This a second acquisition for Rohm this year as it builds its power IC business on the back of its own core high voltage power semiconductor technology which includes the new “wonder technology” silicon carbide.
In May, Rohm bought Renesas’ 8-inch wafer fab in Shiga.
The line will mainly make IGBTs, mosfets and piezoelectric MEMS on a 0.15μm process, and will be Rohm’s main site for power and MEMS.
Rohm said it regards power and sensor devices as one of the four growth engines and is currently developing SiC, IGBT and MEMS products.
The acquisition of Powervation, which is a spin-out of the University of Limerick, fits with this. It designs digital power controllers for cloud servers and communications infrastructure. This is a target market for Rohm.
The Irish firm has developed a proprietary DSP control platform with patented xTune auto-tuning and ITM intelligent transient management technologies designed for complex multi-rail and multi-phase power systems.
Rohm said it plans to combine the power management technology with its analogue/discrete power technologies.
Mike McAuliffe, CEO of Powervation believes it is a great fit.
“The combination with Rohm now presents a compelling opportunity for broad market leadership in digital power management solutions.”
According to Jun Iida, head of LSI development at Rohm:
“The combination of our two companies will enable Rohm to develop integrated digital power solutions to serve a broad range of customers, markets, and applications spanning the entire spectrum from computing and communications to consumer and industrial.”
Powervation will become a subsidiary of Rohm with its principal design centre in Cork, Ireland and system application centres in San Jose, California and Asia.
