Inphi Corporation operates as a fabless provider of high-speed analog and mixed signal semiconductor solutions for the communications and cloud markets.
The company’s analog and mixed signal semiconductor solutions provide high signal integrity at leading-edge data speeds while reducing system power consumption. Its semiconductor solutions are designed to address bandwidth bottlenecks in networks, maximize throughput and minimize latency in communication and computing environments and enable th...
Inphi Corporation operates as a fabless provider of high-speed analog and mixed signal semiconductor solutions for the communications and cloud markets.
The company’s analog and mixed signal semiconductor solutions provide high signal integrity at leading-edge data speeds while reducing system power consumption. Its semiconductor solutions are designed to address bandwidth bottlenecks in networks, maximize throughput and minimize latency in communication and computing environments and enable the rollout of next generation communications and cloud infrastructures. The company’s solutions provide a high-speed interface between analog and mixed signals and digital information in high-performance systems, such as telecommunications transport systems, enterprise networking equipment and data centers. The company provides 25G to 600G high-speed analog and mixed signal semiconductor solutions for the communications market.
In January 2020, the company completed the acquisition of eSilicon Corporation (eSilicon). The company acquired eSilicon to accelerate its roadmap in developing electro-optics solutions for cloud and telecommunications customers.
In May 2020, the company purchased certain assets and rights of Arrive Technologies, Inc. (Arrive). The company acquired Arrive for the expansion of its presence into strategic geographic regions for talent acquisition.
The company leverages its proprietary high-speed analog and mixed signal processing expertise and its deep understanding of system architectures to address data bottlenecks in current and emerging communications, enterprise network, computing and storage architectures. The company uses its core technology and strength in high-speed analog design to enable its customers to deploy next generation communications systems that operate with high performance at high-speed.
The company has informal collaborative discussions with industry and technology leaders in Tier-1 cloud providers, telecom operators, network system original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and optical module and component vendors to design architectures and products that solve bandwidth bottlenecks in existing and next generation communications systems.
The company’s products are designed into systems sold by OEMs, including Tier-1 OEMs in the telecom and networking system markets worldwide. It sells both directly to these OEMs and to other intermediary systems or module manufacturers that, in turn, sell to these OEMs.
Products
The company’s high-speed, mixed signal semiconductor solutions equate to the planes, trains and trucks used by physical delivery services to speed information from place to place.
The company’s telecommunication solutions are its planes, working across distances of 100s to 1000s kilometers (kms). Products include its coherent transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs), drivers and digital signal processing. Its data center edge interconnect solutions are the company’s trains, delivering an amount of packages, across 80 km distances.
The company’s ColorZ is a 100G dense wavelength division multiplexing solution in QSFP28 form factor, utilizing advanced silicon photonics and 4-level Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM4) modulation, to deliver up to 4Tb/s of bandwidth over a single fiber. Its inside data center interconnects are its trucks, working across hundreds of meters up to kms. The company’s PAM interconnects along with accompanying TIAs and drivers deliver solutions for cloud and enterprise customers.
As of December 31, 2020, the company had a range of products in its portfolio, including products that have commercially shipped, products for which it has shipped engineering samples and products under development that perform a range of functions, such as amplifying, encoding, multiplexing, demultiplexing, and retiming signals at speeds up to 400 Gbps. These products are key enablers for servers, routers, switches, storage and other equipment that process, store and transport data traffic. The company introduced 33 new products in 2020. The company designs and develops its products for the communications and computing markets, which typically have two to three year design cycles, and product life cycles as long as five years or more. The company introduced ColorZ in 2016 and began to ship in commercial volume in 2017. Sales of ColorZ included 13% of its total revenue in 2020.
Customers
The company sells its products directly to OEMs and indirectly to OEMs through module manufacturers, cloud providers, original design manufacturers (ODMs) and sub-systems providers. It works closely with technology leaders to design architectures and products that help solve bandwidth bottlenecks in and between systems. In the networking market, the company works closely with OEMs to deliver high performance communication links. These OEMs design its products into their systems and then require their ODM and electronics manufacturing services suppliers to purchase and use that specific product from it. The company also works directly with optical module manufacturers to design its products into their modules, which they sell to OEMs.
During the year ended December 31, 2020, the company sold its products to approximately 140 customers. Sales to customers in Asia accounted for 69% of its total revenue in 2020.
