Semiconductor Times

SEMICONDUCTOR TIMES OCTOBER 2008 / 1

Copyright 2008, Pinestream Communications, Inc. 52 Pine Street, Weston, Massachusetts 02493 USATel 781.647.8800 Fax 781.647.8825 www.pinestream.com [email protected]

Confluence SolarConfluence Solar was founded in 2007to produce premium quality single crys-tal silicon at a cost below that of multi-crystal silicon. The company has raised$12.7 million in Series A funding led byConvexa Capital with additional invest-ments from DC Chemical Co., ScatecAdventure AS, Oceanshore Ventures andothers. Confluence anticipates a SeriesB financing round in Q1’09 of approxi-mately $100 million. The company has22 employees.

According to the National RenewableEnergy Laboratory (NREL), greater than90% of solar cells are made on silicon.With the development of HiCz™ manu-facturers of solar products can receivegreater watt output than from traditionalmulti crystal silicon platforms.

Confluence is opening a new facility inHazelwood, Missouri to develop its HiCzsingle crystal silicon product. The com-pany has developed strategic relationshipswith key suppliers for all critical rawmaterials, supplies and equipment includ-ing polysilicon.

ImmediaImmedia Semi “is dedicated to bringingquality video into the home on demand.”

Peter Besen, CEO (previously GM atBroadcom via the acquisition of SandVideo where he was founder & CEO)

Don Shulsinger, VP of Sales & Market-ing (previously VP of bus. dev. atBroadcom via the acquisition of SandVideo)

100 Burtt Road, Suite 125Wilmington, MA 01887Tel/Fax: 781.915.1920www.immediasemi.com

Lakota TechnologiesLakota Technologies is a “next-genera-tion power electronics semiconductorcompany.” The company is developing“diodes for power-electronics, with someamazing technology.”

Ben Quinones, CEO

www.lakotatech.com

OCTOBER 2008 FOCUSED ON EMERGING SEMICONDUCTOR COMPANIES VOL 13 ISSUE 10

IN THIS ISSUERadar Scope ................................... 1Cliff Rants ...................................... 2Startup Profiles .............................. 5People .......................................... 11Funding & IPOs ........................... 13Mergers & Acquisitions .............. 15Business & Financials ................. 16Market Research .......................... 17Emerging Trends ......................... 18New Products .............................. 18Licensing & Partnerships ............ 21Design Wins ................................ 22Company Financials ................... 22Stock Charts ................................. 23

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Confluence believes the market for sili-con substrates within the solar industrywill grow from $3 billion in 2008 to morethan $7 billion in 2012. Competitors in-clude LDK, REC, Jinglung, Yingli andRenesola. Confluence argues that its pre-mium quality HiCz™single crystal siliconwill maximize the output of high efficien-cy solar cells at a cost competitive toconventional lower quality, multi-crystalsilicon.

The company anticipates providing ini-tial samples in Q4 with commercial in-troduction in Q2’09. Confluenceanticipates a significant degree of cus-tomization to compliment the high effi-ciency solar cell designs of its customers.Products in 125mm2 format and 156mm2

format will be available in Q1 and Q2respectively.

Tom Cadwell, CEO (previously president& CEO of Integrated Materials, Boardmember of Solaicx and EvergreenSolar, and president of MEMCC Asia)

1600 Park 370 Place, Bldg. A, Suite 2Hazelwood, MO 63042Tel: 314.298.1421Fax: 314.298.1414www.confluencesolar.com

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processor architectures, etc. – all competing for a slice of the high-end market.

Confluence Solar – Premium Quality, Low-Cost Single Crystal SiliconOne VC recently told me “the demand for solar is unlimited.” Thatsets of my bubble alarm, but I do think there are many angles formaking a buck in the solar arena. And it starts with the base sili-con. Several startups are working on the unique cost and perfor-mance requirements of solar grade silicon. It’s a large,capital-intensive market, but remember – the demand is unlimited!

Enphase – Micro-Inverter-based Solar Energy Management SystemsEnphase Energy just leaves me jazzed. Why? First, its a solar PVplay, without jumping on the solar PV manufacturing bandwagon.It’s a win, regardless of the underlying PV cell technology – purelyadditive, improving the efficiency of all solar modules. What’s notto like about that?

Second, I actually like the fact that the founders hail from the net-working world. It’s a twist…an outside view, and an approach thatlends a comprehensive, large-scale systems view to the problem,in contrast to myopic, PV-cell efficiency efforts. Sure, you couldsay that outsiders don’t know what they don’t know. In time, we’lldiscover if that’s the case.

While others spend vast sums trying to pick up a percentage pointor two gains in PV efficiency, Enphase focuses on the balance ofthe energy conversion chain, an area that has lacked significantinnovation. There’s huge value here; it’s not difficult to grasp…orsell, it scales easily, etc. I could go on, but you get the point – Ithink Enphase is a winner.

Powervation – Auto-control™Digital Power ICsPowervation hasn’t revealed a great deal about its technology,but the little it has sounds interesting. There are numerous com-panies, both large and small, chasing the digital power IC market,with mixed results to date. Powervation argues that its Auto-con-trol digital power IC technology delivers a truly adaptive Plug-and-Power solution that results in system efficiency gains of upto 30%, a 50% improvement in transient response, and a 65%reduction in overall component count.

The story sounds great, but as we have seen repeatedly in thissector, the proof is in the pudding. Many digital power companieshave made great promises, but few have delivered. Powervationmakes great claims, but we need to see tangible proof from cus-tomers. This market is also evolving rapidly, so Powervation willneed to move fast as others innovate as well.

SandLinks – Active-RFID Networks Using UWBI have repeatedly said that UWB is a solution searching for a prob-lem. What I haven’t said is that it’s a pretty darn good solution. Atits core, UWB has several compelling advantages over narrow-band radio technologies. Sandlinks was formed to develop UWB-based Active-RFID (Class 4) solutions that capitalize on thoseadvantages. To me, that makes sense. Take an existing problem –RFID – and apply whatever technology is appropriate to developthe best solution. And in this case, UWB fits that bill. ■

In the midst of the worst financial crisis in recent history, what isthe state of the semiconductor industry? Turmoil – right? FocusEnhancements has filed for Chapter 11, Neomagic and Allianceare winding down, several memory makers are on the ropes, andmore than a handful of companies are trading at or below bookvalue. Doom and gloom, some may say. Blame it on the economy.The industry is mature. Semiconductor startups are a thing of thepast…

Enough with the banter. What is the reality? Q2 financials wereactually remarkably good. If you want to read something into themat the 30,000-foot level, what did they say? Large cap semicon-ductor companies generally did better than their smaller counter-parts. If you know a thing or two about each company, a quickscan indicates that the strong got stronger. Are these surprises?Big fish generally get bigger, and only the strong survive. That’sthe law of the jungle – nothing new here.

As a contrarian, I believe this is a great time for “semiconductor-centric” investing. The natural process of culling the herd is tak-ing its course. Low stock prices create little incentive for talent tostick around, and, most importantly, there’s no shortage of gamechanging discontinuities in the market today, like skyrocketingenergy costs, revolutionary display technologies, the ever expand-ing demand for mobility and more. These all require semiconduc-tor – if you define the term loosely – innovation, which translatesinto startup activity. This issue has a vast array of startups, chas-ing myriad market opportunities, and there are at least a half dozenmore very early stage companies that I wanted to include but amunder NDA. Innovation lives on…stay tuned…

Achronix – Ultra High Performance FPGAsThere has been little precedent for startup success in the FPGAarena, thus any new development in this arena leaves me skepti-cal. What is it about this space that has made it nearly impossiblefor anyone to compete against the Altera/Xilinx oligopoly? So asnot to upset my many friends, certainly over the years competi-tors like Actel, Lattice, Cypress, Lucent, have had varying degreesof success. But in general the field has been shrinking, not ex-panding.

Is it the patents, tool flows, raw sales muscle, actual device at-tributes, or “no one gets fired for choosing IBM syndrome”?Whatever the issue, be wary… But Achronix does have a wicked– as we say in Boston – solution. It’s not just the 1.5GHz speed,it’s the underlying picoPIPE architecture that makes that speedpossible. There’s some serious technology happening here, withyears of university and self-funded research behind it – and I likethat.

Is it a slam dunk? Definitely not. All those tangible and intangiblefactors that have made it so difficult for others in the past stillremain. Furthermore, is the market for a 1.5GHz device large enoughto sustain a startup? To IPO – unknown; to acquisition – proba-bly. And at this performance level, the competition isn’t just FPGAs,its ASICs, other emerging course-grained device, alternative

Cliff Rants



Sanlinks engineers described the powerintent as part of the RTL delivery to theback-end design house. SandLinks wasable to achieve key requirements for thischip, including ultra-low-power con-sumption and longer battery life for theactive RFID tag.

Avi Menkes, Co-Founder and CEODr. Gideon Kaplan, co-founder, VP, R&DDr. Dan Raphaeli, Co-Founder

P.O.Box 4629, Petah TiqwaHamerkaz, 49277 IsraelTel: 972 2 212 1130Fax: 972 3 919 1930www.sandlinks.com

SiTuneSiTune was founded in September 2006to develop “high performance single chipsolutions for mobile multimedia applica-tions in mobile handsets, portable mediaplayers, personal navigation devices andother consumer electronics.” SiTune’s

SandLinksFounded in 2005, Sandlinks (formerlyInfoRange) develops next generationActive-RFID (Class 4) networks usingUWB technology, including tags, read-ers, and communication software.Sandlinks has raised approximately •4.1million ($5 million) in financing led byVertex Management and including Sta-geOne Ventures and Star Ventures.

SandLinks argues that its next genera-tion Active-RFID (Class 4) solutions of-fers superior performance and scalabilityat significantly lower cost. The compa-ny recently received functional silicon ofits low-power RFID tag device, whichwas implemented using the CommonPower Format (CPF)-enabled CadenceLow-Power Solution.

For the design and implementation of theradio part of its UWB transceiver,SandLinks used the Cadence Virtuosocustom design platform. Using CPF,

PassifPassif Semiconductor received $1.6 mil-lion from Khosla Ventures in Q2’08.

Axel Berny, founder (previously an RF& mixed-signal designer at Siport)

Quantum SemiQuantum Semiconductor is a privatesemiconductor company developing sil-icon-based chips for light absorption andemission.

Lynn Forester, Co-Founder and CEO

4320 Stevens Creek Blvd., Suite 212San Jose, CA 95129Tel: 408.243.2262, Fax: 408.243.2272www.quantumsemi.com

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Radar Scope(Continued from page 3)



Vubiq recently introduced its 60 GHz in-tegrated radio solution, enabling commer-cial, government, and academicinstitutions to utilize the unlicensed 57-64 GHz band for application develop-ment.

Vubiq has developed 60 GHz transmit-ters and receivers complete with highefficiency antennas and low-loss ra-domes integrated into standard BGApackages. Vubiq’s technology is basedon SiGe and CMOS. High speed base-band signals can be interconnected di-rectly to the radios, allowing up to 1 GHzmodulation bandwidth at 60 GHz.

The V60DSK01 development systemenables experimentation and developmentin the 57-64 GHz millimeter wave band,allowing developers to define the base-band technology of their choice. Usershave a selection of differential interfacesfor I/Q (vector) modulation, FM or AM.Vubiq’s development system includes a60 GHz transmitter board and 60 GHzreceiver board, each with a USB con-troller. The basic development systemwill cost $12,500.

