ChipCrunch - Semiconductor Startup and Emerging Technology Blog http://www.chipcrunch.com Sat, 31 Jul 2010 18:34:45 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.chipcrunch.com/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://www.chipcrunch.com ChipCrunch - Semiconductor Startup and Emerging Technology Blog http://www.chipcrunch.com/Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/Tilera.cores.gone.wild.html (http://www.tilera.com) We first encountered (Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/emerging.semiconductor.startups.a.nice.list.html) Tilera back in '07 when the company made the EETimes emerging startup list. We caught up with the company later that year when they revealed (Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/TILE64.Tilera.s.64.processor.bombshell.html) the Tile64 processor. The following year the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) recognized (Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/Tilera.the.Start-Up.to.watch.according.to.the.GSA.html) Tilera with the startup to watch award. Over the last couple of years Tilera has definitely not been standing still nor resting on their laurels. In '09 they announced the Tile-Gx family of processors, which features devices that range from a relatively humble 16 cores to a massive 100 cores. These devices... Blogs - Startup Blurbs Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:06:31 +0100 http://www.chipcrunch.com/Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/Akya.the.art.of.dynamic.reconfiguration.html (http://akya.co.uk)Achieving maximum performance from your design given constraints such as area and power has been name of the game for a while now. Over the last few years we have seen quite a few approaches to this problem: On the one hand, there have been startups that have ventured down the massively parallel architecture route and then wrote sophisticated tools and compilers that mapped software and programs onto those architectures. Companies such as Ambric (Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/Ambric.massive.object-oriented.parallelism.html) and Plurality (Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/Plurality.more.funding.for.HyperCore.html) come to mind - the former has since hit the dead pool (Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/ambric.bites.the.dust.html) while the latter has been... Blogs - Startup Blurbs Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:54:07 +0100 http://www.chipcrunch.com/Blogs/Industry.Squibs/Global.Semiconductor.Alliance.Austin.luncheon.recap.html (http://www.gsaglobal.org)The other day, courtesy of Matt from door64.com (http://door64.com), I had a chance to attend the Global Semiconductor Alliance (http://www.gsaglobal.org) (GSA) Silicon Series luncheon (http://www.gsaglobal.org/events/2010/siliconseries/index.asp) here in Austin, TX. The luncheon was titled “The Future of Consumer Electronics and the Communication Convergence” and was held at the Barton Creek Resort Spa (http://www.bartoncreek.com). The luncheon consisted of a keynote address which was given by Henry Derovanessian, the Vice President of Set Top Box Engineering at DirectTV, and was titled Communication Convergence: Emerging Technologies in Mobile Computing and the Connected Home. The key note was... Blogs - Industry Squibs Sun, 16 May 2010 18:45:11 +0100 http://www.chipcrunch.com/Blogs/Industry.Squibs/upcoming.memory.technologies.a.nice.summary.html There is definitely a lot of work going on all over the world on finding replacement technologies for the current crop of memory technologies, which will scale better and of course cost less to manufacture. So it is nice when an article is written that gives a nice little summary for some of these technologies on their target applications. Such is the case with a piece written by Motoyuki Oishi for Nikkei Electronics Asia, titled Successor to Post Flash Memory Approaching Volume Production (http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/HONSHI/20100420/181992/). The article first examines CMOx technology from Unity Semiconductor (http://www.unitysemi.com), a startup developing transistor-less... Blogs - Industry Squibs Tue, 04 May 2010 21:19:31 +0100 http://www.chipcrunch.com/Blogs/Industry.Squibs/Freescale.a.lot.of.media.news.what.s.next.html (http://www.freescale.com)With the Embedded Systems Conference (http://esc-sv09.techinsightsevents.com/) (ESC) going on in Silicon Valley, it seems that Freescale Semiconductor (http://www.freescale.com) has been in the news continuously over the last few days. First, there was Bolaji Ojo’s analysis (http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224600261) about Freescale moving closer to an IPO. Bolaji based his analysis on Freescale’s sales growth, higher design wins, an improved dept position, and a vibrant equity market, and