In the year ended December 31, 2020, the company’s sales to Microsoft Corporation and Innolight Technology (Suzhou) Ltd., directly and indirectly, through subcontractors, accounted for approximately 12% and 14% of its total revenue, respectively. The company sells products to Cyberlink Electronics Limited (Cyberlink), a distributor who sells to various end customers. Included in the 10 largest direct customers are sales to Cyberlink, which accounted for approximately 15% of its total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2020.
Sales and Marketing
In addition to the company’s direct customers, it works closely with technology leaders in Tier-1 cloud providers, telecom operators, network system OEMs and optical module and component vendors for the cloud, networking and communications market to anticipate and solve next generation challenges facing its customers.
As part of the sales and product development process, the company often designs its products in collaboration with these industry leaders and helps define their architecture. The company also participates actively in setting industry standards with organizations, such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the Optical Internetworking Forum to have a voice in the definition of future market trends.
The company sells its products worldwide through multiple channels, including its direct sales force and a network of sales representatives and distributors. For the year ended December 31, 2020, the company derived 82% of its total revenue from sales by its direct sales team and third-party sales representatives, and 18% of its sales were made through third-party distributors. The company operates marketing representative offices in China, Japan, Taiwan, Germany and the United States. The company’s channel network includes more than one hundred sales and support professionals to support its products and customers. All of these sales professionals are sales agents and are employed by its distributors and sales representatives.
Manufacturing
The company operates a fabless business model and uses third-party foundries and assembly and test manufacturing contractors to manufacture, assemble and test its semiconductor products.
Wafer Fabrication: The company utilizes a range of semiconductor processes to develop and manufacture its products. Each of its foundries tends to specialize in a particular semiconductor wafer process technology. For most of its products, the company utilizes a single foundry for semiconductor wafer production. The company’s principal foundries are Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. in Taiwan; WIN Semiconductors Corp. (WIN Semiconductors) in Taiwan; Tower Semiconductor Ltd. in North America; GlobalFoundries in North America; and Samsung Semiconductor Inc. in North America and Korea.
Package and Assembly: Upon the completion of processing at the foundry, the finished wafers are shipped to the company’s third-party assemblers for packaging and assembly. The company’s principal packaging and assembly contractors are STATS ChipPAC Ltd. (STATS ChipPAC) in Korea; Kyocera Corporation in Japan; Tong Hsing Electronics Industries Ltd. in Taiwan; Amkor Technology in Korea; LuxNet Corporation in Taiwan; ASE Technology in Taiwan and Malaysia; and TF AMD Microelectronics (TF AMD) in Malaysia.
Test: At the last stage of integrated circuit production, the company’s third-party test service providers test the packaged and assembled integrated circuits. STATS ChipPAC in Korea; ISE Labs, Inc. in North America; Giga Solution Tech Co., Ltd. in Taiwan; WIN Semiconductors in Taiwan; ASEM Technology in Malaysia; Presto Engineering in North America; TF AMD in Malaysia; and Global Testing Corporation in Taiwan are the company’s test partners. The company also performs testing in its Irvine and Westlake Village, California facilities.
As part of the company’s total quality assurance program, its quality management system has been certified to ISO 9001:2008 standards. The company’s manufacturing partners are also ISO 9001 certified.
Research and Development
The company’s research and development expenses were $269.1 million in 2020.
Intellectual Property
As of December 31, 2020, the company had 984 issued and allowed patents and other patent applications pending in the United States. The 865 issued and allowed patents in the United States expire in the years beginning in 2021 through 2040. Many of its issued patents and pending patent applications relate to high-speed circuit and package designs.
The company’s trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks include Inphi, iKON, InphiNityCore, Canopus, ColorZ, ColorZ-Lite, iMB, OmniConnect, Polaris, Tri-rate, Vega, M200 LightSpeed-III, Porrima, Capella, Spica, Alcor and the Inphi logo.
Competition
The company’s primary competitors include Acacia Communications, Inc.; Broadcom Ltd.; Renesas Electronics Corporation; M/A-COM Technology Solutions Inc.; MaxLinear, Inc.; NTT Electronics Corporation; Qorvo, Inc.; and Semtech Corp.
History
The company was founded in 2000. It was formerly known as TCom Communications, Inc. and changed its name to Inphi Corporation in 2001. The company was incorporated in Delaware in 2000.
