The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode with London Stock Exchange Group's Chris Mayo has just been released. Listen here.
Alphawave has all building blocks (PCIe/CXL controller and PHY) needed for similar products of Astera Labs, DSP retimers, specifically. I believe the logic design inside should not very challenging. Any insight why Alphawave was not going?
SEC is also AW's customer as far as I know. TSMC has large customer base so they never pay IP vendors to develop key IPs. But Samsung needs them to attract advanced customers adopting their leading node technology. Besides, In APAC outside China there's no data center provider that could afford such leading technology and IP. Therefore I suppose it's Samsung...
Thanks for summary. Informative as always.
I noticed that Alphawave has mentioned "Major extension of IP development and licensing deal with leading APAC customer including UCIe, PCIeGen7, 224G and 2nm technology". I suppose it's very likely a foundry customer, as Alphawave are well connected with all 3 major foundries. If so, we can expect AW to sell more IP to the ecosystem customers in the future.
As far as I know Credo build SerDes based on so called N-1 process technology and they can achieve similar or even superior power/performance because of their architecture and feature. They used to have expertise designing SerDes using extensive analog and mixed signal, and therefore have power advantage as compared with DSP+ADC approach. Besides, rather than supporting both PCIe and Ethernet, their SerDes only focused on Ethernet/optical protocols with selective frequency range so that they can optimize power further. (Of course, this can be their weakness from IP business pov.) Using N-1 process technology can make their products more cost competitive while claiming comparable power and performance.
Besides, their AEC (active ethernet cable) is unique to the market. It provides an low-cost yet more reliable alternative than optical fiber and passive cables. Credo AEC is tailor-made for cloud customers and has many different forms. This is by far their cash cow, followed by copper PHY products.
I saw there is around 200m revenue from China this year. This 2/3 of total. What a big portion. ([LINK REMOVED]
Also AW seems to bear losts from WiseWave involvement.
Any discussion on their China involvement and WiseWave investment?