Sony Semiconductor Israel Ltd., formerly known as Altair Semiconductor, is an Israeli developer of high performance single-mode Long Term Evolution (LTE)

chipset In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components in one or more integrated circuits known as a "Data Flow Management System" that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. It is usually found on t ...

s. The company's product portfolio includes

baseband processor A baseband processor (also known as baseband radio processor, BP, or BBP) is a device (a chip or part of a chip) in a network interface controller that manages all the radio functions (all functions that require an antenna); however, this term i ...

s, RF transceivers and a range of reference hardware products. Founded in 2005, Altair employs 190 employees in its

Hod Hasharon Hod HaSharon ( he, הוֹד הַשָּׁרוֹן, lit. "Splendor of the Sharon plain") is a city in the Central District of Israel. The city is located approximately east of the Mediterranean coastline, south of Kfar Saba, southeast of Raanana ...

, Israel headquarters and R&D center, and has regional offices in the United States, Japan, China, India, Finland, and France. Altair Semiconductor was the first chipset vendor to receive certification from

Verizon Wireless Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the divi ...

to run on its 4G LTE network. Altair has also powered several devices launched on Verizon's network including the Ellipsis 7 tablet and HP

Chromebook A Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a laptop or tablet running the Linux-based ChromeOS as its operating system. Initially designed to heavily rely on web applications for tasks using the Google Chrome browser, Chromeb ...

11.6"LTE. In January 2016 it was announced that

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

was acquiring Altair for $212 Million. Altair was renamed Sony Semiconductor Israel on March 29, 2020.

Corporate History

Altair was founded in May 2005 by former

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globa ...

executives Oded Melamed, Yigal Bitran, and Eran Eshed, with extensive

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

and

wireless Wireless communication (or just wireless, when the context allows) is the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The mos ...

silicon Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic ...

experience. Altair's management and technology executives were among the founding team of Libit Signal Processing, a

fabless Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

chip company acquired by Texas Instruments in 1999 for $365 million. Altair is privately held, and has raised in excess of $120M financing to date. The company has a long history of developing 4G semiconductor solutions and prior to strategically shifting full focus to 3GPP LTE in 2006, had developed solutions for WiMAX and Japanese XGP standards. In January 2016 it was announced that

was acquiring Altair for $212 Million. In 2019, Nohik Semel became the CEO of the company, replacing Oded Melamed.

Market

LTE has emerged as the de facto 4G (4th Generation) technology, after having won the battle over rival technology

WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a family of wireless broadband communication standards based on the IEEE 802.16 set of standards, which provide physical layer (PHY) and media access control (MAC) options. The WiMA ...

, which failed to gain global carrier acceptance and critical deployment mass. As data usage minutes are on a steep increase vector, and voice ARPU ( Average revenue per user) remain flat, carriers face a need to offer advanced and cost effective mobile broadband services which will offset the profitability decline and increase customer satisfaction. According to the

Global Mobile Suppliers Association The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) is a not-for-profit industry organisation representing companies in the mobile communication industry. GSA actively promotes 3GPP technology such as 3G; 4G; 5G. GSA is a market representation partn ...

(GSA), 338 telecoms operators in 101 countries have committed to commercial LTE network deployments or are engaged in trials, technology testing or studies. LTE networks are already fully deployed in key markets such as the U.S. and South Korea. Analysts forecast the number of LTE subscribers worldwide to reach 1B subscribers by 2016. In addition to connecting the consumer device market, LTE has the potential to push forward the vision of the

Internet of Things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...

(IoT). As of 2013, the internet had about 10-15 billion devices connected to it. Industry experts predict some 25 billion devices will be connected by 2015, and 50 billion by 2020. Many of these connections, whether consumer, enterprise, industrial, or other will require

Wireless Wide Area Network Wireless wide area network (WWAN), is a form of wireless network. The larger size of a wide area network compared to a local area network requires differences in technology. Wireless networks of different sizes deliver data in the form of telephon ...

(WWAN) connections, and given the connectivity requirements, a majority of these connection could be via LTE networks.

Milestones

*In November 2009, Altair announced the first commercial grade LTE

User equipment In the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE), user equipment (UE) is any device used directly by an end-user to communicate. It can be a hand-held telephone, a laptop computer equipped with a mobile bro ...

(UE) based on its FourGee-3100. *In October 2011, Altair achieved the world's fastest

Time-Division Long-Term Evolution In telecommunications, long-term evolution (LTE) is a standard for wireless broadband communication for mobile devices and data terminals, based on the GSM/ EDGE and UMTS/HSPA standards. It improves on those standards' capacity and speed by ...

