Rambus completes acquisition of Verimatrix silicon IP, secure protocols and provisioning business

Rambus Inc. announced on Monday that the company has completed acquisition of the silicon IP, secure protocols and provisioning business from Verimatrix, formerly Inside Secure, for US$45 million at closing, and up to an additional $20 million, subject to certain revenue targets for the transferred business for the calendar year 2020. 

The combined portfolio of products, including the secure silicon IP and provisioning solutions from both companies, creates the most comprehensive silicon-proven security IP portfolio in the industry.

“This acquisition is a natural fit for the company in line with our areas of focus in semiconductor,” said Luc Seraphin, president and CEO of Rambus. “The addition of this business from Verimatrix augments our portfolio of mission-critical embedded security products and expands our offerings for data center, AI, networking and automotive.”

Although this transaction will not materially impact 2019 financial results due to the timing of close and acquisition accounting, Rambus expects this acquisition to be accretive in 2020.

Rambus achieves GDDR6 performance at 18 Gbps; aimed at AI, ML, data center, autonomous driving systems that need higher bandwidth memory

Rambus Inc. announced it has achieved 18 Gbps performance with the Rambus GDDR6 Memory PHY. Running at the industry’s fastest data rate of 18 Gbps, the Rambus GDDR6 PHY IP delivers peak performance four-to-five times faster than current DDR4 solutions and continues the company’s longstanding tradition of developing leading-edge products. 

The Rambus GDDR6 PHY pairs with the companion GDDR6 memory controller from the recent acquisition of Northwest Logic to provide a complete and optimized memory subsystem solution.

Increased data usage in applications such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data center, networking and automotive systems is driving a need for higher bandwidth memory. The coming introduction of high-bandwidth 5G networks will exacerbate this challenge. 

Working closely with memory partners, the Rambus GDDR6 solution gives system designers more options in selecting the memory system that meets both their bandwidth and cost requirements.

Rambus GDDR6 PHY achieves high speed of up to 18 Gbps, delivering a maximum bandwidth of up to 72 GB/s; complete and optimized memory subsystem solution with companion GDDR6 memory controller; offers PCB and package design support – allowing customers to bring their high-speed designs to production; and provides access to Rambus system and SI/PI experts helping ASIC designers to ensure maximized signal and power integrity for devices and systems.

It also features LabStation development environment that enables quick system bring-up, characterization and debug, and supports high-performance applications including networking, data center, ADAS, machine learning and AI.

The Rambus GDDR6 PHY will be fully compliant to the JEDEC GDDR6 (JESD250) standard, supporting up to 16 Gbps per pin, and is available on TSMC 7nm process. The GDDR6 interface supports 2 channels, each with 16 bits for a total data width of 32 bits. 

With speeds up to 16 Gbps per pin, the Rambus GDDR6 PHY will offer a maximum bandwidth of up to 64 GB/s. This PHY will be available in advanced FinFET nodes for leading-edge customer integration. The Rambus system-aware design methodology used for IP Cores delivers a customer focused experience with improved time-to-market and first-time-right quality. 

Rambus offers flexible delivery of IP cores and will work directly with the customer to provide a full system signal and power integrity analysis, creating an optimized chip layout. In the end, the customer receives a hard macro solution with a full suite of test software for quick turn-on, characterization and debug.