SiTime Corp. plans to acquire certain assets related to Renesas Electronic Corp.’s timing business accelerating the company’s plan to expand its high-performance timing portfolio.
Additionally, SiTime said the acquisition will accelerate its path to $1 billion of revenue as a pure-play timing company.
As part of the deal, the companies signed a memorandum of understanding to explore SiTime’s microelectromechanical (MEMS) resonator integration into Renesas’ embedded computing products.
“This acquisition is a monumental milestone toward fulfilling our vision to transform the timing market and solve our customers’ toughest timing challenges,” said Rajesh Vashist, chairman and CEO of SiTime. “With Renesas’ timing business, we will increase our clocking portfolio by more than 10x and extend our reach in the fastest growing applications in the timing market, including comms, enterprise and datacenter.”
Vashist said these applications are expected to represent more than 60% of SiTime’s revenue post-acquisition.
The acquired assets
The asset is the clocking brand with a 30-year legacy of clocking products. It has served more than 10,000 customers with nearly 75% of revenue coming from the AI data center and communications segment. The other segments include industrial and automotive.
SiTime said after close, the business is expected to generate about $300 million in revenue.
Sharp focus
For Renesas, the transaction will allow the company to sharpen its focus on embedded computing while having access to SiTime’s MEMS timing technology.
According to Hidetoshi Shibata, CEO of Renesas, the company will explore opportunities for strategic collaboration with SiTime to deliver integrated solutions to power intelligent devices.
It also is a step toward Renesas’ goal of becoming a Top 3 embedded chip maker.
Integrating MEMS
With both companies collaborating on integrating MEMS, the technology could potentially be used with Renesas’ MCU or system-on-chip die into a single package. This would eliminate the need to have a resonator on the system board saving space and simplifying design.
This would allow new possibilities in embedded system in applications like:
- AI data centers
- Industrial equipment
- Robots
- ADAS
- Wearables
