Swindon Silicon Systems Ltd (SSSL) has grown to become one of the UK’s largest independent fabless suppliers of mixed signal ASICs, but started life as a company with four designers working from a small office above a doctor’s surgery.

In the late seventies, a small group of designers at Plessey Semiconductors saw their employer turning away good money because of limited runs lengths. "We saw an opportunity. There was a definite market there," said Andy Brittain, Managing Director at SSSL. "None of us liked the inability to act and the stifling bureaucracy."

So with that, the four designers left and started SSSL. Beginning with design work from Plessey itself, SSSL grew the team over time with other old colleagues from the company. By the mid 80s SSSL was creating silicon for the MoD and developing its own RF designs which became a backbone product for several years.

The early 90s saw steady growth, but from the mid 90s onwards the company’s business really took off. It began to put more emphasis on supplying a fully tested product direct to the customer rather than being solely a design house, hence it began to describe itself as a fabless ASIC supplier.  “The size of the operation up to that time was ticking over, bringing in around £2.5m. In the mid 90s that climbed to something close to £4.5m,” said Brittain. The company reached turnover of £6m in the financial year 2001-2002, and an annual growth rate of 30 per cent. Part of this success resulted from repeat design orders from customers that SSSL had built strong relationships with over the years, but quality accreditation also played an important part as it gave the company increased creditability, says Brittain.

One of the first main standards the company got was BS5750 in 1990, which later became IS9001 in 1994. At the start of the 90s when the company increased its automotive design work, it also worked for its QS9000 automotive standard, which is based on ISO BSEN9000. “Those quality accreditations have allowed customers to treat us seriously,” said Brittain, “It gives you a system or procedure to judge yourself against and standards to work to.”

Currently SSSL is working towards a new automotive technical standard, TS16949, which was written by many of the main companies in the automotive field, particularly in the west, and which has now been adopted by some of the larger players in Japan. Eventually it will become a worldwide standard. SSSL plans to go for accreditation in early 2003.

Ever-changing market conditions require SSSL to be flexible. The company has continuous improvement programmes and constantly monitors its customers' needs in order to pre-empt them. It is well-known for meeting and surpassing all customer requirements, and is regarded highly for this as well as for its design skills and experience, which adds up to over 200-plus staff years.

“One of the strengths we offer is design experience,” said Charlie McDerment, Marketing Director. “When it comes to analogue designs, you are relying a lot more on the competence of the designer rather than a computer. We have 17 designers and the vast bulk of them have worked for 20 years in specific IC designs.”

He added: “What we also offer people is over 20 years of established access to a wide range of technologies - BIPOLAR, CMOS and BICMOS. Most medium sized companies have skills in one or another, but rarely do they have all.”

A wide array of skills are involved in mixed signal analogue design work. "These guys get their hands mucky with transistors," said Brittain, "Jobs we do tend to be difficult in terms of analogue specifications. The skills our designers need are CMOS, BICMOS or BIPOLAR and there aren’t many designers like this out there.”

Another strength comes from the company's broad range of market knowledge and expertise. Over the past 20 years SSSL has taken on work in the automotive, industrial, communications and military sectors. McDerment said: “We do consciously try to broaden our experience into electronics in general all the way from space and military, for the low volume/high price, all the way to consumer automotive, high volume/low price. That tends to help us in the ASIC business, we are doing well because we are broad.”

SSSL places a strong emphasis on customer relationships. Customers will have the same contact throughout the product design process and there will be numerous reviews and discussions on how the process is going. Designers will look at specs and see which would be the best way to approach the design. CMOS is cheaper than BICMOS, so there will often be discussions over the balance between price and performance. Alternatively, with a demanding spec, unless something can be lowered, BICMOS may be the only way to go.

In addition, SSSL quotes NRE (non-recurring engineering) costs at a single price for the customer to be supplied with fully working parts to the agreed spec. There are no hidden costs or penalties to pay so if there is a design problem and more work has to be done it just comes down to time.

One of SSSL’s biggest areas of work has been with Schrader Electronics, which the company began work with seven years ago. They designed the first generation ASIC for Schrader’s electronic tyre pressure measure, which had been commissioned by General Motors (GM). GM had asked for sensors as an added safety feature for their cars with puncture resistant tyres. The market grew as more and more car manufacturers took an interest and now it is nearly close to standard in many cars. Work continues to improve the ASIC design, with generation two now in production with very high volume production for 2002. Generation three in the process of approval and work is about to start on design concepts for generation four.

Another specialist area for SSSL is the re-design of obsolete ICs. It feels that companies all too frequently do not put enough resource into obsolescence avoidance, and it has been able to offer some companies the opportunity to re-design obsolete devices when they have become necessary at a later date.

The company has clearly demonstrated to many of its customers that re-design can be a cost-effective solution that should not be thought of as a last resort. Different commercial approaches can be taken including re-use of IP, design migration and the use of standard cells that can easily be modified. SSSL has already been able to solve obsolescence problems for several military applications.

SSSL has grown to 40 staff and its premises’ is no longer a small office over a doctor’s surgery but a revamped old school in central Swindon. The atmosphere continues to be relaxed even with ten times more staff than when it first started up. And although everyone is easy going, it seems to have a productive effect on the overall company. At present its output capacity is 50m-plus parts per year and it continues to see improvements.

Due to the rapid growth that came with the increased automotive business amongst other things, the company has acquired an additional building in the form of an adjacent old social club, which has been converted into test facilities. It now contains a 160 sq metre clean room test area which continues to receive more test equipment - currently it has 12 Teradyne automatic testers.

SSSL keeps setting itself goals. It is working on shortening design times and is also looking into new product areas such as standard part and commercial design work - SSSL doesn’t want to close any doors.

The company's overall character and strength stems from a relaxed, calm and professional working environment, in addition to an easy-going attitude to team work. “The philosophy for the company is not a 'get rich' type of thing,” said Brittain. “We enjoy what we are doing, and I think we would be going seriously wrong if people didn’t enjoy their work.”