INNOTECH Corporation, at the time of its foundation in 1987, was an IT product trading company, mainly importing the electronic design tools of Cadence Design Systems in the U.S. to Japan. Cadence products are still its main stream products and they are widely adopted by customers in the semiconductor industry.
In 2000, IT ACCESS Co., Ltd. was founded as a joint venture of INNOTECH and ACCESS Co., Ltd. (Securities Code: 4813, Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market), which develops internet browsers, and the company started to provide a broad range of engineering services, mainly around its sales and support of various embedded software.In 2002, INNOTECH made a semiconductor design company, SANEI HYTECHS Co., Ltd., as its subsidiary. As such, a basis for INNOTECH Group to expand its business area has been formed.
In addition to these two companies, currently, INNOTECH Group includes GAIO TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD., which has an expertise in the automobile-related area, REGULUS Co., Ltd., which promotes image processing solutions, MoDeCH Inc., which excels in model-based development which is one of the focus areas of INNOTECH Corporation, STAr Technologies, Inc. in Taiwan, which provides turnkey solutions for semiconductor testing, and INNOTECH FRONTIER, Inc., which conducts market research and investment in overseas and INNOTECH Group keeps pursuing synergy effects among such group companies for the new growing stage.
Description of Business: Design and Development Assistance for LSIs and ASICs
Description of Business: Design and Development Assistance for LSIs and ASICs
SANEI HYTECHS pursues technical advancements as an LSI design consignment company.
The Company has more than 300 employees which is a leading scale for an independent design house and 90 percent of them are engineers, which shows that the company is a real professional organization. Leveraging its expertise and organization scale, SANEI HYTECHS keeps brushing up its total LSI design supporting skills from upstream to downstream of the design process and developing a scheme to handle IoT system development and AI businesses. SANEI HYTECHS nurtures engineers with high-level of knowledge and technical skills and helps achieve the SDGs from three directions, which are “technical innovation”, “education”, and “human resources”.
In the area of “technical innovation”, SANEI HYTECHS designs neural network for AI development with its unique knowhow and aims at reducing the system power by 90 percent with LSI power management and AI circuitry technology in 2030.
As for “education”, SANEI HYTECHS focuses on education of engineers who are required in the semiconductor industry and its goal is to send off total 1,000 engineers by 2030.
In the area of “human resources”, SANEI HYTECHS helps expanding internship programs for women and foreign nationality staffs and its objective is to make the ratio of female employees as 40% and the ratio of foreign nationality staffs as 40% in 2030.
Through such efforts, SANEI HYTECHS will keep up expectations for ever-evolving LSI design business in terms of its sophistication, versatility and complexity to resolve various social issues.
●Supporting more sophisticated, versatile and complex LSI design
SANEI HYTECHS has dedicated itself to LSI design and accumulated its expertise since the time when semiconductor industry was still emerging and provides a coherent co-design scheme with analog circuit design, digital circuit design, and layout design, linked altogether.
At SANEI HYTECHS, digital circuit design engineers and analog circuit design engineers work together to design as a system with a complete entire picture in mind.
Also, layout design engineers and analog circuit design engineers collaborate in order to realize the smallest layout possible while maintaining the circuit characteristics.
●Broad experience in embedded software development
SANEI HYTECHS has been providing design and development consignment service manly in the area of embedded software, such as for development of audio equipment, communication systems, automotive (ISO26262-related) and evaluation jigs.
Utilizing its knowledge, technology and various tools for static analysis and unit evaluation, SANEI HYTECHS makes proposals on board designs, FPGA designs, and software development which correspond to the needs and issues of the IoT society.
●Coherent service of deep learning
SANEI HYTECHS deploys a coherent service covering the entire process of deep learning, including consulting service to assist customers’ AI development, annotation service to efficiently create a large quantity of training data for learning, algorithm design service to propose and design various neural networks, edge device implementation service to implement customer-developed algorithms to FPGAs and microcomputers as core service components.
Description of Business: Development, sales, and maintenance of embedded software development and verification tools as well as engineering service
Description of Business: Development, sales, and maintenance of embedded software development and verification tools as well as engineering service
GAIO TECHNOLOGY was founded in 1980. It started its business from in-house development of cross compilers for embedded development and then, shifted its business as a provider of test tools for embedded software based on source code analysis technology for microcomputers and simulator technology.
