Qorvo acquires SiC device supplier UnitedSiC

Qorvo, a leading supplier of RF solutions, announced today that it has acquired United Silicon Carbide (UnitedSiC), a leading manufacturer of silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductors based in Princeton, New Jersey. According to reports, the acquisition of United Silicon Carbide will expand Qorvo's influence into the fast-growing electric vehicle (EV), industrial power, circuit protection, renewable energy and data center power markets. It is reported that after the acquisition, United Silicon Carbide will become part of Qorvo's Infrastructure and Defense Products (IDP) business, led by Dr. Chris Dries, who was previously president and CEO of United Silicon Carbide and is now general manager of Qorvo Power Device Solutions.

“The addition of UnitedSiC to our IDP business unit significantly expands our market opportunities in high-power applications,” said Philip Chesley, president of Qorvo IDP. “This acquisition enables Qorvo to deliver high-value, best-in-class intelligent power solutions across power conversion, motion control and circuit protection applications.”

"As part of Qorvo, our team is excited to expand our SiC portfolio and continue to build the business at speed and scale in our efforts to accelerate SiC adoption with the industry's highest performance devices," said Dr. Dries. "Our SiC technology, combined with Qorvo's complementary programmable power management products and world-class supply chain capabilities, enables us to deliver exceptional levels of power efficiency in advanced applications."

United Silicon Carbide's product portfolio now includes more than 80 SiC FET, JFET and Schottky diode devices. Based on a unique cascode configuration, the recently released 4th generation SiC FET is rated at an industry-leading 750V and 5.9 milliohm RDS(on), achieving new levels of SiC efficiency and performance critical to EV chargers, DC-DC converters and traction drives, as well as telecom/server power supplies, variable speed motor drives and solar photovoltaic (PV) inverters.

Qorvo launches multiple acquisitions to lay out its future

Qorvo, the new company formed by the merger of RFMD and TriQuint in 2015, is a well-deserved giant in the RF market.

Official data shows that Qorvo, which was formed by the merger of RFMD and TriQuint, combines the complementary product portfolios of both parties, especially power amplifiers (PA), power management integrated circuits (PMIC), antenna control solutions, switch-based products and high-quality filters, which are the company's RF "foundation" for future needs. Qorvo also uses these products to deliver the most comprehensive high-performance mobile device solution portfolio in the industry to customers. It is also because of this merger that the new Qorvo has the strength to improve the quality of services provided by the infrastructure and defense/aerospace industries, and can provide advanced gallium nitride (GaN) solutions for other markets and applications.

The above is exactly what Qorvo has prepared for the rapidly growing 5G market.

In fact, in addition to the above businesses, the extensive demand for national defense, WiFi 6 and the Internet of Things has also made significant contributions to Qorvo's performance. In order to enhance the company's strength in RF, Qorvo wielded the acquisition stick.

In 2016, Qorvo announced the acquisition of GreenPeak, a leading ultra-low power, short-range RF communication technology company. The Netherlands-based company is one of the world's recognized leaders in the IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee markets, and provides a wide range of semiconductor products and software technologies for smart home data communications and the Internet of Things. Through this acquisition, Qorvo not only supplemented its market-leading high-power RF product portfolio, but also added innovative ultra-low power, short-range wireless personal area network (WPAN) SoCs, ZigBee and Bluetooth solutions. This gave Qorvo a head start in the Internet of Things market.

In October 2019, Qorvo acquired Cavendish Kinetics, a world-leading supplier of high-performance RF MEMS antenna tuning application technology. It is understood that Qorvo has been a major strategic investor in Cavendish Kinetics since 2015. The RF MEMS devices developed by Cavendish Kinetics are used to tune the main antenna and diversity antenna of smartphones in low, medium and high frequency bands, thereby bringing stronger signals and higher data rates.

Eric Creviston, president of Qorvo Mobile Products, said: "The addition of Cavendish Kinetics enables us to establish a market-leading position in antenna tuning. Several of the world's leading smartphone suppliers have achieved significant improvements in antenna performance by using CK's RF MEMS technology to reduce losses and improve linearity. Qorvo will continue to build on the great work CK has done to optimize and expand the technology to other applications such as infrastructure and defense."

