Ilbok Lee, CEO of Silego

The company continues to strengthen its selection of programmable solutions.

Silego Technology Inc.’s venture into configurable mixed-signal ICs or CMICs has yielded expanding product families for the consumer, industrial, computational and communications fields.

The Silicon Valley company, which specialized in PC clock chips before Intel started integrating the device function into processor chipsets and nearly overturned the business, shipped its one billionth CMIC-based component this April.

Now, CMICs represent the maker’s core line. These programmable mixed-signal matrices and timing IC products incorporate various analog, discrete digital logic and passive components into configurable and low-cost ICs.

The current selection consists of the GreenPAK programmable mixed-signal matrix, the GreenFET configurable power control and the GreenCLK timing device product families.

In an interview with Global Sources, CEO Ilbok Lee shared the status of Silego’s mixed-signal programmable FPGAs and the semiconductor company’s likely roadmap in coming years.

After reaching the 1 billion-mark, what is next for CMIC components in terms of generational change and new value proposition?

Even after having sold 1 billion components, we believe that our existing CMIC product lines are still young. So Silego’s focus is to expand the offerings with additional interface options, I/O and memory.

What are the other passive and discrete components on Silego's hit list?

With our PAK4 family, we have improved our analog performance and have introduced a more scalable digital architecture.

Future versions of our GreenPAK or GPAK families will sustain this trend, allowing customers to integrate higher performance analog and more-complex digital functions into new GPAKs.

Our power CMIC components will continue to diversify with programmable memory, interface options and current measurement.

How do your engineers decide which passive or discrete functions can be incorporated into CMICs, and how do they accomplish this integration?

We are a customer-driven company, taking into consideration what our customers ask for and then deciding on new features that may be added cost-effectively.

Silego operates this way because our CMICs deliver performance based on a cost structure competitive with nonintegrated solutions.

How is Silego's legacy PC clock business? Any shift or new direction expected here in 2014?

The personal computer clock business is done. There is no new development and most products have reached the end of life.

What is new on the packaging front? What developments can we expect from the company in 2014 and coming years?

Silego is a leader in QFN and DFN technologies. We have introduced a 0.27mm thin package in plastic based on QFN/DFN earlier this year.

Our business philosophy is to introduce products only when there is a compelling value for our customers so we only support QFN and DFN packages and value-based modifications, for example, height reduction and greater pin density.

How do you see the emerging sensor and wearable device markets for timing and interface products? Any design win you would like to share with us?

We cannot share design win information as companies making wearable electronics view size and power performance as a key competitive advantage.

Silego has a significant market share in the wearable market due to the configurable nature of CMICs. This enables our customers to differentiate their products.

The wearable electronics sector is still at the infancy stage and we intend to be a large part of that growth and diversification.