Adam Button, CEO (previously workedin investment banking and strategyconsulting)

Mike Pettus, CTO (previously Directorof Systems Engineering at Metricom)

65 Enterprise, Aliso Viejo, CA 92656Tel: 949.226.8482, Fax: 815.572.0386www.vubiq.com

Wi-ChiDr. Terri Fiez recently took a leave ofabsence as Professor and Head, Schoolof EECS at Oregon State University tostart a mixed-signal fabless semiconduc-tor company, along with some of hisformer graduate students and colleagues.

The company, Wi-Chi (pronounced Y-Chee for wireless energy) is focused onenergy harvesting technology. In Q2’08,New Enterprise Associates and individ-ual investors provided $9 million in Series

in Silicon Valley. In March 2008, TJetfinalized terms for a Series A round co-led by Sigma Partners and Spark Capitalalong with a small strategic investmentfrom Varian Semiconductor Associates.

Compared to LCDs, OLED displays havesuperior viewing angle, contrast ratio,color saturation, brightness, power effi-ciency, and pixel response time. If OLEDdisplays can become cost competitivewith LCDs, OLED will become the dom-inant display technology. However, theequipment and process technology doesnot yet exist to support large volume, lowcost manufacturing.

Building upon a printhead concept de-veloped at MIT by the company co-founders, the TJet approach overcomesthe problems inherent in other OLEDprinting technologies (such as inkjet andlaser transfer) and enables the printingof OLED displays having high powerefficiencies and long lifetimes. By lever-aging the intrinsic low-cost and large areascalability of printing, TJet OLED toolsand process technology will allow displaymakers the manufacture OLED displaysat substantially lower cost than LCDs.

Dr. Conor Madigan, Co-Founder andCEO

Dr. Sass Somekh, Co-Founder and Ex-ecutive Chairman (former president ofNovellus and EVP of AppliedMaterials)

Manush Birang, VP of TechnologyEli Vronsky, VP of Engineering

1430 OBrien Drive, Suite AMenlo Park, CA 94025Tel: 650.327.2903, Fax: 650.433.5412www.tjet-tech.com

VubiqVubiq was incorporated in 2003 and re-ceived Series A funding in 2006, led by aFortune 20 company.

mission is “to become a prominent de-veloper of RF and mixed-signal SOCswith the highest performance for receiv-ing video, voice, and data over wirelessmedium.” The company has receivedfunding from Greenlane Investments.

SiTune recently unveiled the STN-25T1000 Hybrid (universal) CMOS TVtuner. The device is a highly integratedtuner that exceeds all global digital andanalog TV standard requirements, whileconsuming less than 150 mW. The STN-25T1000 has the world’s lowest powerconsumption and is the most highly inte-grated Silicon TV Tuner, according tothe company. The device supports bothanalog (NTSC, PAL, SECAM) and Digital(ATSC, DVB-T, ISDB-T) TV reception.

Samples in Q4; production in Q1.

Vahid Toosi, founder and CEO (previ-ously a senior technical staff memberat Ikanos and Dir. of Engineering atBroadNav Integrated Products)

Majid Hashemi, Ph.D., VP of Engineer-ing (previously director of RFIC at En-tropic and director of RFIC andmixed-signal design at SiRF)

Gill Heydari, VP of Sales and Marketing(previously Director of Sales at Eric-sson AB)

2216, Ringwood Ave., San Jose, CATel: 408.324.1752, Fax: 408.521.3340www.situne-ic.com

TJetTJet Technologies was founded in Oc-tober 2007 to develop “the next genera-tion manufacturing equipment that willallow the emerging organic light emittingdiode (OLED) display to compete withand ultimately replace the liquid crystaldisplay (LCD).” The five MIT co-founders, Dr. Conor Madigan, Dr. Vale-rie Leblanc, Dr. Gerry Chen, Prof.Vladimir Bulovic, and Prof. MartinSchmidt, decided to locate the company

Radar Scope(Continued from page 3)



A funding to support about a dozen peo-ple this year and ramping up the follow-ing year. Wi-Chi is currently looking forexperienced analog designers.

Dr. Terri Fiez, CEO and Co-founder(Professor and Head (on-leave),School of EECS at Oregon State)

7646 SW Mohawk, Tualatin, OR 97062Tel: 541.740.3970www.wi-chi.com

WideSailWideSail Technologies was founded in2007 as a spin-off from McGill Univer-sity to develop high performance errorcorrection semiconductor IP for devel-opers of digital communications ICs. InMay 2008, MSBi Valorisation, an entitydedicated to commercializing innovationsand building companies basedon technological advancements andinventions originating from McGill Uni-versity, Université de Sherbrooke andBishop’s University, as well as their af-filiated hospitals and research institutes,made an investment in WideSail.

All modern communications rely on er-ror correction of some form. WideSail’stechnology addresses the errors that oc-cur during wired and wireless digitalcommunications, as well as in semicon-ductor and magnetic storage devices. Itsproducts provide excellent error correc-tion performance at very high speedswith much lower power than compet-ing technologies.

Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) isbeing applied to a wide range of com-munications standards, including estab-lished standards such as WiFi andWiMAX where it is often treated as ahigh-performance option as well as newstandards like 10 Gigabit Ethernet, Dig-ital Video Broadcast, and Ultra Wide-Band that rely on LDPC for improvedrange and robustness.

WideSail has created a new approach toLDPC decoders that provides error

correction closer to the Shannon limitthan any other coding method. Its ar-chitecture also offers low gate count andextremely low power compared to tra-ditional implementations.

The company offers ASIC-targeted RTLwith test-benches, verification IP anddemonstrator cards using FPGAs in avariety of communications protocols in-cluding WiFi (802.11n), WiMAX(802.16e), DVB-S2, 10 Gb Ethernet,UWB, and 4G telephony (UMTS LongTerm Evolution or LTE).

Gord Harling, President and CEO (pre-viously founding CEO of Goal Semi-conductor, which was sold toRamtron, and Elliptic Semiconductor,a provider of security SIP)

Dr. Shie Mannor, Chief Scientist (a fac-ulty member at McGill Universitywhere he holds the Canada ResearchChair in Machine Learning and previ-ously co-founder and Chief Scientistof Kashya, which was acquired byEMC)

Dr. Warren Gross, Chief Architect (aprofessor at McGill University wherehe leads a research team focusing onultra-low complexity iterative decod-ers and custom high performancearchitectures)

155 Rene Levesque Blvd.Ouest, #2701Montreal, Quebec H3B 2K8CanadaTel: 450.777.9085, Fax: 450.534.3911www.widesail.com

AchronixAchronix Semiconductor was formed in2004 with a mission to develop ultra highperformance (>1 GHz) and extreme en-vironment (-260°C to +130°C and radi-ation hardened) FPGAs and ASICs basedon synchronous and asynchronous de-signs. The company has an exclusive li-cense to four patents from Cornell.When we first talked with the founders,

Achronix had 4 employees, was selffunded ($2.5 million) and did not plan toseek additional capital.

After 2+ years of self-funded develop-ment, Achronix raised $34.4 million inSeries A funding led by New ScienceVentures and Battery Ventures and in-cluding Entrepia Ventures and EastonCapital Investment Group. Achronix has60 employees, HQ in San Jose, and R&Doffices in Ithaca, New York and Banga-lore India.

The company’s mission is now to de-velop “the world’s fastest FPGAs, whichuse a unique patented picoPIPE™ ac-celeration technology capable of up to1.5 GHz peak performance.” Achronixoffers two product lines. The first, a spe-cialized line of products operating near350 MHz for high radiation and extremetemperature environments, has beenshipping for some time.

Recently, Achronix began shipping theworld’s fastest FPGAs, according to thecompany. The Speedster family deliv-ers speeds up to 1.5GHz, which repre-sents a 3X increase in performance overexisting FPGAs.

The Speedster family is based on Ach-ronix patented (> 25 in various filingstages) picoPIPE acceleration technol-ogy, which speeds the way data movesthrough the FPGA fabric. In the absenceof a global clock, picoPIPEs use simplehandshake protocols to efficiently con-trol data flow, resulting in significantlyimproved performance, all along usingstandard RTL for design-entry and em-ploying familiar FPGA tools. picoPIPEtechnology can tolerate substantial vari-ations in supply voltage, which enablespower consumption to be lowered byadjusting the core supply voltage.

Achronix FPGAs achieve higherthroughput compared with existing FP-GAs because of the fine-grained pipe-line stages. Within conventional FPGAs,signals travel on long routing tracks and

Startup Profiles



pass through routing components, thussuffering from high-capacitance. Addi-tionally, there are often many levels oflogic between state-holding elements(registers).

Within Speedster FPGAs, the built-inpipelining ensures that signals only trav-el on short routing tracks, reducing thecapacitance of the signal at each stage.While larger devices may have slightlyincreased latency, unlike other FPGAs,they do not have decreased throughputas each pipeline stage is capable of hold-ing a new data token. Therefore, the in-herent pipelining of picoPIPE technologyallows maximum throughput to be main-tained, regardless of how large the FPGAis. Fine-grained pipelining also ensuresthere is a maximum of one level of logicper pipeline stage, allowing an extreme-ly fast data-token rate.

Leveraging picoPIPE technology for theFPGA fabric has two major benefitscompared with a traditional fabric. First,when a design is mapped into the pi-coPIPE fabric, it can be pipelined auto-matically. Any circuit that will benefitfrom manual pipelining can automatical-ly achieve increased performance whenmapped into picoPIPE technology. Sec-ond, the need for global clocks has beenremoved. picoPIPE technology uses veryfine grained local clocking to ensure datacan travel at very high speeds.

Achronix FPGAs consist of a traditionalsynchronous frame surrounding a pi-coPIPE reprogrammable logic fabriccontaining Reconfigurable Logic Blocks,Multiplier Blocks, Block RAMs, and Pro-grammable interconnect links. Each ofthese building blocks operates at 1.5GHz.

The frame provides all off-chip interfac-es, including configurable I/Os, SerDes,clocks, and PLLs, and forms the bound-ary between the picoPIPE core and these

interfaces. Containing up to 40 lanes of10.3 Gbps SerDes, the Speedster fami-ly offers the highest SerDes bandwidthavailable in an FPGA today, and enablesan aggregate SerDes bandwidth of 800Gbps. The Speedster 10.3 Gbps SerDessupports numerous high-speed interfac-es, such as 40G/100G Ethernet, CEI-6G, 10 Gbps backplane, XFI, PCIExpress (Generations 1 and 2), XAUI,Serial Rapid IO and Infiniband.

Achronix non-SerDes I/Os are alsoamong the fastest in the industry. Speed-ster FPGAs include four embeddedDDR1/2/3 controllers, each offering upto 72 bits of data at 1066 Mbps. Havingembedded controllers saves valuableprogrammable resources and alleviatesdesign challenges related to DDR im-plementation. With performance of upto 1000 Mbps (or 1066 Mbps for DDR3)Achronix I/Os ensure data can be shift-ed into and out of the picoPIPE fabricfast enough to keep up with the 1.5 GHzinternal throughput.

Speedster uses familiar LUT-based fab-ric and standard synthesis and simula-tion tools so designers can use theirexisting Verilog and VHDL RTL designs.Achronix has partnered with leading syn-thesis vendors to make industry-stan-dard tools and methodologies compatiblewith the Speedster family. The Achro-nix CAD environment supports bothSynopsys (formerly Synplicity) Synpli-fy Pro and Mentor Graphics’ PrecisionSynthesis tools for RTL synthesis. Inaddition, the Achronix CAD environmentprovides the necessary tools for physi-cal implementation, performance opti-mization, timing analysis, simulation,debug, and device programming.