Last year, Qorvo completed the acquisition of CustomMMIC. As an important manufacturer in the field of RF and microwave MMIC, the latter has extensive experience in developing MMICs with frequencies up to 70 GHz. Their joining also enhances Qorvo's strength in GaAs and GaN RF products in the defense and aerospace fields.

These acquisitions allow Qorvo to strengthen its position in the RF industry as the market changes.

It is undoubtedly the cornerstone of Qorvo. However, as a company with deep technical accumulation and keen insight, Qorvo has seen new growth opportunities for the company in addition to RF, and has taken steps to get involved. The Internet of Things is the most important one. The acquisition of GreenPeak Technologies mentioned above is Qorvo's first big bet in this market. Through this transaction, they want to get into the Internet of Things connection market.

Two years ago, they acquired a company called Active-Semi. One of the targets of this transaction was the power supply market for IoT devices.

According to data, Active-Semi, founded in Silicon Valley, is a rapidly emerging leader in the power management and intelligent motor drive integrated chip (IC) market. The company's analog and mixed-signal SoC product portfolio provides scalable core platforms for charging systems, power supply systems, and embedded digital control systems for industrial, commercial, and consumer applications. In particular, the PAC and programmable analog ICs it provides can greatly reduce solution size and cost, improve system reliability, and shorten system development time. The support it brings to the rapidly growing smart home (an application branch of the Internet of Things) device market is obvious.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg of Active-Semi's treasure trove.

Bob Bruggeworth, president and CEO of Qorvo, said that through the acquisition of Active-Semi, Qorvo will increase its IDP product offerings to existing customers (including 5G base stations, defense active phased arrays, automotive and IoT) and expand its business scope into new high-growth power management markets. Qorvo is confident that there will be a lot of opportunities to accelerate the adoption of Active-Semi's innovative analog/mixed-signal solutions in multiple markets by leveraging the company's global scale, sales channels and customer relationships. "

From his introduction, we learned that Qorvo recruited Active-Semi not only for the IoT, but also for the opportunities it brings to the 5G, industrial, data center and automotive markets. Take 5G as an example. The new standard not only brings RF requirements, but also faces unprecedented new challenges in base station power supply, which is exactly what Active-Semi is committed to solving.

As for the specific approach, Qorvo said that if power management, PAC and RF can be effectively combined, and power can be used to give RF life, it can provide the industry with more efficient and higher-quality solutions. Of course, Qorvo's wide customer base will also be an important reliance for the company to expand new business.

After completing the acquisition of analog and mixed-signal SoC suppliers, Qorvo announced the acquisition of Decawave last year. This is mainly due to the UWB chip market introduced by Apple in its new generation of flagship smartphones. The so-called UWB, or Ultra Wideband, is actually not a new thing. As early as 1960, the concept of UWB was proposed, and in 1973, the first patent for a UWB system was granted.

As a non-traditional communication system, UWB uses nanosecond non-sinusoidal narrow pulses as information carriers to transmit data, which gives it high positioning accuracy, strong security and anti-interference, high emission green field, high multipath resolution and good system confidentiality.

Because of its many advantages, UWB is considered the preferred choice for smart home, augmented reality and indoor navigation. After Apple entered this market, the industry's attention has reached an unprecedented high. Qorvo also saw this business opportunity and acquired Decawave, the leader in the UWB chip industry.

Qorvo said that Decawave is a pioneer in ultra-wideband (UWB) technology and a UWB solution provider for mobile, automotive and IoT applications. From its establishment in 2007 to its acquisition by Qorvo this year, Decawave has deployed more than 8 million chipsets in more than 40 different vertical markets, from smartphones to drones. The company's pulse radio UWB technology can achieve positioning services accurate to a few centimeters with extremely low latency, making it an important partner for customers to enter this market. In Qorvo's view, based on the pioneering work of the Decawave team, coupled with Qorvo's own experience in the RF front end and a large customer base, the powerful combination of the two can embrace the huge new opportunities brought by the expansion of UWB into new markets such as mobile, automotive, industrial and consumer IoT.

Judging from the development trend of the integrated circuit industry in the past few years, acquisition is undoubtedly an effective way to quickly enter a new track. Because unlike in the past, the terminal market is developing rapidly and changing rapidly. For relevant suppliers, if they cannot quickly occupy a priority position in the track, they may be washed onto the beach at any time.