Further, GAIO TECHNOLOGY engages in the engineering service business, and currently provides assistance to model-based development, test process establishment, tool introduction and operation, and so on to major automobile makers and leading automotive component suppliers.
●Development of standard test tools for the automobile industry
GAIO TECHNOLOGY has a mechanism to test software at the assembly code level without modifying the embedded source code, which is highly appreciated in the area of automotive control software which requires high quality to ensure safety.
GAIO TECHNOLOGY’s tools are certified for automobile functional safety (ISO 26262) and are recognized as the current defacto standard for the automotive software unit test tools.
Autonomous driving, which is the area of focus of many automobile companies, ensures aged people’s mobility and realizes comfortable, safe and secure city planning, and it is a technical innovation which is directly connected to the development goals under the SDGs. Test tools provided by GAIO TECHNOLOGY will contribute as an indispensable solution to our customers to enhance the completeness of their autonomous driving.
Description of Business: Development and sales of software and internally-developed settlement terminals, and so on.
Description of Business: Development and sales of software and internally-developed settlement terminals, and so on.
IT Access was established in April 2000, funded by INNOTECH Corporation and ACCESS CO., LTD., which is one of the leading Internet browser company. IT Access develops software for servers and embedded systems for consumer electronics, communication, FA and OA as well as provides sales support of OS and middleware, and offers original products based on its expertise accumulated by such businesses.
IT Access creates solutions which are necessary in various areas of the society, such as the cloud settlement service whose use is expanding due to declining working population and acceleration of cashless society, communication technology for sensors which contributes to low-power and low-manpower for agriculture and other wide range of industries, development support for autonomous driving technology to realize safer and more comfortable society, and the remote beauty counseling system which goes along with the non-face-to-face-trend.
●Broadly providing the cloud settlement service
In recent years, cashless settlement is becoming rapidly popular, where consumers can complete their shopping by simply tapping their IC cards or smartphones on the settlement terminals. For example, among about 2.2 million units of vending machines working in Japan, more than 20 percent of them, which also include non-cloud settlement terminals, support such cashless payment and the number of such vending machine supporting cashless payment is increasing. The cloud settlement service of IT Access is adopted by almost all beverage makers and about 100,000 settlement terminals are operating mainly in the capital area of Japan (as of May 2023). Cashless payment is speedy and convenient for consumers. For business operators, it not only enhances the efficiency of sales but it also allows them to collect and utilize the big data related to actual sales, making real-time analysis of consumer behaviors and to leverage such analysis to develop their sales strategies. IT Access provides all the necessary functionalities for cashless settlement one-stop, such as its originally-developed settlement terminals, cloud settlement service and their maintenance.
Use of such service of IT Access is increasing due to decreasing working population and acceleration of cashless trends in the society. It widely supports manpower-saving efforts, such as deployment of unmanned shops and smart registers. For example, the cloud settlement system at the unmanned kiosk in the office can combine the face recognition with thermography and provide health check to users at the time of payment. IT Access will keep contributing to realize convenience, safety and security in the IoT era, providing the platform for cutting-edge services and functionalities.
●ZETA as an optimal IoT communication infrastructure
ZETA is the LPWA communication standard (low-power wide area wireless network standard) developed by ZiFiSence, supporting low-capacity sensor devices as well as multihop networking utilizing relay stations, thus, it is ideal as the IoT communication infrastructure. IT Access and INNOTECH Corporation are the ZETA Alliance members and create cloud platforms in Japan to manage access points, relay stations and various sensor nodes to be connected to ZETA and apply them to resolve various social issues.
By such efforts, it is expected that areas where we relied traditionally on manpower, such as sensing in agricultural and marine products industries, infrastructure surveillance such as for rivers, bridge piers and slopes, monitoring of conditions inside buildings and facilities may be conducted with less power and manpower with increased efficiency and safety, and it may dramatically expand the possibilities in the IoT society.
●Providing solutions for ADAS and autonomous driving
IT Access provides the simulation platform for ADAS and autonomous driving developed by an Israeli IT company, Cognata, Ltd., to the Japanese automobile-related companies and INNOTECH Analysis and Design Solution Division provides technical support for its introduction and operation.
The platform incorporates AI and computer vision and virtual vehicles run on various roads in virtual towns which are the realistic re-creations of various environmental elements.