The SPD60, the first device in theSpeedster family, has 47,040 LUTs, 3.4million picoPIPE elements, 144 18kbitblock RAMS, 98 18x18 multipliers, 85Gbps SerDes lanes, 20 10.3 Gbps Ser-Des lanes, 4 independent 1066 MbpsDDR2/DDR3 controllers, 16 PLLs, and768 user programmable I/Os. Future

devices will range from the SPD30 with24,576 LUTs to the SPD180 with163,840 LUTs. Other blocks like RAM,and I/O scale accordingly. The Speed-ster family will range in power consump-tion from less than 20W to around 40Wfor the very high-performance parts.

Achronix is targeting a $1.7 billion sliceof the ASIC market that traditional FP-GAs cannot reach. The Speedster fam-ily of FPGAs removes the systemperformance barriers associated withtraditional FPGAs, enabling systemspeeds of up to 1.5 GHz, 3X the perfor-mance offered by any other competitor.This enables its devices to be used inapplications usually not addressed by theFPGA market. With up to 40 lanes ofembedded SerDes per device, Speedsteralso enables extremely high I/O through-put.

The SPD60 is manufactured in TSMC’shigh performance 65nm G+ CMOS pro-cess. Achronix has already shipped de-vices to numerous customers. Earlyengagement customers are achievingASIC-like performance in networking,telecom, test and measurement, encryp-tion and other high-performance appli-cations. Additional products are in theworks. Volume pricing for the Speed-ster FPGA family ranges from under$200 to $2,500.

John Lofton Holt, founder, Chairman andCEO (previously led Integrated Strat-egies Group (formerly Saber Securi-ty Solutions), a small securitytechnology and venture capital con-sulting firm in Washington, DC and afounding member of the Booz AllenHamilton Commercial InformationAssurance Consulting Practice)

Howard Brodsky, VP of Business Oper-ations and CFO (previously VP ofFinance & CFO at ChipX and Cor-porate Controller for C-Cube)

Paul Indaco, EVP of Worldwide Sales(previously VP of Worldwide Sales atActel and Chip Express)

Startup Profiles(Continued from page 5)



Dr. Rajit Manohar, founder & CTO (pre-viously an Associate Professor ofElectrical and Computer Engineeringat Cornell University)

Yousef Khalilollahi, VP of Marketing(previously a Marketing Director atLSI Logic custom solutions groupand held director level responsibilitiesin marketing and business develop-ment at Actel)

Dr. Kamal Chaudhary, VP of SoftwareEngineering (previously a Distin-guished Engineer at Xilinx)

Dr. Ravi Sunkavalli, VP of HardwareEngineering (previously Director ofIC Design at Velogix)

Dr. Clinton Kelly, IV, founder & VP ofAdvanced Research (previously lednumerousR&D programs related toultra-low-power asynchronous mi-croprocessors and FPGAs)

Dr. Virantha Ekanayake, founder (pre-viously an Assistant Professor in theDepartment of Electrical and Com-puter Engineering at Johns HopkinsUniversity)

333 West San Carlos St., Suite 1050San Jose, CA, 95110Tel: 408.889.4100Fax: 408.286.3645www.achronix.com

Enphase EnergyEnphase Energy was founded in 2006to develop micro-inverter-based solarenergy management systems. In Janu-ary 2008, Enphase raised $6.5 million infunding led by Third Point Ventures.Energy recently raised $15 million ledby new investor RockPort Capital Part-ners and including existing institutionalinvestors Third Point Ventures and Ap-plied Ventures.

Within the solar photovoltaic (PV) mar-ket, industry R&D has focused largelyon improving the cost and efficiency ofsolar modules. Traditional solar energyinstallations deploy a single centralizedinverter to convert the DC output frommultiple solar modules into AC power.

Enphase Energy has concentrated onimproving inverter technology and sys-tems architecture that represent signifi-cant constraints on energy harvest andsystem reliability. The company has pi-oneered the industry’s first networkedsolar energy system, which includeshigh-efficiency micro-inverters, com-munications gateways and web-basedanalytics and visualization. This integrat-ed system maximizes energy harvest, in-creases system reliability, and simplifiesdesign, installation and management.

The Enphase system represents a para-digm shift in the solar market from cen-tral/string inverter-based systems todistributed Micro-Inverter-based sys-tems. Enphase systems include high ef-ficiency micro-inverters that convert theDC power from each solar module togrid compliant AC power, eliminating theneed for a large centralized inverter.

Solar energy system performance is af-fected by various factors such as mod-ule mis-match, obstruction shading,inter-row shading, and obstacles suchas dust or debris. In addition, non-uni-form changes in temperature, irradiance,and shading create complex current-volt-age curves, further affecting energy har-vest. This is due to the fact that theperformance of the entire system is dic-tated by the performance of the weak-est module.

The Enphase Energy Micro-inverter Sys-tem solves these problems by providingeach solar module the benefit of individ-ual Maximum Power Point Tracking(MPPT). The Enphase’s fast MPPT al-gorithm achieves greater than 99.6%accuracy thereby maximizing energyharvest during variable light conditions.Solar systems using Enphase technolo-gy have been shown to increase energyharvest by 5 - 10% over traditional in-verter implementations, and in some cas-es up to 25%.

The Enphase system is comprised of thefollowing three components:

The Enphase Micro-inverter converts theDC output of a single solar module intogrid-compliant AC power. Enphase Mi-cro-inverters are per-module invertersthat are co-located with each solar mod-ule. The Enphase Micro-inverter turnseach solar module into a “smart” moduleby connecting it to the Internet, therebyproviding visibility and analysis of solarsystem performance.

The Micro-inverters have a MTBF of 119years providing system availability ofgreater than 99.8%, a key considerationfor both commercial and residential in-stallations. The Enphase Micro-inverterSystems dramatically simplify design,installation and management of solar sys-tems leading to Balance-of-Systems andLabor savings of about 15%. All thesefactors contribute to a greater ROI forsolar system owners.

By eliminating the need for a large, cen-tral inverter, installation is no longer lim-ited by string design, marginal designs,co-planarity, matched modules, or theburden of finding a location for a loud,hot, space-consuming inverter. Mechan-ical integration is improved, wiring timeis reduced, and the need for DC switch-ing points is removed. Enphase’s Micro-inverter system eliminates the inverter asa single point of failure. The distributedMicro-inverter design also allows instal-lations to be expanded over time.

The Enphase EMU (Energy ManagementUnit) is a communications gateway thatallows solar performance data to betransmitted from the micro-invertersacross a standard AC power line, elimi-nating the need for additional wiring,thereby keeping installation costs andcomplexity down.

Enphase Enlighten is a web-based visu-alization and analytics tool that providesproduction insight on a per-module ba-sis. The system constantly monitors eachmodule, automatically detects any short-fall in energy production, establishes apossible cause, suggests solutions and




promptly alerts the owner of the issue.Unlike “bolt-on” third party monitoringsystems that only monitor the inverter,Enlighten provides visibility into the per-formance of every individual module.

Enphase already has thousands of unitsin the field, with installations in commer-cial and residential solar power systemsthroughout the continental U.S. and Ha-waii. Enphase products are compatiblewith most major brands of solar mod-ules and are available from leading solardistributors and installers.

Paul Nahi, President & CEO (previous-ly CEO of Crimson Microsystems andCEO and co-founder of AccelerantNetworks)

Martin Fornage, Co-founder, CTO (pre-viously led the Hardware Engineer-ing group at Advanced FiberCommunications and a consultant toAFC, Cerent, Cisco, Calix and othercompanies)

Raghu Belur, Co-founder, VP of Mar-keting (previously an early engineerat Cerent, which was acquired byCisco, whereupon he managed theteam developing 10Gig interfaceproducts)

Greg Steele, VP of Operations (previ-ously VP of Operations and COO atAdvanced Fibre Communications,and CEO for the Nelson Family ofCompanies)

Andrew Nichols, VP of Sales (previouslyled North American Sales for Xantr-ex Technology)

Bob Bortolotto, VP of Engineering (pre-viously co-founder and VP of Cay-mas Systems, which was acquired byCitrix)

201 1st Street, Suite 111Petaluma, CA 94952Tel: 877.797.4743Fax: 707.763.0784www.enphaseenergy.com

InfinisimInfinisim was founded to develop a high-speed, SPICE-accurate simulator forlarge mixed-signal circuits. Dr. Syed Za-kir Hussain, Dr. Perry Gee and Dr. Di-leep Divekar have developed a numberof simulation products that are usedwidely today in the EDA industry. RAS-ER’s team has a combined simulator de-velopment experience of more than 50years.

First generation SPICE engines derivedfrom Berkeley SPICE, focused on ac-curacy for small transistor circuits with-out any speedup optimization. Secondand third generation Fast SPICE werederived from timing simulators and fo-cused on speedup at the expense of ac-curacy. The current generation is anincremental enhancement to BerkeleySPICE based on increased efficiency ofthe SPICE algorithm and/or paralleliza-tion. Whether hardware or software ac-celerated, these engines provide up to10X speedup and capacity over SPICE.

The complexity of today’s mixed-signaldesigns has surpassed the capabilities ofcurrent simulation products and theirunderlying technologies. As a result, theanalysis and verification of tightly cou-pled analog/digital circuits, developed in90nm-or-lower process nodes, is result-ing in long simulation run times and in-adequate verification coverage, whichcontributes to increased silicon failures.Furthermore, at 40nm and below de-signs, statistical variations become sig-nificant. This requires accurate modelevaluations. FastSpice tools cannot de-liver the accuracy, and commercialSPICE tools cannot handle the capacityat acceptable performance level.

To address these challenges, Infinisimhas developed RASER™ a transistor-lev-el simulator and analysis tool specifical-ly designed for pre-layout andpost-layout verification of for mixed-sig-nal ICs. Infinisim argues that RASER isthe first simulator in the market that does

not trade off accuracy for capacity andperformance. RASER guarantees SPICE-accurate results with an average of 50times speedup and capacity for largemixed-signal circuits. RASER is the fast-est SPICE accurate simulator in the mar-ket, with the ability to handle full chipcapacity of millions of elements.

Underlying RASER’s performance is In-finisim’s patent-pending Real-time Adap-tive Simulation™ (RAS™ technology,which adapts to the changing circuit sim-ulation environment at every time-pointof the simulation while using the full de-vice models and adhering to the fullSPICE accuracy requirements. Using thistechnology, RASER is able to automati-cally and simultaneously deliver SPICEaccuracy and handle large-scale mixed-signal circuits. This novel approach hasbeen proven to handle 50X larger designsthan traditional SPICE simulators whileconcurrently providing an average of 50Xspeed improvement with full SPICE ac-curacy.

RASER’s speed and capacity uniquelyposition it to run simulations at all stagesof design verification, from single-blockto full-chip, from pre-layout to post-lay-out. RASER reduces simulation timefrom days to minutes while guarantee-ing SPICE accurate results. It supportsfull-chip capacity of millions of elements,providing the highest simulation cover-age prior to tape-out. It helps identifyanalog digital interface issues missed byother tools, reduces design cycle andminimizes mask iterations.

RASER is targeted to those designerswho either cannot simulate a large de-sign accurately using their current tool,or who experience extremely long run-times. It is ideally suited to circuits likeSerDes, high-speed wireline/wirelesscommunication channels, precision ana-log interfaces, image sensors, criticalpaths in SoCs and clock networks. Thesedesigns typically consist of large num-bers of elements and require SPICE sim-ulation accuracy with high performance.



development centers in Fremont, Cali-fornia and Shanghai China.

