iSTART-TEK (iSTART, TW-6786), the only leading developer in memory testing and repairing technology in Asia, announced that the operating revenue is NTD 3.786 million in November 2020 and the cumulative revenue is NTD 32.95 million from January 2020 to November 2020. Also, the cumulative revenue of 335.10% over the period shown, compared with that of the past year, which hits high record. The continuous growth of operating revenue is driven by the positive cycle impacted from iSTART’s ecosystem. iSTART aims to provide wider and deeper complete solution of SoC via cooperation with M31 Technology (M31, TW-6643), a memory Intellectual Property (IP) company, and Yield Microelectronics Corporation (YMC, TW-6423), a Non-Volatile Memory Intellectual Property (NVM IP) company, coupled with the results of hard works in each field. iSTART continues to develop crossover alliances to form market differentiation, which provides customers with higher added value and stronger market competitiveness. Recently, iSTART has signed a contract with Sitronix Technology Corporation (Sitronix, TW-8016) to successfully expand its business.
M31 and YMC are leading suppliers of memory IP, which belongs to upstream companies of semiconductor industry chain, same as iSTART. At the beginning of the cooperation, solid trust is formed because of the long-term experiences in memory field. In terms of M31, both jointly improve memory testing and repairing circuit efficiency of a more automated High-Performance Computing (HPC) related system chips. In addition, iSTART’s repair solution supports NVM IP of YMC. NVM includes OTP (one-time programming, like the cassette of a game console, locks when writing) and MTP (multiple programming, like the hard disk in a computer, can be written multiple times). Customers can dramatically reduce design time of testing and repairing circuit as well as the cost of testing. The success of this cooperation has built foundation for mutual trust and found business opportunities of complete SoC solution. In depth cooperation will be discussed soon.
Furthermore, the ecosystem of iSTART has begun to chemistry. iSTART successfully obtained the affirmation of Sitronix and signed the contract. Sitronix provides customers with a full range of LCD driver chip solutions. In the past, due to the low memory consumption of driver chips, engineers used to solve memory testing problems via in-house manually design circuits. However, as the design of chips become more complex and the manufacturing processes moved to the advanced ones, memory testing circuits become more important, more time-consuming, and labor-intensive. Sitronix decided to implement memory testing EDA tools to replace in-house solution to efficiently rearrange internal resources. iSTART has won the confidence of Sitronix and signed a tool authorization contract with its simple operating processes, superior product features and design. iSTART will continue to provide customers with more complete solutions through authorization and customized services.
The reasons for the gentle decrease in the operating revenue of iSTART in November 2020 is that EDA tool is related to customers’ annual budget plans and needs. However, the related contracts are expected to be signed in December 2020, foreseeing overall operating revenue to grow. On top of that, analysts indicated that because of the uniqueness of the IP and EDA tool markets, the prospects continue to be optimistic, and suggested that it is more appropriate to focus on whether the company’s operation grow quarterly. Due to the customized advantages of iSTART and its high customer adhesion, contracts are mostly renewed after expirations, while the number of customers continues to increase. By this meant, it is estimated that the operating revenue of iSTART continues to rise in the foreseeable future.