Startup Blurbs

Venture capital money has been tight for semiconductor startups recently, but as always there are exceptions to the rule. One hot area is digital amplifiers. We wrote about digital amplifiers and BlackSand technologies in particular here and here. The other hot area is programmable transceivers, which is where BitWave Semiconductor comes into play. The company was formed in 2004 with the mission to assist cell phone manufacturers by reducing the number of chips needed to support all the different wireless standards, thus enabling them to offer more features in a smaller package and at a lower price. If you don’t think there are that many wireless standards, you might want to reconsider: GSM, WCDMA, HSDPA, HSUPA, AMPS, NAMPS, CDMA, CDMA2000, 1xRTT, EV-DO, CDPD, DVB-H, MediaFLO, DMB, Wi-Fi, WiMax, WiBro, UWB, Bluetooth, GPS, DAB, AM/FM, DECT, etc.

The solution to this mess, at least according to BitWave, is what the company calls Softranceiver Technology, which according to their website is the combination of “the art of analog with the science of digital.” Essentially, the Softranceiver architecture integrates digital control for many of the analog components. Thus, an API can be utilized to set proper registers which in turn control the output of the analog blocks. The result is that a single transceiver can be programmed to support many different wireless standards, significantly reducing the component integration costs. BitWave’s approach differs significantly from software-defined radio (SDR) in that it does not rely on digitizing the incoming signal via an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and then processing it via a DSP, which according to BitWave’s President and CEO Dr. Michael Farese, leads to high-power consumption and has not been implemented successfully in a mobile device. An interview with Michael in which he describes several additional Softranceiver advantages can be found over at WTRS.

Currently, the Softranceiver is slated for volume production and general availability in the second quarter of 2008, and will be branded as the BW1102 Softranceiver RFIC. To make the commercialization happen, the company raised an additional $10 million in B-round funding from Apex Venture Partners, TVM Capital, and Ecentury Capital Partners last month. Clearly, the applications of this technology extend far beyond cell phones to just about any device that requires multi-mode, multi-band wireless capability. The potential market for this technology seems very appealing given the current growth rate for mobile devices. As long as the API is reasonable, and the transceiver works as promised, the potential rewards for the company could be enormous.

Based out of Netanya, Israel Plurality has been working on multi-core designs since 2004. In 2007, the company offered a proof of concept chip that incorporated 16 32-bit RISC cores, and offered it to customers as an evaluation and development kit. Then, the company was supposed to follow this up with a 64-core 90nm commercial chip in Q3 of 2007. But unless I’ve missed the announcement, this commercial product seems to have never materialized. Maybe the company encountered some problems with the initial design, or maybe the 64 cores were simply a few too many to make the product cost effective in 90nm? - We will probably never find out.

Regardless, in February of this year Plurality announced that research has been completed on their HyperCore Architecture Line (HAL) of multi-core processors and hinted at an investment round that would finance the commercialization of a 256-core chip, now slated to hit the market some time in 2009. This round of financing occurred in July, and netted the company a nice $8m in funding. Other than the increased number of cores, not too much seems to have changed architecturally, at least on the high-level. The design still incorporates a hardware based synchronizer/scheduler that optimizes the load for each core, although the company hints at having filed several more patent applications which improve its performance. Additionally, the design continues to connect all the cores to a single shared memory, rather than allowing individual cores to have local caches.  Finally, the company is sticking by its task map programming model which requires the programmer to divide a particular algorithm into specific tasks that define dependencies. Plurality makes it sound as if this programming process is a piece of cake for a regular programmer, however, I would question whether a regular programmer can partition an algorithm efficiently into parallel tasks. Further, with this approach, quite a bit of work will be required to re-compile older programs for optimum performance - but that is generally the case anyhow. Optimally, Plurality should develop a compiler that would automatically generate a task map for their HyperCore processor; however, this has been tried many times before and is still very much the holy grail of parallel programming.

Last fall we profiled Black Sand Technologies when they successfully completed raising $8.2 Million in Series A funding. Other than a few appointments of individuals to key positions, there really has not been much news regarding the company since. Needless to say, their web-site has also not been updated with any new product information. But thanks to Forbes.com and Clair Cain Miller who wrote the actual article, we get a little insight on Black Sand’s chief technologist Susanne Paul and her thoughts regarding silicon based power amplifiers.

If you ever wondered what it takes to be a chief technologist, here are a few clues: you ought to be able to work 80-hour weeks, while taking care of several children, and fixing your own car troubles! Anyhow, here is why she believes that silicon based power amplifiers are they way to go in the future. First of all, gallium arsenide, which is currently used for power amplifier design, is much more expensive to manufacture than silicon. The article points out that the cost per wafer for gallium arsenide has been constant over the last 25 years at about $400. In stark contrast, the same waver costs only about $45 for silicon. Additionally, silicon based amplifiers ought to consumer significantly less power then their gallium arsenide counterparts, assuming that engineers will be able to develop algorithms allowing them to vary their broadcasting strength based on transmission distance. They should also be less susceptible to interference, such as tall buildings, and more flexible in accommodating different networks when people are roaming.

Sounds pretty impressive, but should you believe what Susanne is saying? Well how about this quote from the aforementioned article: “She is uniquely qualified, as the only human being in the world ever to have built and put into production a silicon power amp - Venu Shamapant, Austin Ventures” What else do we learn from the article? Well, it seems that Black Sand is expecting to have their first silicon samples later this summer and believe their design will be incorporated into cell phone products in the 2009 time frame. This of course assumes that none of the other startups pursuing similar solutions, or some of the established players in the cellular filed will be able beat them to the punch.