NemoChips argues that its devices willusher in a new era in mobile computingwith ultra-high performance for stream-ing HD video, and power usage as muchas 10X less than its closest competitor.

The company has successfully taped outa low-power mobile video platform SoCleveraging Faraday’s SoCompiler DesignServices employing the Common Pow-er Format (CPF)-enabled Cadence Low-Power Solution. The design took 2months from netlist to tape-out whileachieving >99% leakage reduction and65% dynamic power reduction usingadvanced techniques such as DynamicVoltage & Frequency Scaling, Multi-Sup-ply Voltages, and Power-Shut Off.

The MAP-100 is a low power, high per-formance, multimedia application pro-cessor for mobile terminals, includingmobile handsets, portable media playerand car entertainment system. It deliv-ers DVD quality video to mobile deviceswithout video format limitation. The SoCis fully programmable and capable ofsupporting most major video standardsup to 720p 30fps video decoding withvery low power consumption. An opensoftware platform is also built aroundthis chip to provide a complete solutionfor portable multimedia devices includ-ing smart phones, PDA, DPF and PMP,etc.

The device features a 150MHz+ Pro-grammable MediaCore Processor and300MHz+ ARM926EJ-S Processor with16KB I and 16KB D Cache, with JazelleJAVA support. The Video Hardware Co-dec supports numerous standards in-cluding H.264 Baseline, MPEG4 ASP,VC-1 SP, AVS-M, and WMV7/8/9 de-coder D1@ 30fps. Other features in-clude a hardware encryption/decryptionengine, numerous I/O, memory, expan-sion, and display interfaces, NTSC/PALvideo encoder with integrated DAC out-put, and camera sensor interface with

RASER is currently being used by sev-eral leading mixed-signal designers, en-abling customers to eliminate siliconspins, reduce chip design schedule by aminimum of three weeks and dramati-cally improve product quality and pro-duction yield. Infinisim customers havealready reported increased verificationcoverage prior to tape-out, the ability touncover significant issues related to an-alog-digital interface, and the ability toverify larger circuits at SPICE accuracy.

Mahmood Panjwani, Chairman & CEO(previously co-founder, President andCEO of iManage, which merged withInterwoven, and founder and CEO ofQ-Image)

Samia Rashid, Co-founder and President(previously part of the start-up teamat iManage)

Dr. Zakir Hussain Syed, Ph.D., Co-founder and CTO (previously at Sim-plex Solutions, which was acquiredby Cadence, since its inception wherehe was responsible for the develop-ment of verification products)

Dr. Perry Gee, Ph.D., VP of Engineer-ing (previously part of the original de-velopment team at Simplex Solutionsand director of semi-custom CAD atSynergy Semiconductor)

Dr. Dileep Divekar, Ph.D., VP of R&D(25+ years in EDA; author of “FETModeling for Circuit Simulation”; co-authored 50+ technical publications)

2130 Gold Street, Suite 250Alviso, CA 95002Tel: 408.934.9777Fax: 408.934.9100www.infinisim.com

NemochipsNemoChips was founded in early 2007to develop “next-generation mobile ap-plication processor SoCs to provideDVD quality audio and video for futurehandheld devices.” The company isheadquartered in Silicon Valley with

image processing. The device is fabri-cated in 0.13um CMOS.

NemoChips recently taped out its next-generation processor, designed jointlywith Faraday’s SoCompiler Design Ser-vices. The Faraday PowerSmart designflow speeds the development of low-power technologies using industry-stan-dard flows along with best-in-class toolssuch as PowerTheater.

NemoChips designers scored their big-gest power savings early in the designcycle thanks to Sequance Design’s Pow-erTheater prowess in RTL power anal-ysis and power prototyping whereSequence estimates as much as 80% oftotal power savings can be realized.PowerTheater is claimed to be the firstRTL power analysis and power proto-typing solution with the singular abilityto accurately analyze power at RTL andsupport power management techniquessuch as voltage islands, mixed voltagethreshold, power gating, and clockgating.

Dr. Lifeng Zhao, PresidentDanian Gong, Ph.D., CTO, VP Engineer-

ing (previously president at VMChips)

46704 Fremont Blvd.Fremont, CA 94538Tel: 510.252.9733Fax: 510.252.9744www.nemochips.com

PowervationPowervation was founded in January2006 to develop “a new class of Auto-control™digital power IC solutions thatoptimize power-supply performance andefficiencies for manufacturers of elec-tronic systems used in computing, com-munications and consumer applications.”Powervation maintains corporate offic-es in Ireland and Palo Alto, Calif., withsales centers located throughout Asia,Europe and the U.S.

In September 2006, the company raisedfunding from 4th Level Ventures,



engineer with several Irish compa-nies)

Karl Rinne, Ph.D, CTO (previously aUniversity Lecturer in the Electron-ics and Computer Engineering depart-ment at the University of Limerick andPrincipal Design Engineer with Arte-syn Ireland, Commergy Ireland and,Siemens Germany)

Frank Cassidy, VP, Finance (previouslyVP of finance at Power-One)

Benoit Herve, VP, Marketing (previous-ly product line/marketing manager atZilker Labs and headed up strategicmarketing for the MOSFET and In-tegrated Solution Business Unit at ONSemiconductor)

Jeff Purchon, VP of Global Sales (pre-viously responsible for business de-velopment in Asia for Enpirion andheld VP of International Sales andMarketing for International PowerDevices, which was subsequentlyacquired by Power-One)

Anthony Kelly, Ph.D., VP, Digital Con-trol (previously worked at Analog De-vices, Cadence and STMicro-electronics)

Patrick McNamee, VP, Operations (pre-viously VP of product engineering atCambridge Silicon Radio)

Eamon O’Malley, Ph.D., VP, Digital De-sign (previously an ASIC design en-gineer with S3Group, PhilipsSemiconductors and the Circuits andSystems Research Centre at the Uni-versity of Limerick, Ireland)

100 Hamilton Avenue, #130Palo Alto, CA 94301Tel: 888.763.9888

Block 1, International Science CentreNational Technology ParkCastletroy, Limerick, IrelandTel: +1 353 61 506608www.powervation.com ■

Shannon Development and the founders.In December 2007, the company closedUS$10 million in Series A funding jointlyled by Intel and Scottish Equity Partnersand including comparable participationfrom Venture Tech Alliance along with afollow-on investment from 4th LevelVentures. Enterprise Ireland, a statedevelopment agency, continues to sup-port the company and retains its originalinvestment.

According to digital power market re-search firm, Darnell Group, “The por-tion of the power supply market that willemploy some form of digital loop con-trol is expected to grow at an averageannual rate of about 45% for the nextfive years. By 2013, the digital powerconverter market is projected to exceed1.4 billion units.”

Powervation recently unveiled its Auto-control™power-conversion technology,which marks a fundamental shift in theanalog/digital power-management play-ing field, according to the company. In asimple Plug-and-Power™package, thecompany’s technology delivers a reliable,scalable solution that reduces designcomplexity and cost, and acceleratestime-to-market of eco power-smartsystems.

At the heart of Powervation’s solution isAuto-control, a digital control algorithm,implemented in firmware, which pro-vides a true adaptive adjustment of theconverter to take into account all systemvariations, while guaranteeing stability ofthe converter. Auto-control greatly sim-plifies what was once the time-consum-ing “black art” of designing analogcompensation loops, which were sub-optimal by necessity and designed forworst-case conditions.

Auto-control enables a DC/DC controlcircuit to sense circuit conditions suchas load, capacitance, inductance, etc.,

and automatically adapt the power-con-trol function to compensate accurately.This stabilizes voltage conversion andtransient response over a wide range ofconditions.

Whereas conventional analog/digital so-lutions require complex calculations tocompensate the controller, Powerva-tion’s Auto-control capability regulatescontroller behavior on a cycle-by-cyclebasis, searching for any modification inthe system operation. The entire systemparameters are estimated and containedin a single parameter —“MOJO”, whichallows a simple adjustment knob for per-formance enhancement and guaranteedstability.

Powervation’s Auto-control algorithmmeans that the power converter is trulyself-contained. It can be plugged direct-ly into a system and immediately oper-ate at peak performance without userintervention. This Plug-and-Power ca-pability enables outstanding performancewithout advanced expertise in controltheory, firmware coding or running com-plex simulations.

Early test results reveal system efficien-cy gains of up to 30%, along with a 50%improvement in transient response. A tinyfootprint adds to the advantages, whichalso include a 65% reduction in overallsystem components when compared toanalog solutions. PowerVation’s next-gen solution will improve transient devi-ation by another 50%.

The first product utilizing Auto-controlis Powervation’s Plug-and-Power con-troller aimed at power converter solu-tions in communications, computing andconsumer applications. The new chipwill be available in Q1’09.

Antoin Russell, CEO (previously man-aging director of Power-One, Irelandand VP of R&D)

Alan Dunne, GM (previously CentreManager for PEI-CSRC and a design

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CMOSIS has appointed its co-founderand Chairman, Lou Hermans, Ph.D.,as VP of Marketing and Sales. Hermanswas one of the founders of CMOSIS inNovember 2007. In November 1999, heco-founded CMOS image sensor start-up FillFactory, a spin-off of IMEC,where he served as SVP of Marketingand Sales. The company achieved salesof euro 24 million in 2004, and was ac-quired by Cypress in August 2004. GuyMeynants, CEO. www.cmosis.com

Dialog Semiconductor has appointedMark Tyndall as VP of Business De-velopment and Corporate Strategy. Tyn-dall previously held businessdevelopment and marketing roles atMIPS, Infineon and Fujitsu MicroGmbH. Dr. Jalal Bagherli, CEO.www.dialog-semiconductor.com

Freescale has appointed Dr. Lisa Su asSVP & GM, Networking and Multime-dia. Dr. Su joined Freescale in 2007 asSVP and CTO, leading the company’sTechnology Solutions Organization. Shereplaces Lynelle McKay, the prior GM,who has resigned. Dr. Su will continuein the role of CTO until a replacement isfound. Prior to joining Freescale, Dr. Suled global semiconductor R&D for IBM.www.freescale.com

KLA-Tencor has appointed MarkDentinger as CFO, reporting to CEO,Rick Wallace. Most recently, Dentingerserved as EVP and CFO for BEA Sys-tems, until the company was acquiredby Oracle. President and COO JohnKispert will be leaving KLA-Tencor atthe end of 2008. Kispert served as pres-ident and COO since January 2006 andalso as interim CFO since March 2008.His management responsibilities will beassumed by Wallace. www.kla-tencor.com

Innovative Silicon, Inc. (ISi), devel-oper of Z-RAM zero-capacitor floatingbody memory technology, has appoint-ed Michael Van Buskirk as SVP ofengineering and operations reporting toMark-Eric Jones, president and CEO.

