Delft Semiconductor takes off by landing first big customers

Chip design start-up Delft Semiconductor is finalizing its first projects, with two big customers no less. For Datang NXP Semiconductors, the Chinese-Dutch automotive semiconductor joint venture between Datang Telecom and NXP, it has developed a power management block as part of a battery management IC for electric vehicles. One of its former employers has commissioned the Delft team to design a next-gen current sense amplifier.

Datang NXP is a fabless semiconductor company serving the automotive market from its headquarters in Nantong, China – near Shanghai – and offices in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. “They’ve developed a large chip for closely monitoring the status of an electric car battery so that it doesn’t overheat or short,” clarifies Henk de Graaf, one of Delft Semiconductor’s three co-founders. “We’ve designed the power management part that measures battery quality.”