in Rožnov, which for a change is based on the tradition of the state enterprise Tesla Rožnov. In 1995, it opened Motorola offices here, from which the Freescale semiconductor section was spun off in 2004. It was absorbed by NXP in 2015 and incorporated Rožnov into its global activities.
NXP also has a track in Brno. In 2009, Freescale bought Unis, which develops Processor Expert software for operating chips. “They have worked for customers such as Texas Instruments, Motorola, Fujitsu or National Semiconductor,” said former Unis CTO Stanislav Černý.
In Rožnov, the design of chips or microcontrollers for car manufacturers and others continues. Today, NXP employs about 300 people there and the last time the branches amounted to 400 million crowns. The parent company earned $ 11 billion last year and its market capitalization is over $ 47 billion.
STMicroelectronics
STMicroelectronics is the largest European chip manufacturer. In addition to semiconductor design, it operates several factories, including enclosures, for example. STMicro already has a roughly 200-year-old development center in Prague, which will see further growth. In response to the chip crisis, the company is doubling its annual investment in production, which will also benefit the local branch.
STMicro has a market value of over $ 40 billion and expands by 25 percent to nearly $ 13 billion. He expects to grow to more than fifteen billion dollars this year. The company’s customers include Apple, Tesla and the Czech Škoda Auto.
“Every year we grow by ten to fifteen percent. We are now just under two hundred. We have a number of new positions open, “described the STMicro manager for Lupa Tomas Pokorny. “In Prague, we have teams involved in the development and design of the chips themselves. The second part of our Prague activity is technical application support. We technically support the customer in making it easier for him to develop and implement some of our components into specific designs. ”
Renesas Electronics
Renesas is one of the largest manufacturers of microcontrollers, sensors, microprocessors, ASICs and other semiconductor components in the world. He designs chips, but he also manufactures them in several factories scattered around Japan.
Renesas employs over forty people in Prague. The company reached the city in the first year of the Czech capital, thanks to the acquisition of the company Semiconductor Dialog $ 5.9 billion remains (Dialog brand, only has the suffix A Renesas Company). The dialogue was already working in Prague, based on previous acquisitions and developments dating back to 1998.
The group of engineers in Prague started as chip designers for end customers. Since 2015, the work of the people at Anděl has expanded to the design of production and supply chips. Dialogue has production experience with TSMC, SMIC, GlobalFoundries and other companies.
“We started as such support staff for the Irish, but we have gradually built up a position where we lead Ireland and other countries,” Jan Kovalský, who leads chip activities in Prague, told Lupa. The team has experience with 180- to 16nm production (FinFET), work also took place on the 12nm process.
Prague also partially participates in the work for Apple. Dialog is a long-term strategic partner of a California company, supplying it with power chips. But Apple, like processors and graphics, wants to do it itself and bought some capacity from Dialog. But he committed himself to further cooperation for several years.
After a good experience, Renesas decided to expand the development in Prague and entrusted the development of a smart server to the branch. More in our interview with Ivo Horský.
Intel
Intel in 2020, it bought its P4 technology from the Brno company Netcope, developed in cooperation with CESNET, the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic and the Faculty of Information Technology, BUT. Netcope formed by the division of the company into Flowmon Technologies (acquired by the American company Kemp) and Netcope, which is now called Magmio.
Netcope P4 is a cloud platform that enables so-called packet processing pipelines for programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), using the open source language P4. It is a high level programming language, thanks to which developers do not have to understand the chassis of FPGA chips. Netcope focuses on the use of FPGAs in network cards.
On this basis, Intel is further expanding its research and development in Brno. Brno is one of the investments in Central and Eastern Europe for the American giant. Others are in Poland and especially in East Germany, where a new factory will be established. Intel has announced an investment of 33 billion euros as part of its European expansion.
At the same time, CESNET continues with similar activities as it had with the original Netcope. In February this year, he completed the FPGA accelerating network cards with the French company Reflex CES at a speed of 400 Gb / s. It is one of the first products of its kind in the world. The French will sell Brno technology under their own brand, FPGA chip designs will be provided by a Czech company BrnoLogic.
