Awarded as China's IC Unicorn, WITMEM continues to develop an integrated ecosystem of computing-in-memory

 On August 20, the three-day World Semiconductor Conference 2022 and Nanjing International Semiconductor Expo officially came to an end. WITMEM Technology, the leading enterprise of computing-in-memory chip technology, made its debut at the conference, and appeared at the 5th China IC Unicorn Forum held during the conference as the only computing-in-memory chip enterprise. In a special year of 10 years of working in the field of computing-in-memory chips, WITMEM was awarded the "2021-2022 (Fifth) China IC Unicorn", which is not only a company honor, but also a contribution to the development of computing-in-memory chips. Inspiration and affirmation of progress, technology prospects and applications.

Market background: Solving the storage wall problem is a rigid need for AI development

OpenAI's analysis shows that from 2013 to 2019, AI computing power has increased by 300,000 times. Since 2012, the computing power used in AI training tasks has doubled every 3.5 months. The market has put forward higher demands on chip computing power, power consumption, energy efficiency, and cost. Solving the increasingly prominent storage wall problem in the post-Moore era has become a huge challenge to enter the AI era and implement AI applications. Therefore, the integration of storage and calculation that can avoid the loss and delay caused by the back-and-forth transportation of data has received a lot of attention and investment from academia and industry, and is regarded as an important technical direction. WITMEM came into being and flourished under such an era background. The computing-in-memory chip company represented by WITMEM innovatively uses Flash memory to complete the storage and operation of neural networks, effectively solving the problem of storage walls, improving computing efficiency and reducing costs.

Business process: ten years of research and development, the world's first computing-in-memory SoC chip has been commercialized

In 2012, there was no mainstream direction or mainstream architecture for the integration of computing-in-memory. The founding team of WITMEM began to develop the design of analog in-memory computing chips and tried tape-out. After several tape-out iterations, the world's first Flash in-memory computing was realized in 2016. verification of the chip. After the establishment of WITMEM, after 4 years of independent innovation, and further, the world's first in-memory computing chip WTM2101 has been successfully mass-produced and shipped. The power consumption of the WTM2101 chip is only 5uA-3mA, and it has high computing power. It is suitable for terminal-side intelligent IoT scenarios, such as wearable devices, audio devices, mobile devices, and smart homes. Less than a year after entering the market, the WTM2101 chip has already landed in many wearable device categories such as smart watches and wireless earphones, and the annual sales volume is expected to be in the millions.

Corporate responsibility: polish products, enrich product lines, build bridges, and embrace ecology

In addition to the mass-produced WTM2101 chip, WITMEM has developed the WTM8 series of chips for higher-performance video enhancement scenarios. The new-generation architecture can increase the computing power by 80 times in a single core and increase the efficiency by 10 times. At present, the verification chip has been returned to the film, and the chip product release is expected to be completed next year. At the same time, based on the integrated development ecology of computing-in-memory  that has been initially built, WITMEM will continue to create a richer and more convenient development tool chain, improve versatility and accuracy, polish standardized products, and broaden application scenarios. Gradually develop from the end side to the edge side or cloud.

At present, WITMEM has obtained a total of 600 million yuan in multiple rounds of investment including Hubble, SMIC Juyuan, Xunfei Investment, Shenzhen Venture Capital, SDIC Venture, Puhua Capital, and China Merchants. In the next 10 years, WITMEM will continue to play its social responsibility as a leading enterprise in the integration of computing-in-memory, unite multiple advantageous resources, and continue to build an ecosystem. With focus and steadiness as the wrist, technology and intelligence as the blade, we will overcome all obstacles on the road of building an internationally leading computing-in-memory industry, and will not be moved.

 

【About China IC Unicorn】

The China IC Unicorn Selection Event is jointly sponsored by CCID Consulting Co., Ltd. and Beijing Xinhehui Technology Co., Ltd. Since the first session in 2018, it has been successfully held for four sessions. This year's selection process lasted for two months. A total of more than 300 companies participated in the selection. After the preliminary review by the review team, 93 companies were shortlisted. Then, through the combination of industry evaluation model evaluation and evaluation group scoring, the competitiveness evaluation and investment value evaluation of enterprises are carried out, and the ranking is based on the selection results. The final evaluation group will discuss and determine the list of 46 "China IC unicorns" selected enterprises.