Van Buskirk previously was CTO andcorporate VP of engineering at Spansion.Jeff Lewis was promoted to the newposition of SVP of marketing and busi-ness development. Lewis previouslyserved as VP of marketing and mostrecently as VP of marketing and prod-uct operations. He continues to reportdirectly to Mark-Eric Jones, Lewisjoined ISi in January 2006, as VP ofmarketing. Prior to ISi, he was presi-dent and CEO of CiraNova, an analogEDA company. So far, ISi has an-nounced license deals with AMD andHynix, and expects to name other cus-tomers soon. www.z-ram.com

INSIDE Contactless has appointed Ri-chard Vacher Detourniere as CFO.Detourniere joins INSIDE from Sipar-ex, a leading independent French privateequity and venture capital firm. Mostrecently, he served as a partner in thearea of information and communicationtechnologies. Remy de Tonnac, CEO.www.INSIDEcontactless.com

International Rectifier has appointedIlan Daskal as CFO reporting to OlegKhaykin, president and CEO. Daskalmost recently served as VP of Finance& Business Administration for Infine-on’s North American CommunicationsBusiness Group. www.irf.com

Intersil has completed the company’sinternal reorganization with the consol-idation of five product lines into twoproduct groups: Power Management andAnalog Mixed Signal. David Loftus hasbeen hired as SVP of Worldwide Salesand Corporate Marketing. Peter Oak-lander, the former SVP of WorldwideSales, has transitioned to the role of SVPof the Power Management Group. Theproduct lines now under Oaklander’sleadership are Consumer; Computing;Industrial, Communications, Automo-tive; and Specialty. The VP/GMs of In-tersil’s power businesses, MichaelAlthar, Davin Lee, and Paul Sferraz-za, will report to Oaklander. SusanHardman has been appointed SVP of

Alchimer S.A., the thin films for TSVmetallization company, has appointed Dr.Claudio Truzzi as CTO. Dr. Truzzi haspreviously served as CEO of IC pack-aging consultancy Convergix and CTOand VP at CS2. Most recently, heworked as an independent consultant toseveral large players in the EMS, semi-conductor manufacturing equipment andwafer-level process companies.

Alchimer, a spin-out from France’s CEA(Commissariat á l’Energie Atomique),has developed materials and process IPfor creating thin coatings on the insideof high-aspect ratio through-silicon vias(TSVs). Since conventional techniqueshave reached their limit at TSV aspectratios of 3:1, Alchimer’s technology,which enables TSVs with aggressiveaspect ratios of 10:1 and greater, is wellplaced to drive the adoption of 3D ICpackaging. Steve Lerner, CEO.www.alchimer.com

Altair Semiconductor, a provider of4G mobile ICs for handheld devices, hasappointed Mark Rice as VP and GM,Americas. Rice previously was Direc-tor, Asia Business Development for DSPsystems at TI and VP of Americas Salesfor Alcatel Microelectronics. OdedMelamed, CEO. www.altair-semi.com

BitWave has appointed Navi Miglanias Director of Product Marketing.Miglani previously held senior positionswithin global corporations, including RFMicro Devices, where he was strategicmarketing manager of the Radio Sys-tems Business Unit, and Sychip, wherehe was marketing director. BitWave’sBW1102 Softransceiver RFIC is a highlyintegrated, low power reconfigurabletransceiver. The company will beginvolume shipments of production siliconand software later this year. Russell Cyr,CMO and co-founder. www.bitwave.com

People



ness, is scheduled to ship in 1H’09. Ri-chard Archuleta, CEO. www.plasticlogic.com

Qualcomm has promoted Derek Ab-erle to EVP and president of QualcommTechnology Licensing. Marv Bleckerhas decided to reduce his day-to-daymanagement responsibilities, become apart-time Qualcomm employee, and stepdown from his current position as EVPand president of QTL. Aberle joinedQualcomm in 2000 after supporting theCompany as outside counsel for sever-al years. Most recently, he served as SVPand GM within QTL.

Quantum Leap Packaging has ap-pointed Byoung Lee as CFO. Lee wasmost recently the CFO /VP SpecialProjects at REMEC Defense & Space.David Grooms, CEO. www.qlpkg.com

SiRF has appointed Dennis Bencala asCFO. Michael Kelly has been promot-ed to VP of Sales. Al Heshmati has beennamed VP of Software Engineering.Bencala has been Acting CFO and Prin-cipal Financial and Accounting Officersince August. He joined SiRF in 2000 asCorporate Controller, and became Se-nior Director, Investor Relations andBusiness Development in August 2007.Kelly joined SiRF in 1998 as Director,North America Sales. In August 2006,he was promoted to Senior Director,North America Sales. Heshmati most re-cently was Senior Director of Engineer-ing for GPS at Qualcomm. www.sirf.com

Solaicx, the only manufacturer ofmonocrystalline silicon ingots and wa-fers to use proprietary growers designedexclusively for solar applications, hasappointed Peter Schwartz, Ph.D. as VPof product engineering. Dr. Schwartzmost recently served as VP of processand equipment for Nanoconduction. BobFord, president and CEO. www.solaicx.com

Tessera has launched a search for a newCFO following the resignation of

the Analog Mixed Signal Group. Hard-man previously served as VP and GM,Analog Mixed Signal product lines. Lof-tus previously was employed at Xilinx,where he had 20+ years of experiencein various executive leadership positions,including VP/GM of the General Prod-ucts Division and VP/Managing Direc-tor of Xilinx Asia Pacific. Dave Bell,President and CEO. www.intersil.com

Lattice has appointed Sean Riley asCorporate VP and GM, High DensitySolutions, and Chris Fanning has beenpromoted to Corporate VP and GM,Low Density and Mixed Signal Solu-tions. Riley was previously VP of Mar-keting for MathStar. Fanning mostrecently was Corporate VP, EnterpriseSolutions. Riley may purchase up to450,000 shares of the Company’s com-mon stock at an exercise price of $2.27per share pursuant to the inducementstock option. Bruno Guilmart, presidentand CEO. www.latticesemi.com

Luminary Micro has named Pete Zim-mer as VP of Worldwide Sales. Zimmerwas most recently VP of Americas Salesat Microchip. Jim Reinhart, presidentand CEO. www.LuminaryMicro.com

Microchip’s VP and CFO, GordonParnell, will retire effective December31, 2008. He will be replaced by J. EricBjornholt, currently VP of Finance andCorporate Secretary. www.microchip.com

MIPS announced the resignation of JoseFranca, founder of Chipidea Microelec-tronica, S.A. Professor Franca resignedto pursue his personal interests and re-sume his career in academics.www.mips.com

Multigig, a provider of clock and tim-ing solutions, has appointed Ali Wehbias VP of product and application engi-neering, Scott Gardner as marketingdirector and Stewart Speed as sales

director. Wehbi previously was VP ofdesign engineering at Mobius Microsys-tems. Gardner has held senior market-ing and consulting positions with ICS,Inphi, Oki, and Siliconix. Speed previ-ously was strategic account manager atIDT. Haris Basit, president and CEO.www.multigig.com

MVTS Technologies has appointed JimFraine as EVP of Sales. Fraine has heldsenior management roles with Teradyne,Nextest, IMS, and FEI. MVTS is a pro-vider of value-added refurbished auto-matic testing equipment. Ron Maassen,CEO. www.mvts.com

NEC Electronics America has appoint-ed Bob Pinteric as GM of the Multi-purpose Microcontroller (MCU)Strategic Business Unit, reporting to JimTrent, VP of the Multipurpose Micro-controller and Automotive Group. Pin-teric has held a number of leadershippositions including MCU marketingmanager, infotainment operations man-ager, and director of a flash memorydevelopment center while at Motorola/Freescale. www.am.necel.com

Nusym, a provider of functional verifi-cation software, has appointed NafeesQureshy as VP of Engineering. Qureshymost recently was VP of Engineering atArteris, a network-on-chip interconnectIP company. Venktesh Shukla, presidentand CEO. www.nusym.com

Plastic Logic has appointed Rik Thor-becke as CFO. Thorbecke most recentlyserved as VP, Global Finance for LeviStrauss & Company. Previously, he wasVP of Global Finance and Audit at Elec-tronic Arts and was a Partner in theTechnology Practice of Pricewater-houseCoopers.

Plastic Logic recently opened its com-mercial scale plastic electronics factoryin Dresden, Germany, which will im-mediately begin building plastic electron-ic displays for Plastic Logic’s firstconsumer electronics product. Theproduct, an electronic reader for busi-

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Charles Webster. John Keating, SVPof Corporate Development, has beenappointed interim CFO until a perma-nent replacement is named. Henry“Hank” Nothhaft, president and CEO.www.tessera.com

Texas Instruments has launched its new“Kilby Labs”, a center of innovationdesigned to foster creative ideas forbreakthrough semiconductor technolo-gy. Kilby Labs will be located on TI’sDallas North Campus and is inspired bythe original TI lab, where Jack Kilbyinvented the Microchip. Ajith Amer-asekera, Ph.D., a TI Fellow, has beennamed director of Kilby Labs. He previ-ously served as CTO for TI’s ASIC di-vision. Gregg Lowe, SVP and theproject’s executive sponsor. www.ti.com

Trident Microsystems has promotedDr. Hungwen (Wen) Li from SVP ofStrategic Marketing to Chief MarketingOfficer and has appointed Saeid Mosh-kelani as SVP, Engineering. Prior toTrident, Dr. Li was SVP and Chief Mar-keting Officer for Huahong Internation-al and founder, President and CEO ofRedSwitch. Moshkelani previouslyserved as VP of Engineering and Oper-ations for Dust Networks and VP, En-gineering and Operations, ConsumerDivision for LSI Logic via the acquisi-tion of C-Cube where he served as VP,Engineering and Operations. SylviaSummers, CEO and President.www.tridentmicro.com

Virage Logic has appointed Brian Sere-da as VP of finance and CFO, reportingto Dan McCranie, CEO and chairman.Daniel LaBouve was named VP of glo-bal operations, reporting to Dr. AlexShubat, COO. LaBouve takes over theoperational responsibilities from EhsanRashid who has been appointed to thenewly created position of VP of Japansales. Sereda most recently served asCFO and treasurer at Proxim Wireless.LaBouve previously served as VP ofengineering at Innovative Silicon and VP

of engineering for ARM’s physical IPdivision. www.viragelogic.com ■

Funding & IPOsAltair Semiconductor, a provider of4G mobile ICs for handsets and hand-held devices, has closed a $22M SeriesC funding round, in the form of a com-bined equity and credit investment. Theround was led by Pacific TechnologyFund and joined by ETV Capital and re-turning investors. The funding will beused to support Altair’s global expan-sion, sales and customer support, as wellas future development of chipsets forWiMAX, LTE and XGP.

Altair’s business has gained consider-able momentum since its $18M SeriesB round of funding in May 2007. Lessthan six months after releasing theALT2150, which is claimed to be thesmallest and most power-efficient mo-bile WiMAX processor, Altair’s solutionis considered an industry benchmark formobile, handheld devices, and is inte-grated in some of the world’s leadingdevice and module manufacturers’ prod-ucts.

Recently, Altair had been awarded theleading supplier position of chipsets forwireless devices operating on Willcom’snext generation PHS (“XGP”) in Japan,a 4G technology similar to mobileWiMAX. On the LTE front, Altair hascreated strategic partnerships with keyecosystem members to accelerate thedevelopment and interoperability of itsLTE solution. Oded Melamed, CEO andco-founder. www.altair-semi.com

ASK has secured 11 million euros infunding from XAnge and CDC Entre-prises (5M euro each) and CDC Inno-vation, an early investor (1M euro).Founded in 1997, ASK is a manufactur-er of RFID and contactless products,including cards, tickets, readers andeCovers for electronic passports withover 120 million products delivered inmore than 50 countries. All products are

based on a patented technology (53 pat-ents) that combines a chip and a silverantenna linked together with a goldbump.