Astrum LT
Astrum LT is formally a Lithuanian semiconductor producer, but it is 100% controlled by the Russian company Melsystech. It manufactures advanced medical equipment, for example for dermatology. In them and other machines, it uses high-power laser diodes built on a semiconductor called gallium arsenide. Astrum LT is going to produce these semiconductors in a factory in Kralupy nad Vltavou. To supply them not only to Melsystech, but also to the free market.
It is possible that the situation around Russia will speak to Astrum LT’s plans. Director of the company Sergei Tsarev however, he told Lupa that everything was going according to plan. The company wants to invest 700 million crowns in our country and received support from CzechInvest. The amount of public support is 25 percent.
Espresso systems
Espresso systems is an investor from China, specifically from Shanghai, who opened a development branch in Brno in 2017. Espressif is known for its chips and modules for Wi-Fi, wireless communication, the Internet of Things and the like. For example, the Chinese chip is used by Circadia Technologies Michal Máslíkwhich, among other things, received money from the Gates, Zuckerberg and Bezose funds.
About twenty people work for Espressif in Brno and the company has other open positions. They mainly deal with the area of embedded software.
ASICentrum
Firm ASICentrum was founded in Prague in 1992. It was later bought by a Swiss company EM microelectronicswhich is a manufacturer of integrated circuits falling under Swatch Group (among other well-known watches). ASICentrum specializes in the design of integrated circuits and systems with very low power consumption and low group supply voltage and the development of appropriate software.
The company has know-how for the design and manufacture of extremely low power and low voltage circuits for use in portable battery-powered devices. These EM technologies are used to develop and manufacture a wide range of innovative products, including wireless transmissions (RFID, Bluetooth), smart sensors (optical, motion, magnetic) and power generation for consumer, industrial and automotive applications. EM circuits can be found in mobile phones, PC peripherals, IoT devices and identification systems from the world’s leading manufacturers. ”
Meopta
Přerovská Meopta is an important player in the global chip business. In addition to the general public, the company is known for its optical aspects of weapons, but also for its highly sophisticated optics, such as those used in chip production machines.
A major customer of optics from Přerov is the Dutch icon ASML, the only company in the world that can supply lithographic machines with EUV. The main customers are TSMC and Intel.
One such machine contains one hundred thousand components and costs $ 140 million. The upcoming new generation will jump to $ 300 million. Last year, these machines sold only 42 because the capacity of ASML are not inflatable. ASML is a critical enterprise in the supply chain and is part of the semiconductor crisis. Among other things, the company does not like the US embargo on Chinabecause the Dutch government is blocking the export license because of this.
ASML has a number of suppliers from various countries, including the Czech Republic. For example, Meopta takes the best optical technologies from the Přerov company. ASML even praised Meopta for its professional cooperation and flawless deliveries. In 2020, Meopta was to raise 2.8 billion with a profit after tax of 103 million crowns.
Thermo Fisher, Delong Instruments, ELI Beamlines and SVCS
Four other companies also belong to a similar rank of important suppliers as Meopta. Jaroslav Dolák AND Anton Piják control the company SVCS based in Valašské Meziříčí, which has only fifty employees and a turnover of around one hundred million crowns. However, it manufactures furnaces for firing silicon wafers, which are used to produce chips. Customers include Rožnov’s Onsemi or ABB.
Delong tools is a Czech manufacturer of electronic microscopes based in Brno. These can be used for a number of tasks, which is why you can find the US military or a number of world universities and research institutes, but also for chip quality control. The local branch of the American company competes with the Czechs in the same area Thermo Fisherhis electron microscopes are also known in the industry.
The company operates in Dolní Břežany again ELI Beamlines dealing with lasers, ie other important components in the production and research of chips. ELI recently signed a partnership with the National Institute for Synchrotron Radiation Research in Taiwan and became one of the main areas of interest of the Taiwanese delegation in the Czech Republic, which was looking for partners for its advanced semiconductor sector.