As such, customers can save many hours which had been spent on tests and verifications of autonomous driving and accelerate their efforts to introduce the technology to the market.
In the meantime, these tools enable pursuits of safety of the automobiles as well as help countering new challenges presented by the urban space and the social infrastructure associated with such urban space.
●Professional check of skin, scalp, and hair: Smart Skin Care
IT Access has jointly developed a beauty counseling system called Smart Skin Care which manages comprehensive customer data of skin, scalp, and hair conditions collected by a microscope with moisture measurement functionality in an industry-academia collaboration project and provides the system to cosmetic makers and so on.
It is a cloud-based service combining skin, scalp and hair sensors with smartphones and tablets and even sales staffs who struggle with IT technology can operate it easily. It utilizes the same hardware and major part of the software is commonalized so that the initial deployment and running costs are smaller compared to dedicated systems. Also, since it is an open platform, consumers can compare and choose cosmetic products which best fit their needs across different brands and makers.
In order to counter the novel coronavirus pandemic, remote diagnosis is available even when face-to-face service to customers are difficult and it contributes to maintain healthy mind and body of people.
Description of Business: Design and development of image-processing systems
Description of Business: Design and development of image-processing systems
Based on the keywords of “monitor, capture, and analyze”, REGULUS provides the “Summit Series”, which are in-house made intelligent camera systems, and they enable edge-computing and contributes to actualization of robot vision (camera system and image processing technology whose purposes are to be incorporated into robots) for many different applications. Its small-size and high-quality AI camera systems are expected to play key roles in ensuring safety at the construction and logistics business sites.
●Intelligent camera system
The Summit Series are intelligent camera systems which can be connected to cutting-edge sensors such as high-speed/high-sensitivity/high-resolution/global shutter/multi-wavelengths high-functionality sensors.
Combination of these systems with an image-processing library and cutting-edge sensors will be the solutions for customers’ needs for high-performance, reductions of development lead-time and costs for development and mass production of their products.
●Ensuring safety at construction sites
REGULUS leverages its expertise accumulated during technical development to monitor safety at construction and logistics business sites. For example, the “OmniEye”, which can be mounted on a construction machine, is an omni-directional AI camera and it detects human up to 360 degrees. It is expected that OmniEye will help ensuring safety at construction sites with a lot of danger in a simple and convenient manner.
REGULUS designs and develops AI camera systems for industrial applications such as robotics and other related image-processing products. Also, it manufactures and sells REGULUS-original safety-monitoring AI camera system, leveraging its technology and development scheme.
The company provides its own products and services to various customers under the seamless development and manufacturing flow, ranging from system specification design, software development, circuit design, prototyping, verification, up to mass production.
●Human detection camera system utilizing AI
REGULUS major product, the “OmniEye” is a camera system for human detection, leveraging image-processing and AI, which can be mounted on heavy equipment and construction machines which are utilized at civil engineering, construction, and dismantling sites and on industrial vehicles such as forklifts which are utilized at factories and warehouses. In order to ensure safety at various locations, REGULUS will add technologies such as stop control and collision damage mitigation and continues to contribute to the society.
Also, REGULUS will continue its effort on reducing environmental load by pursuing smaller footprint and less power consumption, not to mention on product quality and performance enhancements.
Description of Business: Design and development assistance of electronic components
Description of Business: Design and development assistance of electronic components
MoDeCH is a group of professionals whose expertise is world-leading analog modeling technology. It provides high-precision device models with its most cutting-edge device modeling technology as well as develops and sells tools for such modeling, undertakes measurement consignment projects, and provides circuit design assistance services and on-demand SPICE model library services.
MoDeCH is a group of professionals whose expertise is world-leading analog modeling technology. It provides high-precision device models with its most cutting-edge device modeling technology as well as develops and sells tools for such modeling, undertakes measurement consignment projects, and provides circuit design assistance services and on-demand SPICE model library services.
For example, higher precision simulation on the electric circuits is required when developing base technology for 5G, 6G and autonomous driving and developing electric cars. MoDeCH aims to accelerate such development activities by providing precise models and verification service for virtual simulation and to contribute to technical innovation. Also, digitization of the manufacturing industry by simulation and so forth reduces consumption of labor, time, and resources spent for design modifications, and in case of failure, it makes it easier to isolate the root cause. By assisting such digitization of the manufacturing industry, INNOTECH Group believes that it can contribute to establish “sustainable manufacturing patterns” of the customers.
