ChipCrunch.com

Some things just don’t go away easily, and in some rare cases this might actually be a good thing. We wrote about Ambric and their promising Am2045B processor and development environment back at the end of 2007. Subsequently, at the end of 2008 after failing to raise an additional $15 million in funding, Ambric folded. Now it seems that there will be an additional chapter in Ambric’s history for the company’s assets were recently acquired by Nethra, as I was recently informed by Nethra’s Senior Director of Business Development, Manu Pallai, via a note titled Ambric Continued. According to a press release on the company’s website, Nethra intends to complete the integration of the Ambric team by mid-April and continue working with current Ambric customers to ensure a seamless transition and continued support.

So who is Nethra and what use could they have for the Ambric team and assets? Let’s start with the basics: Nethra is a privately held fabless semiconductor company based out of Santa Clara, CA. The company specializes in imaging and video solutions for the digital consumer market, as well as surveillance and industrial applications. It is backed by Artiman Ventures, GunnAllen Financial, iLabs Capital, and Quicksilver Ventures. The amount of funding the company has received is presently not being published, but digging around the net it seems that the company received $14.2 million at the end of 2006. IC development costs are rather high and with this acquisition I would think that the company must have obtained some additional funding in the mean time. Nehtra’s current flagship processor is the Nethra Imaging (NI) 2065 which integrates a 32-bit RISC CPU core and supports CMOS sensors up to 3.2 megapixels. The key advantages the NI2065 offers are algorithms the company has been able to implement for adaptive lighting, low-lighting, and image stabilization to improve image quality. The NI2065 consumes a maximum of 0.2 Watts, measures 5 mm x 6 mm in a 68 pin package, and as such is targeted at mobile applications. Below is a chart summarizing the features for several of the NI 20XX processors.

Now consider the following: Nethra is heavily vested in improving the image quality captured by CMOS sensors, essentially striving to enable performance comparable to CCD sensors but at a much lower price point. Their current products max out at 3.2 megapixels and rely on algorithms to compensate for the image quality captured by the CMOS sensors. With higher image resolutions just around the corner it is likely that the 32-bit RISC core will become overwhelmed regardless of how optimized the code for the algorithms might be. The good news is that image processing is a highly parallel task where the same filter can be applied to different areas of the picture simultaneously. Now, if these algorithms can be combined with the massively parallel architecture that Ambric was pursuing, and the power can be kept reasonable, then Nethra might indeed be plotting a course that should enable it to scale well as the picture and video demands become more complex. It seems like a showdown between Nethra and Movidia might be looming in the near future.