Under an 'Inclusive Company' Agreement Signed in April
Thirteen Korean system semiconductor startups, including UX Factory and GLS, have gained free use of Flexible Access, a comprehensive design package provided by ARM, the world's largest semiconductor design company, through the Korean Ministry of SMEs and Startups.
ARM is the company that Nvidia, a U.S. system semiconductor company, has recently acquired from SoftBank of Japan for US$40 billion.
Flexible Access is a system semiconductor design package that includes technical support and IPs required for the design, such as CPU and GPU.
The Ministry of SMEs and Startups concluded an "Inclusive Company" business agreement with ARM and Seoul National University in April to support the growth of innovative companies in system semiconductors.
The agreement was the first Inclusive Company agreement that ARM signed to provide comprehensive support, including free use of its design package, mentoring, and prototyping, to innovative startups and venture companies.
ARM launched Flexible Access, a voluntary win-win program, allowing early-stage startups to use ARM’s excellent infrastructure free of charge. The number of companies benefiting from ARM’s support program was expanded from 10 to 13.
The Flexible Access program provides support to startups with a cumulative investment of less than US$5 million or annual sales of less than US$1 million.
The 13 companies were selected from among 50 companies through the first round of document reviews and the second round of visits by ARM and Seoul National University.
The selected companies included Deeper-I, the first Korean company to supply deep learning-based image recognition technology based on its own artificial intelligence chip, and intelligent semiconductor design company "Mobilint," which consists of members with excellent thesis records.
Also included were Fadu, an SSD semiconductor production company founded by graduate students at Seoul National University, and DeepX, an artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor solution company which won major prizes at the 2019 Korea Technology Innovation Awards.