In an August 24, 2022, EE Times interview, Efinix co-founder, president, and CEO Sammy Cheung described a strategy to make small, lower-cost, lower-power FPGAs for edge and embedded systems, pairing programmable logic with a RISC-V software platform. He cast this as an opportunity outside the high-end focus he attributed to established FPGA vendors. Those are Cheung’s strategic and technical claims from 2022—not an independent market assessment or a current product comparison.
What Cheung meant by a “general-purpose FPGA void”
Cheung said Efinix was not trying to replicate Altera or Xilinx. Instead, he saw room for general-purpose FPGAs aimed at edge and embedded applications: systems that need flexible, parallel processing without necessarily requiring a large, high-end device. His view was that incumbent vendors were focused on the high end, leaving an opening for smaller and less expensive solutions. That was his market characterization in 2022, not a current survey of the FPGA market.
The underlying product idea was to bring together FPGA fabric and an embedded software and acceleration platform. In Cheung’s account, the combination could serve developers building practical edge systems, rather than only teams whose work begins and ends with hardware description languages.
How Efinix described its architecture
Cheung described Efinix’s architecture as fine-grained: a basic cell could be configured to perform logic or routing. He said this design was intended to reduce area and power, and that the company used standard foundry process recipes. The interview did not provide independent measurements of area, power, or performance, so its efficiency claims should be understood as Efinix’s stated advantages rather than verified rankings against other FPGA families.
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His design philosophy was summed up in a short line: “My business is simple. Don’t build an expensive elephant.” The point was to target useful capability at a scale and cost suited to edge and embedded designs, rather than pursue the largest possible device.
Why RISC-V was part of the plan
Cheung presented RISC-V as a bridge between FPGA acceleration and embedded software development. Efinix could offer a reference platform as a starting point, while more sophisticated customers could integrate their own soft processor core. The FPGA fabric could implement standard accelerators or acceleration tied to custom instructions.
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That approach was meant to broaden the potential audience beyond traditional RTL specialists to include embedded system software engineers. It does not mean that using an FPGA requires no hardware expertise; rather, Cheung’s proposal was to give software-oriented teams a reference path and a way to combine software with custom hardware acceleration.
Applications Cheung highlighted
Cheung identified industrial systems as Efinix’s initial market and emphasized imaging workloads, where cameras and related equipment can benefit from parallel, flexible data processing. The interview named these applications:
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- Thermal, video, and time-of-flight cameras
- Printing systems
- LiDAR
He also discussed automotive, high-end consumer devices associated with AR/VR and mixed reality, communications, and data computing as growth areas or future possibilities. These were plans and expectations voiced in 2022, not evidence that Efinix had established deployments in each market.
A concrete example: the Trion T20 and SPRESENSE
The interview reported that Efinix’s Trion T20 was being used in Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation’s SPRESENSE HDR camera board. It described SPRESENSE as an open-source development platform for edge and IoT applications. The example illustrates how programmable logic could fit into an imaging-oriented development platform; it does not establish present-day stock, compatibility with a particular board revision, or retail availability.
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What the 2022 business figures do—and do not—show
The interview included company figures, interviewer-supplied context, and forecasts. They are historical statements from 2022, not current operating results:
| Figure | What the interview said | How to interpret it |
|---|---|---|
| More than 10 million devices | EE Times reported Efinix’s figure for devices shipped globally. | A company-reported cumulative shipment figure as reported in 2022; it does not establish later shipments. |
| 140 employees | EE Times reported employees across the U.S., Malaysia, Hong Kong, China, Japan, and Germany. | A 2022 headcount, not a current staffing figure. |
| 1,000 customers | The interviewer mentioned this number in a question. | Interviewer-provided context, not an independently confirmed customer count in the interview. |
| About 15% to 20% of revenue | Cheung forecast that platform revenue could represent this share in the long term. | A long-term forecast stated in 2022, not a reported outcome. |
| 1% FPGA market share | Cheung expected Efinix to reach this share for that quarter, as quoted in the EE Times Asia version. | A forecast for a specific quarter, not a verified result or current market share. |
| More than $6 billion | The interview framed the FPGA market at more than this amount. | A figure used in the 2022 interview; it did not supply the methodology or an underlying market-research citation. |
How to assess the strategy today
The interview is useful for understanding how Cheung positioned Efinix in 2022: smaller-scale general-purpose FPGAs, a fine-grained logic-and-routing architecture, and a RISC-V-enabled path to embedded acceleration. It does not establish how current Efinix products compare with alternatives or whether the company’s forecasts and market ambitions were achieved.
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- Digilent Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Trainer Board: Recommended for Introductory Users
A practical comparison of FPGA options should examine device cost, power, density, performance, architecture and routing efficiency, software workflow, and tool or ecosystem support. Cheung identified several of these priorities, but the interview supplied no independent cross-vendor benchmark. For a purchase or design decision, check current official device specifications, tool support, board compatibility, and independent measurements rather than relying on the 2022 positioning alone.
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