Clients and references include most ofthe public transport authorities in Eu-rope, such as RATP, as well as publictransport authorities in the largest citiesof the US and Asia. ASK was the sup-plier of the 14.5 million contactless tick-ets of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. In2007, the company reached a turnoverof 30.5 million euros with strong growthpotential. Bruno Moreau, CEO.www.ask.fr

ASOCS, developer of a wireless Multi-Comms processor for handheld devic-es, has secured $8 million led by FinTechGIMV Fund and included existing inves-tors Vertex Venture Capital and HarelHertz Investment House. ASOCS hasraised $20 million to date. Gilad Garon,CEO.

AVA Solar, an advanced thin-film pho-tovoltaic (PV) module manufacturer lo-cated in Fort Collins, Colorado, hascompleted its second institutional equi-ty round of financing. This $104 mil-lion funding was led by DCM andincluded new investors TechnologyPartners, GLG Partners and BohemianCompanies as well as prior investors,including Invus. The funds will be usedto complete AVA Solar’s first produc-tion facility in Longmont, Colorado,which will have the capacity to produce200 megawatts of PV modules annual-ly. Pascal Noronha, CEO. www.avasolar.com

CriticalBlue, a provider of acceleratedembedded software solutions, has raised$4M of private equity funding fromToshiba and Scottish Venture Fund aswell as previous investors Herald Ven-tures, Lanza TechVentures and PentechVentures. David Stewart, CEO.www.criticalblue.com

GateRocket has completed a $3 millionSeries A round of financing led by New



development of its Coolteq handset sili-con due to be launched during 2009.

Nujira High Accuracy Tracking (HAT™Modulator technology dynamically con-trols the power supply to the circuit inline with the transmission performancerequired, enabling the creation of highlyefficient RF Power Amplifiers for 3Gand 4G cellular networks and DVB dig-ital broadcast transmissions. Nujira isengaged with major OEMs and has astrong pipeline. The company is in ne-gotiation with several more OEMs,which will bring its market coverage toalmost 100% in the Cellular Infrastruc-ture market, with TV Broadcast not farbehind. Tim Haynes, CEO and founder.

Nusym, a provider of functional verifi-cation software, has raised $8 million inSeries B financing led by Voyager Cap-ital, with Simmons Goodspeed Invest-ment Management, and a publiccompany participating as a “strategicinvestor”. Previous Series A investorsWoodside Fund and Draper Richards,also participated. The product line iscurrently being evaluated on leading edgedesigns at Nusym’s semiconductor part-ners. Venktesh Shukla, president andCEO. www.nusym.com

Percello has completed a $12 millionSeries B financing round co-led by Gran-ite Ventures and Vertex Venture Capital,and including T-Mobile Venture Fund asa strategic investor. The company’s $6million Series A was led by 7-Main Ltd.Percello was founded in 2007 to devel-op baseband processors for the 3G andLTE femtocell market. Shlomo Gadot,CEO. www.percello.com

PowerGenix, manufacturer of nontox-ic, high performance rechargeable Nick-el-Zinc (NiZn) batteries, has closed $30million in Series D financing led byBessemer Venture Partners and includ-ed existing investors Advent Internation-al, Angeleno Group, Braemar EnergyVentures, Granite Ventures, OnPointTechnologies and Technology Partners.The company has signed $75 million in

Microstaq’s products enable energy ef-ficiency gains of 20% or more in HVACsystems. Energy savings come from thevalve’s ability to precisely and electron-ically control fluid flow, down to 0.5%increments, which allow systems of alltypes to be more efficiently operated.The MEMS valves also have fewermoving parts than their conventionalcounterparts, increasing reliability andreducing maintenance costs. Electroniccontrollability eliminates the need fortuning. Microstaq’s products also offerlower overall system cost. The compa-ny is now in late stage developmentwork with major HVAC OEM manufac-turers. Sandeep Kumar, CEO. www.microstaq.com

Nanosolar has added new capital andbrought its total amount of funding todate to just below $500 million, as partof a strategic $300 million equity financ-ing. The Nanosolar Utility Panel givesutility-scale power producers the solarpanel technology to build and operatecost efficient solar power plants. AES(one of the world’s largest power com-panies), the Carlyle Group, EDF (theworld’s largest electric utility), and En-ergy Capital Partners signed off on in-vestments into Nanosolar throughRiverstone Holdings, EDF Renewables,and simultaneously formed AES Solar.A fraction of the oversubscribed roundalso included financial investors such asLone Pine Capital, the Skoll Foundation,and Pierre Omidyar’s fund as well asreturning investors GLG Partners, BeckEnergy, and Conergy founding investorGrazia Equity. Martin Roscheisen, CEO

Nujira, has closed $18 million in SeriesC funding led by new investor BankIn-vest Group, New Energy Solutions Fundand including existing investors Ama-deus Capital Partners, 3i, CambridgeCapital and Cambridge Angels. Thefunding enables Nujira to continue withthe commercialization of its Coolteqproducts for the cellular network andbroadcast markets and to accelerate

Atlantic Ventures, Massachusetts Tech-nology Development Corporation andLong River Ventures. Seed-stage inves-tors and Angel groups also participatedto bring the total GateRocket has nowraised to $4.5 million. This round of fi-nancing will enable the company to en-gage more customers and broadlydeploy its solution for FPGA verifica-tion and debug. Dave Orecchio, Presi-dent and CEO. www.gaterocket.com

GreenVolts, a provider of concentrat-ing photovoltaic (CPV) technology, hassecured $30 million in Series B fundingfrom Oak Investment Partners. Green-Volts is a utility-scale solar technologycompany focused on delivering whole-sale-distributed generation solutions thatcan produce the lowest cost solar ener-gy on a massive scale. A portion of thefunds will be used for its GV1 project,the world’s largest non-silicon CPVpower plant built as part of its agree-ment with Pacific Gas & Electric. Thefirst megawatt of GV1 will be deliveredlater this year. Bob Cart, founder andCEO.

Microstaq (see profile in April 2005 is-sue) has closed a $12.5 million Series Bfinancing round led by Good Energies,with follow-on investments from exist-ing investors Yaletown Venture Partnersand Polygon Group. Microstaq devel-ops MEMS-based flow control valvesthat enable material energy savings inHVAC, Refrigeration, Automotive, andother sectors.

Microstaq claims to be the first compa-ny to develop MEMS valves and com-mercialize them for macro-flow andmacro-pressure fluid control applica-tions at extreme temperatures. Thesecharacteristics make the products suit-able for a number of different applica-tions, including HVAC systems, whichrepresents roughly a quarter of all elec-tricity consumption in the U.S.

Funding & IPOs(Continued from page 13)



1,800 employees worldwide, publiclyheld e2v is much larger than privatelyheld QP Semiconductor, with sales ofabout $24 million and 90 employees.Both firms are solidly profitable withstrong balance sheets, and the productportfolios of the two companies are en-tirely complementary. John Stannard,QP Semiconductor co-founder andpresident; Keith Attwood, e2v’s CEO.www.e2v.com, www.qpsemi.com

Samsung has sent a letter to the Boardof SanDisk reiterating its proposal toacquire SanDisk for $26 per share incash, which would deliver an immedi-ate cash premium of 93% over SanD-isk’s closing share price on September4, 2008.

Tegal (NASDAQ: TGAL), a manufac-turer of plasma etch and deposition sys-tems, has signed an agreement withAlcatel Micro Machining Systems(AMMS) and Alcatel-Lucent to acquiretheir Deep Reactive Ion Etch (DRIE)and Plasma Enhanced Chemical Va-por Deposition (PECVD) products, andthe related IP, directed at 3D wafer-lev-el packaging applications. The restrict-ed stock and cash deal, valued at $5million, is expected to close later thismonth. At closing, Tegal will pay toAMMS $1 million in cash and $4 mil-lion worth of newly issued shares ofTegal common stock.

The agreement calls for the continuedsupport by AMMS of the existing in-stalled base of DRIE tools in use byMEMS and integrated device manufac-turers. Tegal will continue the develop-ment of the AMMS DRIE product line,including the integration of the AMMSprocess modules on its Compact bridgeplatform and the completion of a 300mmprocess chamber. Thomas Mika, Chair-man, President and CEO of Tegal.www.tegal.com, www.alcatelmicromachining.com

XtremeEDA, an Ottawa-based profes-sional services company specializing inthe verification and design of ASICs and

Netherlands. Existing investors TridentCapital and Emerald Technology Ven-tures also participated. This investmentaccompanies a recently awarded $4.97million grant from the State of Ohio’sThird Frontier Projects, which will beused to further improve the Company’smanufacturing technologies. The Com-pany operates a 2 Megawatt roll-to-rollpilot production line and is building a 25Megawatt roll-to-roll production line tomanufacture flexible and lightweightphotovoltaic products. Xunming Deng,CEO. www.xunlight.com ■

Mergers & AcquisitionsFreescale has signed a definitive agree-ment to purchase Intoto, a provider ofsoftware platform products for net-working and communications equipmentmanufacturers. Terms were not dis-closed. Freescale intends to apply Into-to’s technology and talent to createhigh-performance applications and soft-ware components optimized to improvesystem performance, streamline devel-opment and enhance software supportfor its QorIQ multicore communicationsplatforms. QorIQ platforms are Frees-cale’s new brand of communicationsprocessors designed to take embeddedmulticore to new levels of adoption.Lynelle McKay, SVP & GM, Freescale’sNetworking & Multimedia Group.www.freescale.com

International Rectifier has rejectedVishay unsolicited, non-binding proposalto acquire all of the outstanding sharesof IR for $21.22 per share in cash. TheBoard believes that the proposal byVishay does not value the Company andits future prospects appropriately.www.irf.com

QP Semiconductor, a provider of mis-sion-critical ICs for the military, aero-space and high reliability industries, hasagreed to be acquired by e2v technolo-gies, a developer of high technologycomponents and sub-systems. Withsales of approximately $360 million and

customer supply agreements since be-ginning high-volume manufacturing inMarch of this year and is supplying NiZncells into multiple markets includingpower tool, lawn and garden, consum-er AA, military and light electric vehi-cles (LEV).

PowerGenix’s NiZn cells pack one-thirdmore power and energy than existingrechargeable alkaline cells. The compa-ny’s cells have also received compliance,under third-party testing, with the Eu-ropean Union’s Reduction of HazardousMaterials (RoHS) and Battery Directiverequirements. In the U.S., the Recharge-able Battery Recycling Corporation(RBRC), which represents 90% of theglobal battery industry, recently expand-ed its recycling program for the first timein seven years to include PowerGenix’sNiZn, the most recyclable rechargeablechemistry on the market. Dan Squiller,CEO.

Runcom, a pioneer in OFDMA-basedsilicon for user terminals and base sta-tions that comply with the IEEE802.16e-2005 standard for WiBro and MobileWiMAX applications, has secured $10million in Series C funding from TLcomCapital. This is only the second roundof financing for Runcom. The previousinvestment round currently held bySMAC Partners from Germany andConcord from Israel was executed in2000. Runcom is already profitable.

Runcom’s RNA200 ASIC was the firstand most popular Mobile WiMAX com-pliant ASIC in the market for user ter-minals with more than 250,000 sold. TheRNU2000 Base Station System on Boardwas first in the market as well with morethan 1,000 fielded. Dr. Zion Hadad,founder and CEO.

