NanoBridge Semiconductor

Established in September 2019 as a spin-off from NEC Corporation, NanoBridge Semiconductor, Inc. (NBS) is a venture company headquartered in Tsukuba, Japan, specializing in advanced semiconductor technology. The company was founded by a team of NEC researchers, including Toshitsugu Sakamoto and Munehiro Tada, with Tadahiko Sugibayashi serving as CEO. The foundation of their technology dates back to earlier discoveries, including the formation of a metallic bridge in an air gap in 2001 and the finding of operation with a solid-electrolyte in 2003 by Dr. Sakamoto.

NanoBridge Semiconductor operates on a fab-lite or fabless business model, focusing on the design and intellectual property (IP) licensing of its core technology. The company's revenue is primarily generated through upfront license fees and royalties for every chip that incorporates its technology. It also manufactures and provides its proprietary chips, such as the NBFPGA (NanoBridge Field-Programmable Gate Array) and NBNVM (NanoBridge Nonvolatile Memory), to customers for proof-of-concept and small-scale production. The firm serves a diverse client base, including domestic and international manufacturers of IoT devices, automobiles, and companies in the aerospace and communications infrastructure sectors.

The core of the company's offering is the NanoBridge®, a resistance-change switching technology. This technology controls the creation and destruction of a nanometer-sized metal bridge within a solid electrolyte by applying voltage, which effectively switches the device between 'on' and 'off' states. A key benefit is its non-volatility, meaning it does not require power to maintain its state, leading to significantly lower power consumption. Furthermore, the technology demonstrates high resistance to radiation and extreme temperatures, making it suitable for harsh environments like aerospace applications. Chips using NanoBridge can be four times smaller and consume ten times less power compared to standard counterparts, especially in AI inference applications. This technology, which is protected by a portfolio of 95 global patents, can be integrated into standard CMOS manufacturing processes with the addition of just two masks.

Keywords: resistance-change switching, nonvolatile memory, FPGA, semiconductor IP licensing, fabless semiconductor, rad-hard electronics, low-power IoT, atomic switch, solid electrolyte, advanced circuits, NanoBridge, NBFPGA, NBNVM, aerospace technology, automotive semiconductors, communications infrastructure, intellectual property, circuit design, nanotechnology, Tsukuba startup