(TD-LTE) speed demonstration (download speeds of more than 100Mbit/s) in a live over-the-air demonstration with Japanese carrier

SoftBank is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the ...

. *In August 2012, Altair was certified by

to operate on Verizon's 4G LTE network. *In September 2012,

SK Telecom SK Telecom Co., Ltd. ( or ) is a South Korean wireless telecommunications operator and former film distributor and is part of the SK Group, one of the country's largest chaebols. It leads the local market with 50.5 percent share as of 2008. ...

Ericsson (lit. "Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson"), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Sweden, Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in ...

and Altair demoed the world's first

handover In cellular telecommunications, handover, or handoff, is the process of transferring an ongoing call or data session from one channel connected to the core network to another channel. In satellite communications it is the process of transfe ...

technology that supports both FDD and TDD on one device. *In February 2013, Altair announced the launch of its FourGee-3800/6300 chipset. *In November 2013,

selected Altair's chipset to power its own Ellipsis 7 tablet. *In January 2014, it was announced that Altair's chipset was at the core of the HP

11 LTE.

Products

Altair's product portfolio includes baseband processors, multi-band RF transceivers, and a range of reference hardware and product level protocol stack software conforming to 3GPP LTE standards. Altair products are based on proprietary

Software-Defined Radio Software-defined radio (SDR) is a radio communication system where components that have been traditionally implemented in analog hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/ demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented b ...

(SDR) and are small and power-optimized. They support both FDD and TDD in any worldwide LTE frequency band. The chipsets can be used in a range of consumer products, including tablets, netbooks, USB modems, CPEs,

Smartphones A smartphone is a Mobile device, portable computer device that combines Mobile phone, mobile telephone and Mobile computing, computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities ...

as well as

Machine to Machine Machine to machine (M2M) is direct communication between devices using any communications channel, including wired and wireless. Machine to machine communication can include industrial instrumentation, enabling a sensor or meter to communicate th ...

(m2m) and

(IoT) devices. Baseband Processors * FourGee-3100 is a Category 3 (100Mbit/s) LTE baseband/RF transceiver chipset solution conforming to 3GPP Release 9 LTE specifications * FourGee-3800 is a Category 4 (150Mbit/s) LTE baseband/RF transceiver chipset solution conforming to 3GPP Releases 9, 10 and 11 LTE-Advanced specifications * FourGee-3802 is a Category 6 (300Mbit/s) LTE baseband/RF transceiver chipset solution conforming to 3GPP Releases 9, 10 and 11 LTE-Advanced specifications RF Transceivers * FourGee-6202 is a multi-band LTE-FDD & TDD MIMO transceiver that supports frequency bands between 400 and 2700 MHz * FourGee-6300 is a multi-band LTE-FDD & TDD MIMO transceiver that supports frequency bands between 400 and 3800 MHz Reference Platforms * LTE Historical Platforms *FourGee-2150/6150 is a mobile WiMAX baseband/RFIC chipset which implements full mobile WiMAX, Mobility System Profile Wave-2 MAC/PHY feature-set *FourGee-4150 is compliant with the PHS MoU eXtended Global Platform (XGP) 4G standard, and implements full PHY/MAC functionality

Awards

In 2008, Altair won a Best of WIMAX World award in the category of chip design. In 2012, Altair was selected as a finalist for the Red Herring Top 100 Europe award, a prestigious list honoring the year's most promising private technology ventures from the European business region. In 2013, Altair won the LTE North America award for Best Chipset of Processor Product. In 2014, Altair was once again selected as a finalist for the Red Herring Top 100 Europe award.

External links

Altair Semiconductor Homepage

* ttps://venturebeat.com/2013/07/01/altair-semiconductor-raises-25m-for-cheap-efficient-lte-chipsets/ Altair Semiconductor raises $25M for cheap, efficient LTE chipsets - VentureBeat
H-P Chromebook Points to Trends in Chips, Patents - Wall Street Journal

Interview: Eran Eshed, Co-Founder, Altair Semiconductor - Microwaves & RF

Interview with Eran Eshed of Altair on LTE developments & trends – LTE World

Movers & Shakers Interview with Eran Eshed, Co-founder and VP of Marketing and Business Development, Altair Semiconductor – Frost & Sullivan

References

{{Sony Semiconductor companies of Israel Fabless semiconductor companies Sony subsidiaries 2016 mergers and acquisitions Electronics companies established in 2005 Israeli companies established in 2005 Privately held companies of Israel