Company patents
Socionext Inc.
Socionext Inc. exhibits a patent strategy heavily focused on semiconductor technologies, with Semiconductor Packaging & Encapsulation (21.8% of portfolio) and Integrated Circuit Layout & Arrangement (20.7% of portfolio) being the largest categories. While many categories saw significant growth in 2024, such as Memory & Storage (Static) with an 800.0% YoY increase, a surprising shift is evident in 2025 and so far in 2026, with substantial declines across nearly all categories, including a -75.6% YoY drop in Integrated Circuit Layout & Arrangement in 2025 and a -72.5% YoY decline in Semiconductor Diodes & Transistors so far in 2026, suggesting a potential re-evaluation or completion of major R&D cycles in these areas.
Patent Trend by Technology Area
Yearly patent publications since 2023
Product themes
Product-level themes inferred from filings since 2023, with category chips showing where each theme appears. Select a theme to filter the patents below.
363 US filings (since 2023) · 12 categories · 33 themes
Focuses on the physical design, materials, and manufacturing processes for individual memory cells, including transistor structures, interconnects, and multi-layered (3D) architectures to enhance density and performance.
Techniques for stacking multiple semiconductor dies or active layers vertically to achieve higher density and shorter interconnections, often utilizing through-silicon vias (TSVs) or other vertical conductive paths like through-hole electrodes.
Design and operation of transistors optimized for memory applications, including floating body devices, ferroelectric FETs (FeFETs), vertical TFTs for 3D arrays, and charge-trapping memory cells.
Structural innovations in individual transistors, such as fin-based field-effect transistors (FinFETs), 3D gate structures, or multi-layer active regions, aimed at improving performance or density.
Techniques and methodologies for fabricating semiconductor devices, including etching, deposition, annealing, isolation, and doping steps, aimed at improving yield, performance, or enabling new structures.
Development of memory cells utilizing resistive switching or phase-change materials, including novel material compositions, multi-layered structures, and integration with selector devices like bipolar junction transistors, to achieve non-volatile storage.
Focuses on the architectural and circuit-level innovations for Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) and Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs) to improve speed, accuracy, linearity, and power efficiency. Includes specific types like SAR and Delta-Sigma, and their constituent components.
Techniques for designing and fabricating the conductive pathways (interconnects) and their contacts between different components within an integrated circuit, focusing on density, reliability, and performance.
Focuses on the design and manufacturing of transistors where the gate material fully encircles the channel, often using nanosheets or fins, to improve electrostatic control and reduce short-channel effects.
Manufacturing processes and structural designs for transistors utilizing fin-shaped channels or multiple gates (e.g., FinFETs, Gate-All-Around FETs) to enhance gate control and reduce short-channel effects.
Circuits and techniques for generating, synchronizing, interpolating, and recovering high-frequency clock signals and high-speed data streams, often involving reduced propagation delay, multi-level signaling, and robust sampling mechanisms.
Digital logic and control circuits for managing power delivery, driving various loads (e.g., inductive, display elements), converting power, and protecting against over-voltage or electrostatic discharge. Includes gate drivers for power FETs and voltage level shifters.
Techniques for forming electrical contacts, vias, and interconnects to semiconductor devices, including advanced methods like contact-over-active-gate (COAG) and backside contacts for improved density and performance.
Methods and apparatus for improving the visual fidelity, resolution, or compression efficiency of video signals, often through advanced processing, up-scaling, or neural network-based filters.
Methods and systems for improving the quality of video streams, generating intermediate frames, or continuously locating and following objects within a sequence of images, even under occlusion.
Digital logic circuits designed to interface with analog sensors or signals, including comparators, input buffers, differential input stages, and logic for processing sensor outputs (e.g., capacitance, optical, touch) for detection or measurement.
Development and manufacturing of semiconductor devices using wide bandgap materials like Silicon Carbide (SiC) or Gallium Nitride (GaN) for high-power, high-frequency, or high-temperature applications.
Novel materials and processes for forming low-resistance electrical contacts and interconnects within semiconductor devices, including selective deposition, silicidation, and barrier layers for improved performance and scaling.
Integrated circuits or sub-circuits designed to regulate, balance, or protect power delivery within a device, often involving specific transistor and capacitor arrangements.
Techniques and circuits designed to identify, compensate for, or correct non-linearities, offsets, and other imperfections in signal processing paths, particularly within analog-to-digital, digital-to-analog, or digital-to-time converters.
Advanced techniques for forming and optimizing gate dielectrics, work function layers, and other dielectric layers within transistor structures to improve performance, reliability, and scaling.
Specialized digital and mixed-signal circuits for controlling and reading out quantum bits (qubits), including generating precise modulated RF signals and integrating with photonic components for quantum operations.
Methods and circuits for detecting and mitigating defects, ensuring data integrity, and enabling self-testing and repair mechanisms within memory devices and subsystems.
Hardware and control techniques for optimizing memory access latency, ensuring data integrity, and managing storage resources efficiently. This includes error correction, read/write voltage control, and intelligent data placement or in-memory computation.
Methods and architectures for processing digital signals to enhance quality, remove noise, manage group delay, and facilitate symbol decision, often involving digital filters and equalization techniques.
Novel electrical connection methods within or between package components, including through-glass vias (TGVs), backside contacts, and optimized redistribution layers for improved signal and power integrity.
Integration of various sensor types (e.g., thermal, strain) or display components directly onto semiconductor substrates or within device architectures for compact and high-performance systems.
Systems that combine data from multiple camera sensors or capture multiple images from different perspectives or qualities, often involving image processing techniques like synthesis to create enhanced or comprehensive views.
Design and operation of analog and mixed-signal circuits within the memory array, such as page buffers, sense amplifiers, and data latches, responsible for reading and writing data from/to memory cells.
Development of novel materials and designs for bonding, sealing, and underfill applications, focusing on improving mechanical integrity, electrical performance, and preventing defects like cracks or delamination in chip-to-chip connections.
Methods and systems for efficiently reducing the size of digital data, often employing adaptive techniques, neural networks, or temporal modeling, to achieve high compression ratios while preserving data quality. Includes entropy coding.
Techniques utilizing deep learning models like Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) or diffusion models to create new images, modify existing ones, or generate synthetic data based on various inputs or conditions.
Incorporation of novel semiconductor, dielectric, or metallic materials into transistor structures to achieve enhanced performance, new functionalities, or specific device characteristics.
Patents
Showing 1-10 of 32
High-Performance ADC/DAC Architectures