Domestic vehicle-to-everything (V2X) specialist Start - Up Ettifos said on the 22nd that it officially unveiled its first V2X chip, ESAC (Ettifos SIRIUS Accelerator Chip), at SEDEX Semiconductor Exhibition held at COEX in Gangnam District, Seoul. ESAC is a domestically produced V2X accelerator chip developed using Ettifos's proprietary software-defined modem (SDM, Software Defined Modem) technology.
The ESAC chipset will be applied first to the company's road infrastructure V2X equipment, the roadside unit (RSU). The ESAC-based RSU supports both the current standard LTE-V2X and the next-generation standard 5G-V2X. Even if the V2X communication standard evolves in the future, the latest standard can be used with over-the-air (OTA) wireless software updates without hardware replacement.
To that end, over the past two years Ettifos has verified core V2X intellectual property (IP) through cooperation with major domestic research institutions such as the Korea Electronics Technology Institute (KETI), the Korea Intelligent Automotive Parts Promotion Institute (KIAPI), and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), as well as global partners in the United States, Japan, Spain, Taiwan, Singapore, and the UAE.
Recognized for its in-house communication modem design technology, Ettifos recently successfully attracted a 18 billion won Series B investment with participation from LB Investment, L&S Venture Capital, Kyobo Securities, KR Ventures, Medici Investment·IBK Capital, BNK Venture Investment, Evergreen Investment Partners, STIC Ventures, SL Investment, and LIG Nex1. Cumulative investment totals 30.5 billion won.
Heo Hyeon-gu, an executive director at Ettifos, said, "This ESAC development is the first outcome that brings together Ettifos's communication semiconductor design capabilities," and added, "Starting with this, we plan to advance our V2X chipset roadmap and expand our business into non-terrestrial network (NTN) and defense-industry chipsets."