Provino Technologies

About Provino Technologies

Provino Technologies, Inc. was a semiconductor IP company that provided Network-on-Chip (NoC) solutions for advanced System-on-Chips (SoCs). Founded in 2016 by CEO Shailendra Desai, along with Dan Dobberpuhl and Amarjit Gill, the company was established to address the complex data traffic challenges in next-generation chip designs, particularly for the machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), consumer, and automotive application markets. Desai brought experience from SoC design roles at PA Semi and Apple.

The company's core product was the iFabric interconnect platform, an IP solution engineered to manage the high computational demands and power efficiency requirements of modern SoCs. This platform incorporated features like virtual channels, credit-based flow control, and support for Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS). The iFabric architecture was designed to be scalable, supporting various IP interfaces to help SoC designers integrate third-party and in-house IP, thereby accelerating development and reducing time-to-market. The business model was centered on licensing this semiconductor IP to large, established chip companies and other corporations that were beginning to design their own chips.

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with an office in Ahmedabad, India, Provino Technologies secured $10.5 million in funding over two rounds. This included a $2.5M seed round in 2017 and an $8M Series A round in 2018 led by Dell Technologies Capital. In March 2021, the company was acquired by Google for an undisclosed amount, a move intended to bolster Google's in-house chipmaking capabilities, especially for its AI and machine learning research and development efforts.