Helic is an RF IC specialist developing innovative silicon solutions and disruptive EDA technologies for the wireless semiconductor market. Founded in May 2000, the company is backed by a consortium of institutional investors and venture capitalists from Cyprus, Greece and the United Kingdom.

Background
Helic's background technology is a unique RFIC design software and methodology. It was conceived to address a critical missing link in RFIC design flows and accelerate the development of complex RFICs and systems-in-package by enabling rapid, whole-chip electromagnetic modelling early in the design flow. Besides its internal use for Helic's own design activities, the tool has been in use since 2000 by RF semi foundries and IDMs worldwide.

Combining our specialized EDA tooling with breakthrough RF IP we are helping our customers develop first-time-right RF silicon, slash their development costs and reduce their time to market. Our technologies and silicon designs are particularly suited for demanding multi-band, multi-mode radio transceiver ICs, where high performance, low power and low cost are the driving requirements.

Does Helic offer EDA tools, IP or both?
Both. The complexity of modern multi-standard RFICs poses significant challenges to our customers, the RF semi companies. To meet severe time-to-market constraints they need both efficient RFIC tools and verifiable IP blocks. A deep understanding of analog/RFIC design is necessary for providing efficient EDA tooling, and vice versa. Helic intends to provide one-stop-shop solutions that help our customers get to product faster.

Is reconfigurable RF IP possible?
Our EDA tools make it possible to design and capture IP blocks that can be subsequently adapted and retargeted for a variety of silicon processes, frequency bands and standards. Ideally, using Helic's tools the end-user of the IP can reconfigure it to generate customized silicon instances (semi-hard IP). This has not been possible in the past, mainly due to the lack of appropriate EDA tooling and methodologies.