●Providing high-precision models
Models provided by MoDeCH are mathematical models of abstraction of electronic device characteristics on the electric circuits. During the product development phase, automobile and electronics makers conduct verification prior to mass production in order to make sure that their designs work correctly. The software which conducts such verification is the simulator software and information used during such verification is the model. In order to make highly-precise designs, higher precision models and knowhow to handle such models become necessary. MoDeCH provides all of them.
●Provide models on-demand by AI technology
For optimal simulation with a lot of product variations and many specification changes, many models with optimal granularity need to be provided. However, it requires a lot of work to create such models and the needs were never satisfied in the past. MoDeCH develops and provides model creation assistance software whose objective is to instantly reduce the workload in creating models, leveraging the AI technology.
Description of Business: Manufacturing and sales of semiconductor test equipment and measurement tools
Description of Business: Manufacturing and sales of semiconductor test equipment and measurement tools
STAr Technologies, Inc. (STAr), which was founded in August 2000, specializes in manufacturing and sales of semiconductor reliability test systems and probe cards (boards with probes to test wafers). STAr provides test equipment for various applications worldwide, such as SPICE modeling, device characteristic assessment, reliability test, and silicon photonics tests. Its headquarters is located in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and its subsidiaries are in China, U.S., Korea, Singapore, and India. STAr also acquired Accel-RF Instruments Corporation in the U.S. which develops and sells reliability test systems for compound semiconductors in February 2020.
Semiconductor devices are mainly divided in two categories; one is a silicon semiconductor which is made from single element which is silicon and another is a compound semiconductor which is made from several elements. As the electron moves much faster compared to silicon, compound semiconductors processes signals high-speed, and have strong characteristics, such that they operate at low voltage, react to light, and generate microwaves. Therefore, compound semiconductors are widely used as key devices in our daily lives to resolve social issues nowadays.
STAr, by its acquisition of Accel-RF, has established world-wide sales network for reliability test systems for products which utilize compound semiconductors, such as RF devices, power devices and micro LEDs. Also, it is expected that STAr’s acquisition of Accel-RF will generate synergy effects for the development of next generation technology and enhancement of efficiency in manufacturing.
●Ensure RF device reliability for 5G
As 5G, which is the fifth generation mobile communication network standard, requires high-frequency communication bandwidth, RF devices which utilize compound semiconductors are indispensable. STAr provides test systems for RF devices and contribute to ensure reliability of such devices.
Communication speed of 5G is faster than that of 4G by one digit (10Gbps) and it provides around 1000 times larger communication capacity. As 5G prevails, technical innovations will be accelerated in the areas such as the VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), AI, autonomous driving, tactile communication and so on and it is expected that such innovations will help resolve social issues in a wide range of areas, such as in the industry, education, medical, and social welfare.
●Low-energy power devices to counter global warming
Power devices conduct power conversion and power control and by replacing their material from traditionally used silicon to compound elements, their loss of power has become less than a half. In order to realize low-energy society to counter global warming, it is desirable that efficiency of power conversion is enhanced and loss of energy is kept minimum. Compound semiconductors which are optimal for low-energy applications are utilized in various areas, such as power systems to transmit and distribute electricity, electric railways, electric cars, power supplies, robotics, consumer electronics, OA appliances and so on. STAr provides test systems for power devices and contribute to ensure reliability of such devices.
●Development of test systems for micro LEDs
Currently, mainstream displays for PCs, tablets and TVs are the LCD (liquid crystal displays) panels and organic EL (electroluminescence) panels. As for the second generation display technology, micro LED is expected to be the one. It utilizes light highly efficiently and it is considered to be high-luminance, low-power, high-contrast, and long-life, thus it is called as the “ultimate display method” and its future seems to be very promising. STAr develops test systems for micro LEDs and is already providing them to large-scale customers.
Description of Business: Market research, investment and others
Description of Business: Market research, investment and others
In January 2015, a corporate venture capital, Fenox Innotech Venture Company VI, L.P. was established in the U.S. and in February 2015, INNOTECH FRONTIER, Inc. was founded to fund and assist the venture capital.