Peraso Inc's Competitiveness

mmWave
mmWave circuit and system design is a highly specialized engineering skill, as well as a challenging technology to ship in mass production. At frequencies above 24 GHz, circuits are extremely vulnerable to small variances in the semiconductor manufacturing process. Designing circuits that minimize susceptibility to these variances takes years of practice, and we believe we are one of the few companies in the world that is skilled in mmWave design. Further, we have shipped mmWave devices in volume, and ensuring all devices sold adhere to strict performance standards is a core competency we have developed. In addition, we have developed our own mmWave phased array antenna technology, which allows us to be highly competitive in terms of overall system cost. Our customers do not need to engage with third-party antenna suppliers, thus eliminating the additional cost for a third-party antenna.
IEEE 802.11ad/ay Market:
Our primary competitor in the IEEE802.11ad/ay market is Qualcomm. The primary benefit that we provide to the market is the support of the higher frequency bands from 66 GHz to 71 GHz. The advantage at these frequencies is that oxygen attenuation is significantly reduced, and signals can travel much further.
We also have key points of differentiation compared to Qualcomm for wireless video devices. We are well positioned in this market, as we have USB 3.0 built into our devices, so our products generally support USB architectures. A prime example is the replacement of the USB cable with a wireless version using our technology. There are many applications where this can be of use, including USB web cams, wireless displays, and AR/VR headsets. We have invested significant software resources into providing the market with wireless USB solutions, and we believe there is no other mmWave vendor in the world that can offer multi-gigabit solutions as a replacement for wired USB.
5G Market:
With 5G, our efforts are focused on the mmWave RF front-end phased array component of the system. This focus is in contrast to the IEEE solution, in which Peraso provides a baseband device as well as an mmWave RF front-end phased array device. The 5G product instantiation is an RF module that embraces a broad swath of intellectual property that establishes a substantial moat to potential competitors. Key elements of our mmWave intellectual property include:

RF circuits;

phased array antenna; and

in-system circuit calibration, beam forming, real-time system monitoring.
From a competitive perspective, we are currently the only pure-play, 5G vendor to offer a dual-band (28/39GHz) RF solution for the FWA market. Qualcomm does offer a 5G RF solution for the FWA market, however its solution is based on aggregating its mobile RF solution, which requires several compromises in terms of cost, performance, and power consumption. With an initial focus on fixed wireless access, we can derive advantages by optimizing our silicon for that specific market. Furthermore, we have experienced initial success in the unlicensed, 60 GHz, FWA market, and we believe we will be able to transfer all of our knowledge gained from the 60 GHz market to the 5G market. However, this market opportunity is more competitive, and potential competitors, in addition to Qualcomm, include Mediatek and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., or Samsung.
Memory
The markets for our memory products are highly competitive. We believe that the principal competitive factors are:
processing speed and performance;
density and cost;
power consumption;
reliability;
interface requirements;
ease with which technology can be customized for and incorporated into customers? products; and
level of technical support provided.
We believe that our products compete favorably with respect to each of these criteria. Our proprietary 1T-SRAM embedded memory and high-speed serial interface IP can provide our Accelerator Engine ICs with a competitive advantage over alternative devices. Alternative solutions are either DRAM or SRAM-based and can support either the memory size or speed requirements of high-performance networking systems, but generally not both. DRAM solutions provide a significant amount of memory at competitive cost, but DRAM solutions do not have the required fast access and cycle times to enable high-performance. The DRAM solutions currently used in networking systems include RLDRAM from Micron Technology, Inc., or Micron, LLDRAM from Renesas, DDR from Samsung, Micron and others, and HBM, which is stacked DRAM memory from Samsung and SK Hynix. SRAM solutions can meet high-speed performance requirements, but often lack adequate memory size. The SRAM solutions currently used in networking systems primarily include QDR or similar SRAM products from Cypress Semiconductor Corporation and GSI Technology, Inc. Most of the currently available SRAM and DRAM solutions use a parallel, rather than a serial interface. To offset these drawbacks, system designers generally must use more discrete memory ICs, resulting in higher power consumption and greater utilization of space on the line card.