expects the company to file for an IPO later this year or at the very latest at the beginning of 2011. Then the company also revealed (http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=224600660) ultra low-current MCUs for... Blogs - Industry Squibs Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:40:41 +0100 http://www.chipcrunch.com/Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/Shocking.Technologies.ESD.protection.through.VSD.html (http://www.shockingtechnologies.com/) We first covered (Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/shocking.technologies.a.conductive.dielectric.html) Shocking Technologies (http://www.shockingtechnologies.com) at the beginning of 2008, when the company raised $4M in venture funding from Hercules Technology Growth Capital. Back then, very little information was available regarding what the company was pursuing, other than that it had something to do with conductive dielectrics. As it turns out, our guess that that company might be looking into electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection was right on. The conductive dielectric has been rebranded into a Voltage Switchable Dielectric (VSD) material, which the company defines as a “polymer nano-composite that behaves like an insulator (dielectric)... Blogs - Startup Blurbs Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:45:24 +0100 http://www.chipcrunch.com/Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/InVisage.better.image.sensors.using.QuantumFilm.html (http://www.invisageinc.com)We’ve all gotten accustomed to having digital cameras in our cell phones, and we’ve also gotton accustomed to the fact that if we want to take descent pictures we’ll need a second camera to do so. Slightly inconvenient, especially when travelling, but there is no easy way around it at this point. Well, according to Jess Lee, the president and CEO of InVisage Technologies (http://www.invisageinc.com), a startup out of Menlo Park, California, a couple years from now even the tiny image sensors in our cell phones will be able to produce fantastic images. The magic ingredient to make this... Blogs - Startup Blurbs Wed, 07 Apr 2010 22:05:35 +0100 http://www.chipcrunch.com/Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/Tabula.spacetime.architecture.for.programmable.logic.devices.html (http://www.tabula.com) The term spacetime usually makes one think about physics, relativity, mathematical models, or at the very list some very interesting science fiction stories - Isaac Asimov anyone? But in this case, we are talking about Tabula (http://www.tabula.com), a fabless semiconductor startup out of Santa Clara, California developing programmable logic devices. Founded in 2003, the company currently employs 100+ people and has over the last few years filed over 150 patents, of which over 80 have been granted. The company is backed by several top-tier venture capital firms and has raised a total of $74 million in Series C... Blogs - Startup Blurbs Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:54:54 +0100 http://www.chipcrunch.com/Blogs/Industry.Squibs/Power.amplifier.wars.Gallium.Arsenide.vs.CMOS.html (http://www.anadigics.com)There is nothing more interesting than competing technologies pursuing the same end product or application. In the blue corner, founded in 1985 and weighting in at close to 70 patents, please welcome the heavy-weight Anadigics (http://www.anadigics.com) from the GaAs camp. In the opposite red corner, please welcome the feather-weight challengers Black Sand Technologies (Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/Black.Sand.Technologies.3G.CMOS.based.RF.power.amplifier.html) and VT Silicon (Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/VT.Silicon.world.s.first.4G.silicon-based.power.amplifier.html) from the CMOS camp. All right, the above might be somewhat playful and exaggerated, but this does not mean that a real fight pitting Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) Power Amplifiers (PAs) vs. CMOS based PAs is not shaping up.... Blogs - Industry Squibs Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:56:39 +0100 http://www.chipcrunch.com/Blogs/Startup.Blurbs/2009.Top.Venture.Capital.Firms.for.Semiconductor.Startups.html You have a great idea for a semiconductor startup, you have written your business plan, reviewed it a million times, you’ve assembled your team, and everything is ready to go, all that is needed is this annoying thing called money. Who do you approach? If you are well off or have wealthy relatives that trust you at least to some degree, this might not be an issue. Similarly, if you have good connections in the venture capital community be it on the local or national level, you will be fine most likely as well. But for the rest of us,... Blogs - Startup Blurbs Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:47:16 +0100