ROHM Semiconductor acquires Powervation

23rd July 2015

Nat Bowers

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ROHM has completed the acquisition of Powervation, a developer of digital power management SoC solutions, for approximately $70m in an all-cash transaction. Combining Powervation’s Intelligent Digital Power platform with ROHM’s leading analogue power technology and global market access will enable a range of fast growing market opportunities, as customers increasingly adopt digital power solutions to power next-gen high density systems and ICs such as Processors, Memory, FPGAs and ASICs.

Since its founding in Ireland in 2006, as a University of Limerick spin-out, Powervation has established itself as a leading innovator in digital power controllers serving high performance computing, cloud and communications infrastructure markets. The company’s proprietary DSP control platform with patented xTune auto-tuning and intelligent transient management technologies, has been adopted by industry leading customers who need advanced power management, precision telemetry / control and high efficiency solutions to power their complex multi-rail, multi-phase systems. Powervation delivers on these needs with further breakthroughs on design flexibility, fast time-to-market and lower total cost of ownership.

ROHM supplies a diversified global customer base in the consumer, automotive and industrial markets. By acquiring Powervation, ROHM will gain leading-edge digital power technologies to strengthen its product offerings in the rapidly-growing cloud, data-centre and communications infrastructure markets. This acquisition will also enable ROHM to develop advanced digital power solutions for a broader range of markets and applications with Powervation’s flexible controller platform.

According to market research reports, digital power continues to progressively displace traditional analog technology in the $11bn global power management IC market driven by its performance and energy efficiency advantages.

Jun Iida, Head of LSI Development and member of the ROHM board of directors, commented: “The combination of our two companies will enable ROHM to develop industry-leading, integrated digital power solutions to serve a broad range of customers, markets and applications spanning the entire spectrum from computing and communications to consumer and industrial."

Powervation will become a fully owned subsidiary of ROHM, with principal design centre in Cork, Ireland and system application centres in San Jose, California and Asia which fuse expertise in power systems, digital control, silicon and embedded software. ROHM plans to accelerate product development through investment and synergies with ROHM analogue/discrete power technologies and to increase market adoption further by leveraging ROHM’s global customer base and channels.

“The Powervation team is excited to join forces with ROHM, a top 25 global semiconductor company. It’s simply a great fit - we have built an innovative digital power IC company to date but the combination with ROHM now presents a compelling opportunity for broad market leadership in digital power management solutions,” concluded Mike McAuliffe, CEO, Powervation.