ZeroWatt Technologies: Executive Summary

NPI Proudly Promotes, ZeroWatt Technology's CEO and ARCS Scholar

Fred Tzeng, Co-Founder and CEO, ftzeng@uci.edu, 949-433-2917

Dr. Payam Heydari, Co-Founder and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at UC Irvine, payam@uci.edu, 949-824-9324

The ever-increasing demand for portable electronics has fueled the need for low power microelectronics to extend battery life. ZeroWatt Technologies has developed a revolutionary technology which promises to significantly reduce the power consumption of one of the most challenging and power-hungry building blocks of many electronic systems: the analog-to-digital converter (ADC). ZeroWatt’s core technology can reduce the power of ADCs by a factor of up to 10 compared to existing ADC solutions, while lowering the product cost by as much as 2 times.  Taking a cell-phone as an example, ZeroWatt’s integrated circuit technology would increase battery life by about an hour.  For a medical ultrasound, ZeroWatt’s technology would save approximately 10-20% in the overall manufacturing cost of each unit, which would add up to around $200M per year for a medical ultrasound manufacturer like GE. 

Market Need for Low Power Analog-to-Digital Converters

Fueled by the digital revolution, ADCs have become critical building blocks of many systems, as they transform a real-life analog signal into digital data. These circuits are ubiquitously found in numerous applications, including commonplace consumer electronic devices such as cell phones, laptops; portable commercial devices such as portable ultrasound machines; and emerging applications, such as wireless sensor nodes and biomedical implants.

The ADC remains one of the bottlenecks of low power systems. Recent discussions with customers have affirmed a strong need for lower power, lower cost ADCs in several of their products, exemplified by the following:   

• In certain electronic systems applications (i.e., ultrasounds), the ADCs consumes as much as 40% of the entire system power. Therefore, lowering the power in ADCs would be very beneficial to the overall product power.
• Lower ADC power not only extends battery life, but it also reduces chip cost as well. ZeroWatt is tackling chip cost from two fronts: producing a chip with up to 10 times lower power, and a chip area 3 times smaller than existing solutions.
• Low power ADC design will be increasingly difficult as CMOS scales down to lower node technologies (i.e., 65nm to 45nm to 22nm). ZeroWatt brings a new architecture amenable to any CMOS node.
• A survey has revealed that customers rank the traits in ADCs in the following order of importance: 1. Power Consumption, 2. Speed and resolution, 3. Cost, 4. Flexibility.
  

ZeroWatt’s Competitive Advantages

ZeroWatt Technologies’s ADC technology has several competitive advantages, enabled by a patent-pending circuit architecture using a unique algorithm and circuit design trade-secrets.

1.    Record-breaking low power- Current ADCs experience a trade-off between speed, resolution, and power: as the speed and resolution increases, the power increases exponentially. ZeroWatt will develop its main competitive advantage by breaking the bounds of this traditional speed-resolution-power trade-off in analog-to-digital converters (ADC) to reach record-breaking low power consumption. Compared to other low power ADC competitors, it can deliver up 10 times lower power. Due the use of a unique architecture, ZeroWatt’s low power achievement is technology independent, meaning it can deliver the same percentage of power savings anywhere from 45nm all the way to 0.5μm CMOS, suiting a variety of applications.

2.    Smaller chip area- Due to ZeroWatt’s use of a proprietary multiplexing technique, different input channels can be digitized while reusing the same circuits. This leads to an approximately 3 times smaller chip area than most competitor products, which simply replicate an ADC for each channel input. As the number of channels increases, ZeroWatt attains even greater chip area reduction percentage compared to replication ADCs.

3.    Reduced cost- Due to a lower power and smaller chip area, ZeroWatt ADCs are expected to have about 1/2 lower cost than competitors. As cost in consumer electronics is a very competitive issue, we expect low cost to be one of our strengths to serving the consumer electronics market. 

4.    Reduced noise and distortion- ZeroWatt’s proprietary architecture brings the important advantage of reducing noise and distortion in ADCs, a key enabler of high resolution converters. This means the electronic system can detect signals with cleaner quality (i.e, a better ultrasound image) and detect signals of smaller levels (i.e., cellular basestation can detect farther range).

