Michael Sanie is a veteran of the semiconductor and EDA industries. His career spans several executive roles in diverse businesses with multifunctional responsibilities. He is a passionate evangelist for disruptive technologies.
Most recently, he was the chief marketing executive and senior VP of Enterprise Marketing and Communications at Synopsys, where he also held leadership roles as VP of marketing and strategy for the Design Group and VP of product management for the Verification Group.
Michael previously held executive and senior marketing positions at Cadence, Calypto, Numerical, and Actel, as well as IC design and software engineering positions at VLSI Technology (now NXP Semiconductors).
He holds BSECE and MSEE degrees from Purdue University and an MBA from Santa Clara University.
Tell us about your company
Endura Technologies is developing an end-to-end SoC power delivery solution. In addition to our revolutionary, patented power delivery architecture, we have a diverse skillset to implement test silicon, design IP, design services, design passives (required inductors and capacitors as part of the power delivery solutions), partnerships, and silicon manufacturing relationships. This allows us to create end-to-end SoC power delivery solutions.
Our unique architecture, combined with our fully integrated approach to power delivery at the system level is changing the game for challenging applications such as data centers, automotive, and many others.
What problems are you solving?
Energy consumption for advanced products has become a major care-about across many markets and applications. Battery life and heat dissipation for aggressive form factors drive part of this. The substantial operating costs for massive compute infrastructure is another driver.
A bit more specifically, servers/AI chips are driving much higher compute demands, requiring more power to be delivered. At the same time, these chips are built on smaller nodes, which run on lower Vdd’s. The only way this equation can work is to provide much higher currents with several power rails, and increasingly this is only achievable by 2.5D or 3D IC integration These facts are fundamentally changing power delivery approaches.
On top of that, systems in automotive, audio, and switches typically rely on many sensory inputs ranging from MEMs devices to image sensors to radar. These devices require efficient power delivery across many load configurations and at increasing switching frequencies while maintaining ultra-low noise.
These fundamental disruptions are making people take power delivery a lot more seriously — in two ways: Power delivery is no longer an afterthought; it needs to be designed/architected at the same time as the SoC AND it needs a much more holistic approach. Off-the-shelf PMICs are quickly running out of steam in how they meet these complex requirements. To get the best power delivery each SoC needs its own ‘application-specific’ (or context-aware) power delivery solution.
Powering these systems at scale requires a new approach. One that takes a comprehensive view of power requirements for the chips and chiplets that implement the complete system. And one that optimizes performance, scalability, and efficiency over the broad spectrum of switching frequencies, current loads, voltage ranges, and silicon manufacturing processes.
This is the problem Endura is solving.
What application areas are your strongest?
Endura has applied its technology across a wide range of power-intensive or power-sensitive application areas – mostly data center and automotive. You can find more specific examples on our website that cover data centers, requirements for memories in data centers, a notebook design with a PCIe Gen5 solid state drive, optical modules and automotive.
What keeps your customers up at night?
Advanced system design presents a power delivery balancing act. The drivers for the requirement may differ, but all systems must operate efficiently with the lowest energy consumption possible.
These systems contain many parts, all operating at different frequencies, with varying power demands and obstacles. Solving the complete problem requires a holistic approach to power management and delivery.
But such an approach has been out of reach for most companies, requiring system designers to attempt integration of multiple tools and multiple sets of IP and software to solve the problem. This has been a very difficult problem to solve. Until now.
What does the competitive landscape look like and how do you differentiate?
The traditional approach to power delivery focuses on a component-level strategy. That is, acquire best-in-class power management solutions, typically from tier-1 suppliers and integrate these devices at the PCB level.
The substantial complexity and power demands of applications such as data centers require a new, fine-grained approach – one that integrates power delivery down to the chip level and one that co-optimizes the architecture for optimal system-level performance.
There are some design teams (typically in larger companies with a broad range of skills) that are making the investment to achieve these results across the supply chain. For everyone else, the complexity of integrating such approaches remains out of reach. Endura is democratizing this new, system-level approach to power delivery, so it is available to every system design team.
What new features/technology are you working on?
Power management approaches include the use of traditional, discrete devices (sVR) to embedded chiplets for 2.5/3D integration (eVR) down to on-chip, integrated blocks for optimum point-of-load energy delivery (iVR).
While sVR approaches are well-understood, deployment of fully integrated eVR and iVR strategies is extremely complex and challenging. Endura has the technology and know-how to solve these problems, and this is our development focus.
How do customers normally engage with your company?
Endura Technologies has development facilities in California and Dublin, Ireland. If you would like to explore how we can help you develop a forward-looking power strategy you can reach out at info@enduratechnologies.com.
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