2025 Outlook with Randy Caplan of Silicon Creations

Randy Caplan is co-founder and EVP of Silicon Creations. For over 18 years, Randy has helped to grow Silicon Creations into a leading semiconductor IP company with more than 500 customers in over 20 countries, and nearly 100% employee retention. Silicon Creations’ designs have been included in over 1500 mass-produced chips from 3nm to 350nm, from which more than ten million wafers were shipped. Randy’s earlier career includes developing high-speed data transceivers at Agilent Technologies and as a Senior Design Engineer at MOSAID, where he contributed to high-performance silicon IP clocking and interface products.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.

Silicon Creations is a mixed-signal IP provider, specializing in low-risk, high performance clocking solutions (PLLs) and high speed data interfaces (SerDes). We offer designs in every foundry (TSMC, Samsung, GF, Intel, Rapidus, UMC, SMIC, and more…), and every process node (2nm up to 180nm, all inclusive). We were founded in 2006, are ISO9001 certified, and after 18 years, still have close to 100% employee retention.

What was the most exciting high point of 2024 for your company?

Passing ten million (TSMC) wafers shipped using our IP. Also, we passed our 1000th production license of our Fractional SoC PLL IP.

We developed and taped out a portfolio of advanced-node TSMC IP including multiple PLLs, free-running oscillators, low-noise IOs, and temperature sensor IP. We also developed select 2nm PLLs with multiple other foundries including Samsung, Intel, and Rapidus.

What was the biggest challenge your company faced in 2024?

Simultaneously developing IP in all the leading process nodes (TSMC, Samsung, Intel, Rapidus). This required new design techniques to support core-device-only requirements in GAA (gate-all-around) nano-sheet / nano-wire processes.

How is your company’s work addressing this biggest challenge?

Chip development costs in advanced nodes have gone up exponentially. We provide a substantial portfolio of low-risk, proven, foundational IP which helps enable our customers to get their designs right the first time. Our advanced design and verification flow enables fast iteration and re-verification in processes where PDKs are frequently changing. This ensures we’re not the bottleneck in our customers’ development schedule.

What do you think the biggest growth area for 2025 will be, and why?

We’re seeing growth in many parallel market segments including AI accelerator chips, crypto mining, and automotive. Customer tapeouts in advanced nodes (5nm and below) are picking up. We’re even seeing early interest in sub-2nm nodes. Due to long chip development schedules and fab times in advanced nodes, our IP sales tend to be a strong leading indicator of chip sales one to two years in the future. We don’t have first-hand knowledge of the end market forces, but we can infer from our IP sales which semiconductor market segments are seeing increased investment now.

How is your company’s work addressing this growth?

We use an advanced IP design flow, leveraging the latest EDA flows from Siemens, Synopsys, Cadence, Silvaco, and others. This helps to reduce IP development time, improve simulation-to-silicon correlation, and ensure our customers have the foundational blocks they need to build their high-performance chips.

What conferences did you attend in 2024 and how was the traffic?

All TSMC shows, ICCAD (China), DAC and many other foundry and EDA events (Samsung, GF, Intel, Siemens U2U, CadenceLive). Traffic was especially strong at TSMC and ICCAD, but we also had a good turn-out at our booth for the other events as well.

Will you attend conferences in 2025? Same or more?

Silicon Creations attended over 30 trade shows / conferences in 2024, and expects to attend a similar number in 2025…

How do customers engage with your company?

We already work with 16 of the top 20 TSMC customers, and over 500 companies overall. For new inquiries, please send an email to sales@siliconcr.com, or come to our booth at any trade show.

About Silicon Creations

Silicon Creations is a self-funded, leading silicon IP provider with offices in the US and Poland, and sales representation worldwide. The company provides world-class silicon intellectual property (IP) for precision and general-purpose timing (PLLs), oscillators, low-power, high-performance multi-protocol and targeted SerDes and high-speed differential I/Os for diverse applications including smart phones, wearables, consumer devices, processors, network devices, automotive, IoT, and medical devices. Silicon Creations’ IP is proven and/or in high-volume mass production in process technologies up to the most advanced available in the industry.

Also Read:

One Thousand Production Licenses Means Silicon Creations PLL IP is Everywhere

Silicon Creations is Fueling Next Generation Chips

Silicon Creations is Enabling the Chiplet Revolution