China IC Unicorns announced, Computing in memory chip company Witmem Technology is on the list

 On June 14, 2022, China IC Unicorn List 2021-2022 (the fifth edition), jointly organized by China ICTE and Beijing Xinhehui Technology Co. As a credible and influential selection activity in the field of IC in China, the inclusion of Centron represents not only the recognition of the competitiveness and investment value of the company by the industry and academia but also the rapid development of the commercialization process of Centron and its vast market potential by the industry.

Targeting industry bottlenecks and hitting market pain points

According to data released by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics Organization, the global market size will exceed US$550 billion in 2021, a year-on-year increase of more than 25%. However, with the advent of high computing power and the era of big data, the storage wall problem has become more and more prominent. The company, represented by Witmem Technology, focused on computing in-memory architecture and innovatively used Flash memory to complete the storage and computing of neural networks, effectively solving the storage wall problem and improving computing efficiency while effectively reducing costs.

 

Ten years of accumulation and exploration to achieve innovation on the ground

 

In 2012, when there was no mainstream direction and architecture for storage and computing, the founding team started to research and develop the design of analog computing in memory chips and attempted to stream the chips. Through several stream iterations, the Flash in-memory computing chip validation succeeded in 2016. After four years of independent innovation, the WTM2101 has been successfully implemented in mass production and shipped to the market. It is mainly used in smart wearable devices with high computing power, power consumption, and application diversification requirements. It is reported that the WTM2101 chip has already been implemented in several wearable device categories, such as smartwatches and wireless headphones, and the annual production and sales volume can reach one million levels.

 

Continuous iteration and upgrading to promote industrial development.

 

In terms of product matrix, Witmem Technology started investing in developing WTM8 series chips for higher-performance video enhancement scenarios in 2021. The new architecture can improve the arithmetic power by 80 times and efficiency by ten times in a single core, and the validation chip has already returned to the chip. In terms of application areas, Shaodi Wang, Founder, and CEO of Witmem Technology mentioned that in addition to the existing products for the consumer electronics market, Witmem Technology is also trying to iterate the reliability of its effects towards the automotive grade standard.