Startup Blurbs

Putting together a complete list of acquisitions for an entire year is quite some work. Lucky for us, the guys over at PartnerUp did all the hard work, composing on their blog a "Complete List of 2009 Web, Internet and Tech Acquisitions." So all we had to do is scan through their hard work in search of semiconductor company acquisitions. Given that 2009 was a rather lackluster year for mergers and acquisitions in general, it is not surprising that finding semiconductor startups on the list was slim pickings. Nevertheless, a few did manage to make the list.

1. CopperGate: Developed System-on-a-Chip (SoC) solutions for entertainment and control applications inside the home. The company was acquired by Sigma Designs, Inc. in October of last year for $160 million.
   
   
2. Dune Networks: Developed networking and switching silicon devices targeted at intelligent, scalable, and reliable switching platforms for network infrastructure applications. The company was acquired by Broadcom in December of last year for $178 million.
   
   
3. Intellon: Developed chips for powerline communications (PLC), broadband-over-powerline (BPL), and Ethernet-over-Coax (EoC) solutions for home networking. The company was acquired by Atheros in September of last year for $244 million.
   
   
4. Raza Microelectronics: Developed Super System-on-a-Chip (SuperSoC) MIPS-compatible processors targeted at the infrastructure, enterprise, and consumer media markets. The company was acquired by NetLogic Microsystems for $183 million.
   
   
5. TZero Technologies: Developed wideband chips for high quality high-definition (HD) real-time video. The company was acquired by NDS Surgical Imaging for an undisclosed amount.
   

There is a good chance that there might have been a few more acquisitions here and there. After all, is it possible that this was a year without any EDA startup acquisitions? Well, if you know of any send us a note and we will gladly add them to the list.

We first wrote about Semprius Inc. back in 2007 when the company raised $4.1 million in Series A funding. Back then the company was busy working on its micro-transfer printing technology which allows the company to transfer transistors from a traditional substrate onto other surfaces such as glass or plastic. Back then we wondered, given all the commercialization options,  which avenue Semprius would pursue and how successful it would be. Well, the last couple of years have shed some light on the company’s prospects. Semprius chose to initially focus on the production of low cost, high performance solar modules, in particular concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules for large-scale solar power generation. This move was first rewarded by a successful Series B round of funding in the middle of last year, which netted the company a nice $6.4 million. During the investment round the existing investors were joined by In-Q-Tel and the GVC Investment Fund. Then, an additional bonus followed later that year, when John A. Rogers who is one of the three original Semprius founders, received the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant in the amount of $500,000. Finally, the company also appeared on the EETimes Silicon 60 List towards the end of the year.

2010 has barely started, and the company is once again collecting some funding. This time around, Semprius received a $1.5 million investment from X-FAB, a pure-play analog/mixed-signal semiconductor foundry based out of Erfurt, Germany, as part of a strategic development agreement. With this agreement, X-FAB will become the designated foundry for Semprius technology. This latest investment shows a couple things: First, the company is active on multiple fronts. While the solar applications are moving full steam ahead, the company is also actively marketing its technology for other applications. Second, X-FAB clearly believes that Semprius’ technology will be quite relevant in the field of printed electronics over the near term, and as such wanted to lock in potential customers which are likely to take advantage of it for its foundry business. Overall, Semprius has now received close to $12.5 million in funding and with the recent developments and positive press coverage things seem to be looking up for the company at the moment.

Marseille Networks, based out of Silicon Valley, CA is claiming a lot with their latest press release, but only partially reveals its hand. The company claims to have reinvented the fabless semiconductor development process through what it refers to as a virtual tape-out methodology. These claims become even more stunning, when one considers that, as pointed out by VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi, the company has a mere 20 employees and has raised a paltry, by semiconductor startup standards, $5 million in funding. Claims like these could be easily dismissed as wishful thinking on part of the company’s founders, but Marseille’s introduction of a complete line of Quad-HD (2160p – 3840 x 2160) video processors for the flat-panel TV, PC, and A/V markets makes this a bit difficult. Especially, since the company maintains that these complex chips were developed in less than 12 months. As part of the company’s Video Through Virtualization (VTV) 1200 family of processor, these chips have native Quad-HD support and also perform up-scaling of legacy HD content to Quad-HD. From the company’s press release it is not clear if a demo utilizing these new processors was performed at CES this year. Maybe someone who stopped by Marseille’s booth at CES could comment on this?

And while specifications and block diagrams are available for the VTV-1200 family of processors on Marseille’s website and are generally self-explanatory, how exactly the virtual tape-out methodology works is significantly less clear. According to the company, the VTV platform which enables the virtual tape-out flow is a hybrid hardware emulation and software simulation environment which sits on-top of Marseille’s proprietary switch fabric. The VTV platform consists of four major components: Tools, Hardware, Libraries, and Methodology. The info on the company’s web-site seems to indicate that the hardware is FPGA based. The key benefit, as shown in the picture above, seems to stem from the customer’s ability to start developing their software before the final chip is delivered, which in turn the company suggest should save anywhere between 6 – 12 months in design time. Based on this I fail to see how this is really a reinvention of the fabless development process. There are plenty of companies in the chip industry that provide software based simulators and FPGA based emulators to customers way before they deliver the final silicon. Of course, there might be more to the virtual tape-out flow than might appear at first. Are customers allowed to modify the architecture, integrate custom IP, and then re-program the FPGA continuously to analyze the changes in performance? Are the changes then communicated back to Marseille’s to be integrated into the final IC? Maybe, but as stated before, it is not exactly clear from the information that Marseille’s has published so far.