Xunlight, developer of low-cost andflexible thin-film silicon solar modules,has received $11 million of additionalfinancing from institutional investors.The investment was led by Rabo Ven-tures, a division of Rabobank, a top 25global financial institution based in the



Tec’s fingerprint sensors in its next de-sign cycle in late 2009. AuthenTec an-ticipates an impact to its sales will occurin 2H’09. The business of this custom-er represented approximately 40% ofAuthenTec’s revenue in Q2’08 and isexpected to represent approximately 30to 35% of revenue in Q3’08.www.authentec.com

ChipMOS LTD. (NASDAQ: IMOS)announced that its consolidated subsid-iary, MODERN MIND TECHNOLOGYLIMITED, has completed the US$130million investment commitment to Chip-MOS TECHNOLOGIES (Shanghai)LTD. with the injection of the remain-ing US$7.5 million registered capital inearly August. ChipMOS is a provider ofsemiconductor testing and assemblyservices with facilities in Hsinchu andSouthern Taiwan Science Parks in Tai-wan and Shanghai.

Initially, US$250 million of registeredcapital for ChipMOS Shanghai wascommitted by the Company. The Com-pany sought approval for reduction ofregistered capital to US$130 million andsuch approval was granted by theShanghai Foreign Investment Commis-sion in July 2008. The Company doesnot believe that the reduction will ad-versely affect planned operations ofChipMOS Shanghai. The reduction ofthe investment commitment and thecompletion of the investment mean thatChipMOS will not be required to makean additional US$120 million investmentprior to December 7, 2008. www.chipmos.com

Focus Enhancements (NASDAQ:FCSE) has filed a voluntary petition forrelief under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bank-ruptcy Code. Six of the company’s sev-en Board members have resigned. BrettMoyer, President and CEO. www.focusinfo.com

NeoMagic (Nasdaq: NMGC) announceda cessation of efforts to raise additionalcapital. As a result, NeoMagic is mak-ing efforts to wind-down its operations

FPGAs, has merged with ESLX, a US-based company offering design and ed-ucational services at the electronicsystem-level (ESL) Now a wholly-owned subsidiary of XtremeEDA, ESLXhas been renamed and will operate as aUS-based company, XtremeEDA USA.The combined companies will offer cus-tom solutions across the full spectrumof the electronics design chain for ar-chitectural modeling, IP integration andverification of highly complex chips andsystems. Claude Cloutier, president ofXtremeEDA; Jack Donovan, presidentof XtremeEDA USA. www.xtreme-eda.com ■

Business & FinancialsAlliance Semiconductor’s Board hasdetermined to begin proceedings to dis-solve the corporation. The company hasfor some time been considering wheth-er to re-invest in another business or toliquidate and distribute its net assets toshareholders. President and CEO, MelKeating, has resigned to further reducethe Company’s costs, continuing thesubstantial cost reductions since theCompany sold its operating businessesin fiscal 2007.

AuthenTec (NASDAQ: AUTH), a pro-vider of fingerprint sensors and solu-tions, updated revenue estimates for Q3and FY2008 and reported the loss of a2009 design-in opportunity at a signifi-cant PC customer. Based on order trendsand discussions with customers, Au-thenTec now expects Q3’08 revenue torange between $18.2 and $18.5 millionand FY2008 revenue to range between$69 and $71 million. This represents anincrease from the $15.1 million report-ed in Q3’07 and $52.3 million reportedfor fiscal 2007.

Additionally, AuthenTec has been noti-fied by a significant PC customer that itdoes not presently plan to use Authen-

and has terminated employment for sub-stantially all of its operational and engi-neering employees in all worldwidelocations. Beginning September 19,2008, management, acting based upona plan approved by the Board, eliminat-ed 52 positions. www.neomagic.com

NVIDIA announced a workforce reduc-tion to allow for continued investmentin strategic growth areas. As a result,NVIDIA expects to eliminate approxi-mately 360 positions worldwide, orabout 6.5% of its global workforce.NVIDIA will continue to invest in se-lective high-growth opportunities like itsCUDA parallel computing technologyand Tegra mobile single-chip computer.Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO.www.nvidia.com

NXP has announced a redesign programthat will bring NXP to a healthy finan-cial situation and position the companyfor future growth. The changes comein response to a challenging economicenvironment, a weak US dollar, and thereduction in size of the company aftermoving its wireless business into a jointventure with STMicroelectronics.

The redesign program includes majorreduction of NXP’s manufacturing base,its central R&D, and support functions.This program is expected to affect ap-proximately 4,500 people globally andwill result in annualized savings of $550million. The restructuring cost will re-sult in an estimated cash out of $800million.

Moving forward, NXP will focus on itsAutomotive, Identification, Home, andMultiMarket businesses where it has ahigh share of innovative products andmarket leadership positions. The rede-sign measures will establish NXP witha strong base to achieve its mid-termtargets to deliver profitable growth with15% EBITA and positive cash flow.

Changes to the manufacturing opera-tions reflect NXP’s long term asset-lightstrategy, the need for a balanced

M&A(Continued from page 15)



Market ResearchWorldwide sales of semiconductorsgrew by 7.6% to $22.2 billion in Julyfrom July 2007 sales of $20.6 billion.Sales grew by 2.8% from June whensales were $21.6 billion. Year-to-datesales through July were $148.3 billion,an increase of 5% from the same peri-od of 2007 when sales were $141.3 bil-lion. Sales of DRAMs and NAND flashmemory continued to decline as a resultof continuing price erosion. Total semi-conductor sales excluding memoryproducts increased by 11.6% year-on-year and by 3.2% sequentially.

300mm for the first time accounts forthe largest share of wafer manufactur-ing capacity and actual wafers pro-cessed, with 44% of total capacity and47% of total silicon processed. Overallcapacity utilization remains high at 89%with leading edge above 95%. Consumerelectronics, PCs and cell phones accountfor about 80% ofchip demand. LCDTV units are pro-jected to increase32% this year, anddigital set top box-es and digital stillcameras will bothbe up around 20%,with PC unitgrowth of about13% and cell

geographical cost base and commitmentto ongoing customer programs. Theprogram entails the migration to moreadvanced production processes and re-duction of excess capacity in older tech-nologies, while maintaining a strongmanufacturing presence in Europe. NXPplans to consolidate the majority of itsproduction to two higher capability Eu-ropean fabs: Nijmegen and Hamburg,and to SSMC in Singapore.

As a result, four factories are plannedto be sold or closed. The fab in Fishkill,New York, USA will be closed ultimate-ly in 2009. Additionally, two other fac-tories are planned to be closed by 2010:the “ICN5” part of the NXP facility inNijmegen, Netherlands, and part of the“ICH” fab of the Hamburg facility, Ger-many. NXP’s fab in Caen, France willbe put on the market for sale.

After the restructuring, NXP will invest16 to 17% of sales in R&D, which is inline with leading semiconductors com-panies. The changes will lead to a re-duction in annual operating expenses of$250 million and are expected to be im-plemented mostly during 2009. Fransvan Houten, CEO. www.nxp.com

Transmeta (NASDAQ: TMTA) has ini-tiated a process to seek a potential saleof the Company, with the assistance ofPiper Jaffray & Co., after actively ex-ploring a full range of strategic alterna-tives over the past few months and afterstrengthening its balance sheet. Thisyear, as a result of its successful licens-ing activities, Transmeta will collect atleast $265 million of cash payments forits IP and patents.

Transmeta has also entered into twoagreements with Intel relating to the li-censing of Transmeta technologies andIP. Pursuant to these two agreements,Transmeta expects to receive cash pay-ments from Intel totaling $91.5 millionbefore the end of Transmeta’s currentfiscal quarter ending September 30,2008. Les Crudele, president and CEO.www.transmeta.com ■

phone growth of over 10%. www.sia-online.org

North America-based manufacturersof semiconductor equipment posted$884 million in orders in August 2008and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.83, accord-ing to SEMI. The three-month averageof worldwide bookings in August 2008was $884 million, about even with thefinal July 2008 level of $889 million, andabout 36% less than the $1.37 billion inorders posted in August 2007. The three-month average of worldwide billings inAugust 2008 was $1.07 billion, about1% less than the final July 2008 level of$1.08 billion, and almost 37% less thanthe August 2007 billings level of $1.68billion. www.semi.org

Worldwide semiconductor manufac-turing equipment billings reached$7.83 billion in Q2’08, 26% less thanQ1’08 and 29% less than the same quar-ter a year ago, reports SEMI. Worldwide

WW Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment Billings ($B)

2Q08/1Q08 2Q08/2Q07Region 2Q’08 1Q’08 2Q’07 (Q/Q) (Y/Y)Europe 0.52 0.73 0.62 -29% -15%China 0.47 0.81 1.22 -42% -61%Japan 1.93 2.39 2.06 -19% -6%N. America 1.25 1.84 1.51 -32% -17%Korea 1.41 1.74 1.77 -19% -20%Taiwan 1.45 2.37 3.20 -39% -55%ROW 0.80 0.67 0.63 19% 26%Total 7.83 10.56 11.01 -26% -29%Source: SEMI/SEAJ September 2008

PC Shipments By Region And Form Factor (in millions), 2007-2012

FormRegion Factor 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012USA Desktop & 37.0 35.5 33.7 32.6 31.1 29.6

x86 ServerPortables 30.0 35.3 41.1 47.5 54.1 61.1Total 67.0 70.8 74.8 80.2 85.2 90.7

Int’l Desktop & 124.1 127.7 133.0 141.1 147.6 154.7x86 ServerPortables 78.0 112.8 146.2 180.3 209.0 237.2Total 202.0 240.5 279.2 321.3 356.6 391.9

WW Desktop & 161.1 163.2 166.6 173.7 178.7 184.3x86 ServerPortables 108.0 148.2 187.4 227.8 263.1 298.3

Total 269.1 311.4 354.0 401.5 441.8 482.6

Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker, September 2008



do battle with ARM. There will be noclear semiconductor maker “winner” inthe short run. www.instat.com

The HomePNA Alliance announcedthat more leading North American tel-cos are deploying its technology and thatHomePNA was installed in more NorthAmerican homes in the last quarter thanany other coax home networking solu-tion. In addition, HomePNA announcedthat TELUS, the $9 billion Canadian tele-com company, has chosen the HomeP-NA 3.1 technology for its TELUS TVservice offering. HomePNA delivers datathroughput of up to 320 Mbps over ex-isting coax wires. www.homepna.org

HomeGrid Forum announced contin-ued progress and cooperation towardsadvancement of the International Tele-communication Union’s StandardizationSector (ITU-T) G.hn next generationhome networking standard. The mem-bers of the ITU-T’s G.hn RapporteurGroup are creating a specification for asingle MAC/PHY technology that canrun over coaxial cable, phone lines, orpower lines. homegridforum.org ■

New ProductsAdvent Solar has unveiled Advent So-lar Ventura Technology, its cell-to-mod-ule solar architecture. Ventura SolarTechnology provides a platform-leveldesign by combining Emitter-WrapThrough (EWT) back-contact cells withsemiconductor device manufacturingmethods to create a highly scalable plat-form for module manufacturing.

With Ventura Technology, Advent Solarwill develop solar cells and modules thatdeliver high energy output by optimiz-ing silicon light capture, and dramati-cally improving cell and module-levelconnectivity to minimize resistive loss-es. The architecture provides higher cell-to-module efficiency, while using thinnersilicon wafers to reduce costs.

semiconductor equipment bookingsreached $6.99 billion in Q2’08, 30% lessthan the same quarter a year ago, and13% less than the bookings figure forQ1’08. www.semi.org

Worldwide PC shipments are project-ed to grow by 15.7% in 2008 to reach311 million units, reports IDC. Growthwill remain in double-digits through2011, with growth above 9% in 2012,boosting annual shipments to over 482million in 2012. ■

Emerging TrendsiRex has launched the iRex 1000 seriesDigital Reader. Although the iRex iLi-ad products with their larger screen andsuperior functionality have been suc-cessful, the company recognized theneed for a new generation solution forbusiness. The result is the iRex 1000series, offering superior functionalityand a 10.2-inch screen size to allow easyreading and referencing of documentsfrom A4 Powerpoint presentations to so-phisticated PDF files and from HTMLto TXT and JPEG.

