SEMIFIVE and Niobium to develop FHE accelerator for US
SEMIFIVE, a semiconductor design company, has partnered with Niobium to develop a Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) accelerator. The partnership aims to enhance data privacy and security by enabling computation on encrypted data without decryption. The effort is part of SEMIFIVE's strategy to expand into the U.S. market with complex private computing solutions.
- The deal is valued at approximately KRW 10 billion (USD 6.86 million) and aims to produce one of the world's first commercially viable Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) accelerators. - The accelerator chip will be manufactured using Samsung Foundry's 8nm Low Power Ultimate (8LPU) process technology, with SEMIFIVE providing a complete turnkey ASIC solution covering design, packaging, and testing. - Niobium Microsystems, a US-based company founded in 2021, spun out of the computer science research firm Galois and focuses on hardware for Zero Trust computing environments. - SEMIFIVE, founded in 2019, is a rapidly growing South Korean System-on-Chip (SoC) design company and is a key design solution partner for Samsung Foundry. - The global market for homomorphic encryption was valued at over USD 321 million in 2024 and is projected to grow, driven by the increasing need for secure data processing in cloud computing and private AI. - For advertising, FHE allows for privacy-preserving real-time bidding, where ad relevance scores and bid prices can be calculated on encrypted user data without decryption, addressing regulatory challenges like GDPR and CCPA. - Niobium's CEO, Kevin Yoder, stated the goal is to make computation on encrypted data fast enough that processing sensitive information "in the clear will no longer be allowed."