5.    Self-adaptation- ZeroWatt’s ADCs are able to self-adapt to an optimal speed and resolution setting as the signal conditions and statistics fluctuate. ZeroWatt’s ADC is able to achieve at least 5 times power savings compared to the traditional ADC under any signal condition.

The unmatched low power advantage along with the reduced chip area and product cost of ZeroWatt’s integrated circuits defines its advantage over ADC competitors such as Analog Devices, Maxim Integrated Circuits, Texas Instruments, and National Semiconductors. With two patents filed, hardware prototype scheduled for fabrication in the summer of 2009, a team of experienced integrated circuits designers backed by a network of semiconductor executives, ZeroWatt is positioned to be the first to bring this innovation to the market.

Sales Strategy and Target Markets

ZeroWatt Technologies is developing its products considering two business models: as a discrete ADC integrated circuits company or as an intellectual property (IP) licensing company. The choice of business model will be depend on the target applications and the customer needs.

 

As a discrete ADC company, ZeroWatt will be targeting the data converter market, a $2.2 billion industry in 2008, of which an estimated 35% of this market will need low power ADCs. ZeroWatt will perform in-house chip design and testing, while it will outsource chip fabrication to semiconductor foundries. It will sell packaged integrated circuits to original equipment manufacturers of electronic devices.

 

As an IP licensing company, it will be targeting a $2 billion semiconductor IP market, of which $350 million is the data converter IP market. The data converter IP market has a 34% growth rate, representing the fastest growing segment of the semiconductor IP market. ZeroWatt will be licensing IP to its customers for their chip designs. Revenues will be generated from licensing fees and royalties. An example would be in cell phone chips, where the ADC is a sub-block of a larger system on a chip (SoC), and the customer would license ZeroWatt’s ADC IP to use the design on their chip. Collaborations with customers are also expected in the IP licensing business, where ZeroWatt would develop the ADC design side-by-side with the customer to tailor fit it into the chip.

The ZeroWatt Team and History

ZeroWatt’s ADC technology was developed at the Nanoscale Communication Integrated Circuits (NCIC) Lab in the University of California, Irvine, which is one of the top analog integrated circuits research laboratories in the world, with a track record of more than 70 publications and 25 fabricated chips. The company was founded and the technology was developed by Ph.D. candidate, Fred Tzeng, and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, Payam Heydari. Both Mr. Tzeng and Dr. Heydari currently serve as key executives of the company. As the company grows, ZeroWatt expects replace key positions with more experienced semiconductor executives. In addition, ZeroWatt has a close network of advisors on the technical, business, and legal aspects of the semiconductor industry to consult with.

 

ZeroWatt Technologies won first place in the 2009 Straddling Yocca Carlson and Rauth Business Plan Competition at UC Irvine. More than 75 teams competed in this year's Business Plan Competition, and after the final presentations, the judges voted ZeroWatt as the 1st place winner and the best concept paper recipient. ZeroWatt also received the 2008 International Low Power Electronics Design Symposium (ISLPED) Design Contest Award for their low power technology.

Company Status

ZeroWatt Technologies has verified top-level functionality of it technology, and is currently in the chip design stage. It is scheduled to fabricate a prototype chip in the summer of 2009, and expects to demonstrate hardware measurements in winter of 2009.

 

ZeroWatt’s core technology is covered by 2 pending patents. It is negotiating to secure exclusive rights to its patent-pending technologies. The patents were filed by the University of California (UC), with whom ZeroWatt has subsequently drawn up a letter option agreement granting ZeroWatt exclusive rights to the technology.  ZeroWatt Technologies is incorporated as a Delaware C-corp. It also receives legal counsel from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.

ZeroWatt has already met with key executives and GE and Broadcom to confirm that there is a strong demand for low power ADCs in their products. ZeroWatt has received design specifications and target applications from GE and Broadcom, and will be meeting them again once the hardware has been demonstrated.