Startup Blurbs

Back in March we covered TimeFlux technology from LightWaves. The article sparked quite a discussion with people referencing the Shannon-Hartley theorem, time-frequency duality, and so on while discussing the performance claims made by LightWaves. The discussion focused mainly on wired networking and the ability to provide proper bandwidth and latency for real-time data streaming. Assuming that all this data in some way or another arrives at a particular location, be it an enterprise LAN or a home network, a good way to distribute it to all the clients will still be needed. With UWB technology floundering as of later, it seems that an alternate wireless distribution method will be needed.

This is precisely the market Quantenna is targeting: reliable high-speed wireless coverage for high definition (HD) video and related multimedia content. Based out of Freemont, CA the company recently raised $14 million in Series C funding from Southern Cross Venture Partners, Grazia Equity Gmbh, Sequoia Capital, Sigma Partners, and Venrock Associates. Founded back in 2006, Quantenna has raised a very respectable $42 million in venture funding to date. The Series C funding is mostly to be used for expanding sales and engineering activities. Currently, the company offers free flavors of their 802.11n Wi-Fi compliant chipsets: the QHS1000, the QHS600, and the QHS450. The numbers in the product names correspond to the maximum link speed that each chipset is able to support. The flagship product, the QHS1000, can operate in the 2.4 and 5 GHz spectrum concurrently, while the latter two work exclusively in the 5 and 2.4 GHz spectrums, respectively. The two most touted features that these chipsets support are the 4x4 multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) technology and dynamic digital beamforming.

According to the company press release, the combination of these technologies results in a four time larger coverage area and twice the throughput of existing solutions. At the same time the product page states that these technologies provide a 50 percent performance improvement over other 802.11n solutions. I’m not a networking expert by a long shot, but if you claim twice the throughput and a four time larger coverage area, wouldn’t this indicate more than a 50 percent performance improvement? Of course, it can be that performance includes additional factors that are not accounted for in the initial statement, or maybe the baselines for the two comparisons are different, nevertheless some clarification would be appreciated. The 4x4 configuration refers to four radio transceivers and four antennas which in addition to supporting two data streams can utilize the extra two antennas for dynamic digital beamforming to increase data stream reliability by 12dB over 3x3 configurations. Optimum performance is achieved by continually monitoring real-time packet data and adjusting the wireless signals in milliseconds as needed. A short video describing beamforming can be viewed on the company’s website. Additionally, Quantenna has filed several patent applications including one for a tunable antenna system and one for interference rejection, in case you might enjoy further reading.

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.

Let’s face it, as much as we would like our chips to work at the desired frequency and voltage levels, when the in initial silicon comes back, we are happy if we can simply get past a basic boot. Things are not likely to improve with the ever smaller process sizes which are no friend of variation, nor are they going to get better with developers integrating an increasing number of cores and IP from many sources into a single System-on-Chip (SoC). With a few exceptions, most engineers dread spending weeks in the debug labs trying to figure out which paths are causing the issues. So what would make sense going forward? How about a vastly improved application-level debugging and profiling platform specifically targeted at SoC devices that is generic enough to work with different architectures while still enabling the capture of detailed system operation? Enter UltraSoC Technologies, a startup based out of Cambridge, UK that was spun out from the University of Kent in 2005.  The company is developing what it calls UltraDebug, a tool that is supposed to provide all the features we mentioned above and is specifically targeted at embedded systems and multi-processor SoCs. Given the current career opportunities, it seems that the product will be based on Eclipse C/C++ Development Tooling (CDT). Unfortunately, this is just about all UltraSoC is revealing for now. In addition to UltraDebug they are also working on a tool called UltraOptimize that is supposed to aid the engineer with profiling and performance measurements. UltraSoC recently raised about $600K in capital from the South East Seed Fund and Iceni Seedcorn Fund, which is to be utilized for the continued development and marketing of UltraDebug.