FotoNation Ltd., an Irish perception recognition company, and SEMIFIVE Inc., a South Korean custom AI semiconductor provider, have announced a strategic collaboration to develop the TriSilica family of ultra-low-power perceptual AI chips. Under the agreement, SEMIFIVE will lead turnkey development for the chip family, with the initial product—the TS-210—planned for a Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) shuttle scheduled for the end of this year. The target foundry process is Samsung Foundry's 8nm Low Power Ultimate (8LPU) process.
What TriSilica does
TriSilica is an ultra-low-power, compact-footprint perceptual AI silicon platform designed to support multimodal sensor inputs, including audio, mmWave, spectral, infrared, and RGB. FotoNation's TriSense IP core brings together neural ISP, sensor fusion, and AI for perceptual cognition under extreme power constraints. The TriSilica chip family adds industry-first high-capacity bonded memory, translating that architecture into production silicon for devices that perceive, adapt, and act.
The partnership
The collaboration marks SEMIFIVE's first European deal, expanding its presence in the European market and building on its track record in the United States, China, Japan, and India. A decisive factor in securing this project was SEMIFIVE's expertise in high-complexity, low-power IC design and integrated packaging technologies, which the company has proactively developed.
"Our partnership with SEMIFIVE and its custom semiconductor capabilities will be a core driver for commercializing FotoNation's next-generation, ultra-high-performance, low-power sensor-fusion SoCs," said Petronel Bigioi, CEO of FotoNation. "We expect this collaboration to become a major turning point in advancing image processing and sensor-fusion technology to meet the demands of the rapidly growing edge AI market."
Background
FotoNation is an Irish AI company headquartered in Galway, with a development center in Brașov, Romania. The company designs silicon and IP built around a single conviction: eliminate unnecessary data before inference begins. Its technology is embedded in more than 4 billion products worldwide, contributing to dozens of top-tier tape-outs across the consumer and edge AI markets.
SEMIFIVE Inc. (KOSDAQ: 490470) is a pioneer of platform-based SoC design, working with customers to implement innovative ideas into custom silicon. The company offers comprehensive spec-to-system capabilities with end-to-end solutions so that custom SoCs can be realized faster, with reduced cost and risks for key applications such as data center or AI-enabled IoT. SEMIFIVE has a strong partnership with Samsung Foundry as a leading SAFE DSP partner.
Bottom line
The FotoNation-SEMIFIVE collaboration aims to accelerate the commercialization of ultra-low-power sensor-fusion SoCs for edge AI applications. The TS-210 chip, targeting Samsung's 8nm process, is the first product in the TriSilica family. The partnership also serves as SEMIFIVE's entry into the European semiconductor market.