Focusing on Data Converter Chips: Caelus Technologies Plans to Expand its Geographical Footprint beyond Hong Kong, Explore Deep Chinese Markets

“I have created more than 20 patents for Caelus to achieve a high resolution or high-speed data converter.”

Caelus Technologies offers low-power high-performance data converter chips to customers to satisfy the need for energy-efficient data conversion. It operates across Hong Kong.

The company provides solutions in a wide range of applications such as instrumentation, medical imaging, data acquisition, sensors, wireless/wireline communications, to name a few.

Caelus was founded in 2018 and is based in Shenzhen, Hong Kong.

The Silicon Review contacted Chi Fung LOK, founder and CTO of Caelus Technologies, who spoke about how the company is making a difference in this segment and plans to stay at the forefront. Below is an excerpt.

Head to Head with LOK Chi Fung, founder and CTO of Caelus Technologies

Q. What ground-breaking and proactive methodology does Caelus Technologies implement to meet its clients’ expectations?

I have created more than 20 patents for Caelus to achieve a high resolution or high-speed data converter. For instance, as data size is getting larger and larger, the bandwidth demanded by users in wireline (optical) or wireless (mobile) communication increases substantially from time to time. A wide bandwidth data converter is an essential module in such applications. Caelus high-speed Analog-To-Digital Converter (ADC) offers over 10GS/s 12b ADC at a power consumption of only 35% from Analog Devices (ADI)/Texas Instruments (TI) related products, which not only reduces the overall system power consumption but also supports ultra-high-speed data conversion. In the next 2-3 years, Caelus will focus on the millimeter-wave market to develop 20GS/s – 40GS/s 10b – 12b ADC for future direct RF or millimeter-wave transceivers to support high data rate transmission. This can improve the upload/download rate of the overall system at lower power consumption. The communication link operates 7 days/24 hours, if power consumption can reduce, it can save a lot of electricity fees from end-users. So, both wide bandwidth and low power consumption are the key factors in future data converters embedded in the communication link.

Q. What can you tell us about the disruptive solutions Caelus offers? And how unique are these solutions?

Our patent technologies can boost conversion rate by 20-35 percent relative to ADI/TI related products whereas the power consumption can save 60-65% at similar performance using the same process technology to realize the chip. It can support the upcoming direct RF or millimeter-wave transceiver to boost higher performance and lower Bill-of-Materials (BoM) cost. The patent technologies differ from ADI and TI and are unique without patent infringement issues.

Q. In what industries are your clients? Can you provide us with one or two success stories describing the challenges your clients faced and how your solutions helped them overcome those challenges?

Our clients are hardware manufacturers. For example, the sub-6GHz transceiver is one of the major applications in 5G technologies. Our high-speed ADC can allow the customer to achieve full bandwidth 6GHz direct RF sampling in transceiver design. Customers can use MIMO antenna with simple Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) filters and Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) RF-frontend in front of our ADC chip to receive all signals in the band. Customers can reduce BoM cost to build such a transceiver and save a lot of money while it can still maintain the same performance. Frequency demodulation and filtering are implemented in the digital domain to allow software-defined radio, allowing greater flexibility and configurability.

For 28GHz transceiver in 5G technologies, our high-speed ADC can support millimeter-wave communication to allow simpler down-mixing and filtering applications. The 28GHz transceiver can support self-driving applications and is still not fully realized in today’s technologies. Customers can achieve this standard at a lower cost and with greater flexibility.

Q. What are your focus areas?

The performance of the metric of the data converter is determined by three factors (resolution, speed, and power consumption). They are traded off at each other. Caelus offers high resolution (14b-20b) product at moderate rate 100kS/s – 5MS/s. Meanwhile, Caelus offer high-speed (1GS/s – 32GS/s) product at moderate resolution (10b – 12b), both areas consume less power consumption.

Currently, Caelus focuses on data converter chips. In later developments, RF front-end and digital signal processing (DSP) technologies will be explored to make complex system chips for customers.

Q. How skilled is the Caelus team of experts? And how do they bring value to the company?

Caelus has six people on the team; five of them with more than 10 years of work experience. They are all-around designers in analog, digital, and layout design. We have started to tape-out two chips that are all functional and well-performing, even though the team size is small.

Q. What new endeavours is Caelus currently undertaking?

Caelus is now working on a high-speed data converter that functions at much less power consumption compared to ADI/TI-related products while delivering similar performance. If we succeed, it will make a breakthrough in the industry. Especially, we only have six people to work on this.

Q. Given how frequently circumstances change, what plans for transformation are you pursuing to remain relevant now and in the future?

The direction of a higher conversion rate data converter at much lower power consumption is the right way to go. The future chip should embed RF frontend and DSP capability within the data converter system-on-chip (SoC), allowing the user to use a single chip to do complete transmit and receive data application. Caelus is the first to build a reputation on data converter technology and later expand to design RF frontend and DSP within our product chip for a higher competitive edge.

Q. Is there anything else you want us to highlight that we might have missed?

Almost 55 percent of semiconductor revenue is generated in China. Caelus is a Hong Kong company and would first target the Chinese data converter market. We would like to stand out in the Chinese market before emerging into the international market since those markets are dominated by top US companies like ADI and TI. It’s hard for a start-up company to compete with giants at the beginning. However, to address this, we will do more exhibitions to introduce our products to customers later.

Chi Fung LOK | Founder & CTO

Chi Fung LOK has more than 14 years of work experience in analog/mixed-signal IC design. He had worked for Huawei, Credo, ASTRI, and Fujitsu before founding Caelus four years ago. He has earned BEng, MPhil in Electrical Engineering, and MSc. in Finance at HKUST. He has authored more than 20 patents in the United States, China, and Europe. He has got the ‘Rising Star Award in Deloitte’ (2021) and ‘Hong Kong Most Outstanding Brand Award in Hong Kong’ (2022) for Caelus.

“Our high-speed ADC can allow the customer to achieve full bandwidth 6GHz direct RF sampling in transceiver design.”