Weighing less than 570 grams and only1.2cm deep, the 1000 series is an opensystem, which synchronizes easily withthe PC and is able to read all commonformats. The large display has 16 greytones and storage capacity is deliveredvia a changeable 1GB SD card. Thechargeable built in Li-Ion battery hassufficient power to last for several days.iRex was founded in 2005 as a spin-offfrom Philips The iRex team developedthe electronic paper display for the SonyLibrie in 2004. Hans Brons, CEO.www.irextechnologies.com

Ultra-mobile computing could faroutsell desktop and notebook PCs in thelong run, and is now garnering muchattention from semiconductor firms,reports In-Stat. Intel is gearing up to

By eliminating the front grid, more sun-light becomes available for electricalconversion. EWT provides higher lightcapture and efficient distribution of en-ergy to the backside contacts. The Ven-tura architecture combines the EWTback contact cell design with MMA todeliver a scalable, high output moduleplatform. Monolithic Module Assembly(MMA) enables fully automated mod-ule assembly, applying proven, high vol-ume, high precision semiconductor-stylemanufacturing techniques. Peter Green,president and CEO. www.adventsolar.com

Ambric has introduced its Ambric RapidMedia Processing (RMP) platform, acollection of five elements: the Am2000family of Massively Parallel ProcessingArray (MPPA) devices; the aDesignertool suite and libraries; the Am2045 GTfamily of reference boards; a rich set ofcodec IP content; and the OpenVIScompliance specification, which enablesinteroperability of codecs under a com-mon host application and hardware plat-form. Many customers and third partyIP providers are adopting the RMP plat-form to create a range of interoperablecodecs and video processing IP.www.ambric.com

Analog Devices has created a MEMSmicrophone capable of high-fidelity au-dio/video playback, conference calling,TIA-920-compliant VoIP, voice recog-nition, and other functions. ADI com-bined audio applications know-how withMEMS technology to design a new fam-ily of microphones with the industry’shighest SNR of greater than 61-dB A-weighted. Today, the highest qualitysound available in a cell phone is just 55dB. The new omni-directional input mi-crophones are available with digital out-put or analog output and deliver theindustry’s flattest frequency responsefrom 100 Hz to greater than 15kHz.Today, MEMS microphones account fora bit less than 10% of the total marketin units, but shipments are expected toincrease by 32% yearly over the next 4

Market Research(Continued from page 17)



desktop applications. As the first digitalcontrollers to offer up to 8-phase con-trol, the CHL8316 and CHL8318 con-trollers use a number of patent-pendingdigital control techniques to meet over90% power efficiency levels across vir-tually all load ranges. CHiL has also in-troduced the CHL8510 server driver, anew high-frequency MOSFET gate driv-er designed to support these new addi-tions to the company’s family ofmultiphase digital controllers.

At currents ranging from 30-40A, Chilsimultaneously meets transient controlrequirements and increases server pow-er efficiency by about 8%, which re-sults in a 150W reduction at the voltageregulator level alone on a typically con-figured blade server. The 6-phaseCHL8316 and 8-phase CHL8318 con-trollers are $2.49 and $3.29 respective-ly @ 1Ku. The CHL8510 MOSFETdriver is $0.49 @ 1Ku. Ram Sudireddy,president and CEO. www.chilsemi.com

ClariPhy will demonstrate its all-digitalCMOS 10-Gbps maximum likelihoodsequence detection (MLSD) technolo-gy in an XFP application at ECOC 2008,Europe’s largest conference on opticalcommunications. The demonstrationwill be in combination with SumitomoElectric’s uncooled directly modulatedlaser technology. ClariPhy’s MLSD PHYis a low-power, all-digital CMOS IC thatdelivers optimal electronic dispersioncompensation (EDC) performance inoptical links ranging from a few metersin data centers up to 100s of kilometersin long haul telecom networks. Dr. PaulVoois, cofounder and CEO. www.clariphy.com

ClearSpeed has announced industry-leading results in the acceleration ofcomputationally intensive financial codessuch as credit risk analysis. Benchmark-ing a number of customer applicationson ClearSpeed’s latest product, theCATS-700, ClearSpeed showed resultson 64-bit codes that far exceed all othersolutions in the market. In one exam-

years to exceed 1 billion units in 2012,according to iSuppli. Samples now.Mark Martin, VP, Micromachined Prod-ucts Division. www.analog.com/mic

Cambridge Analog Technologies, adeveloper of ultra-low-power high-per-formance analog ICs, has successfullytaped out low-power ADCs and digitalPLLs using Cadence Virtuoso IC 6.1.3,the latest version of the Cadence cus-tom IC platform. Kush Gulati, president,CEO and co-founder.

Celeno Communications has intro-duced its CL1300 WiFi Chip for serviceproviders, which can reliably stream upto four concurrent and different HDstreams with whole-home coveragewhile maintaining wire-like quality ofexperience. The CL1300 is a standards-based 802.11 SoC targeted at wirelessvideo home networking access pointapplications that includes full 802.11PHY and MAC functionality, a wirelessnetwork processor and an embeddedCPU.

Powered by Celeno’s patent pendingOptimizAIR technology, the solutionsupports extreme range of over 50meters (150 feet) through multiple wallsand ceilings with enough throughput for4 HD streams and with no packet lossor visual artifacts. The CL1300 alsodemonstrates superior performance withthird party client chipsets, 802.11a/b/gor 802.11n and even with very low-costsingle antenna client designs.

OptimizAIR integrates over a standard802.11 core patent-pending Beam Form-ing MIMO to dramatically increaserange, Channel Aware TransmissionShaping to boost robustness and zeroout packet loss and Channel AwareScheduling to achieve HD quality of ser-vice. Shipping now. Gilad Rozen, CEO.www.celeno.com

CHiL Semiconductor has introducedtwo new high-efficiency digital multi-phase buck controllers for VR11.1-com-pliant server and gaming/enthusiast

ple, a Japanese Tier One investmentbank’s 64-bit credit risk analysis codewas accelerated from 50 hours on astandard x86 desktop machine to 10minutes on a single CATS-700 1U node,a speedup of 300X. In other examples,speedups of 80X and 91X were achievedcompared to the latest 8-core 3GHz x86servers on 64-bit Monte Carlo codes.

The CATS-700 delivers 1.152 TFLOPSof 64-bit floating point performance ina 1U enclosure. It includes 24GBytesof ECC DRAM, typically consumes300W and is programmed in C. A single42U rack half filled with CATS-700 andhalf filled with standard servers wouldcost around $600K and provide perfor-mance equivalent to 40 racks filled withthe latest 3GHz 8-core x86 servers. TheCATS-700 system would deliver initialcapital savings of over $9M and TCOsavings over 3 years of over $11M. TheCATS-700 solution is also only 1/40th ofthe physical size and consumes 96% lessenergy than the unaccelerated system ofequivalent performance.

These results far exceed what is possi-ble with the latest 64-bit versions of Celland graphics processors. For a 42U rackwith equal numbers of servers and ac-celerators, the CATS-700 solution is 3xfaster and 2.8x more power efficientthan a system using IBM’s latest 64-bitQS22 Cell blade, and 2.7x faster and 5xmore power efficient than a system us-ing Nvidia’s latest 64-bit Tesla 1U GPUserver. www.clearspeed.com

DS2 has developed major new featuresfor its 200Mbps powerline communi-cations chipsets to enable 4X fastertransmission speeds than standard wire-less networks. The upgrade enables ser-vice providers like BT, Portugal Telecomand Telefónica to offer affordable andfully self-installable IPTV services.

Key new features include automaticmulti-cast capabilities, on-chip supportDSL as TR069 remote network man-agement features, and complete LLTDprotocol integration with Windows Vista



dition to the standard single IC configu-ration, two NMI325 ICs can be usedtogether to create a full diversity solu-tion, thereby dramatically improvingsensitivity and mobility performance.

Key features of the NMI325 include -99dBm sensitivity, 120dB of variablegain, and greater than 55dB of adjacentchannel selectivity. The SoC includes aUHF-band radio, ISDB-T one-segmentdemodulator, plus all necessary memo-ry and consumes less than 60mW ofpower. No other external memory, bal-uns or loop filters are required. Sam-ples now; production in Q1. MohyAbdelgany, president and CEO. www.newportmediainc.com

Nuvoton, a recently formed subsidiaryof Winbond, has introduced theWAU8822 stereo-audio CODEC for por-table-audio applications. Novoton hasshipped more than one billion voice andaudio chips in the last 20+ years underthe Winbond name. Winbond spun offthe unit in July 2008. Ike Saeed, VP ofmarketing. www.nuvoton.com

picoChip has expanded its massivelymulti-core product family with the in-troduction of the PC202-10, PC203-10and PC205-10 multi-core DSPs, whichdeliver processing power of up to262GIPS and 35GMACS. The PC20xx-10 devices are based on the same multi-core picoArray architecture as existingPC20x products, but with a larger ar-ray of processors, whilst retaining fullcode compatibility. The devices delivera 40X advantage in price-performance,and 8X higher absolute performance,compared with traditional DSPs. Theperformance uplift is achieved by in-creasing the number of processor ele-ments in the devices from 248 to 273.The PC205-10 is at the heart of pico-Chip’s single-chip WiMAX solution, theonly offering capable of delivering trueIO-MIMO, a critical requirement ofmobile WiMAX. Doug Pulley, CTO andco-founder. www.picoChip.com

users. DS2 is also developing a fullybackward interoperable 3rd generationpowerline technology that will providethroughput speeds of 400Mbps. VictorDominguez, VP Sales. www.ds2.es

IBM has introduced the semiconductorindustry’s first computationally-basedprocess for production of next genera-tion 22nm semiconductors. Known asComputational Scaling (CS), a processthat enables the production of complex,powerful and energy-efficient semicon-ductors at 22nms and beyond, this newinitiative will feature support from sev-eral of IBM’s key partners initially in-cluding Mentor Graphics and ToppanPrinting.

Computational Scaling uses mathemati-cal techniques to modify the shape ofthe masks and characteristics of the il-luminating source at each layer of anIC. IBM’s CS solution is an ecosystemthat includes the following components:a new resolution enhancement technique(RET) that uses source-mask optimiza-tion (SMO); virtual silicon processingwith TCAD; predictive process model-ing; design-rule generation and corre-sponding models; design tooling; designenablement; complex illumination; vari-ance control; and mask fabrication,along with necessary partnerships. IBMhas partnered with Mentor Graphicson a new resolution enhancement tech-nique to enable cost-effective printingof 2D patterns for the 22nm semicon-ductor technology generation. www.ibm.com/technology

Newport Media has unveiled a 65nmCMOS single-chip solution for the mo-bile version of Japan’s Integrated Ser-vices Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial(ISDB-T) digital television standard. TheNMI325 Sundance J mobile digital TVreceiver integrates an RF tuner, demod-ulator and all required memory into asingle monolithic CMOS device. In ad-

Plastic Logic has previewed the PlasticLogic reader, an 8.5 x 11-inch devicefeaturing a large, readable display. Thedevice is thinner than a pad of paper,lighter than many business periodicals,and offers a high-quality reading expe-rience, better than alternatives of paperor other electronic readers on the mar-ket today.

The Plastic Logic reader supports a fullrange of business document formats,such as Microsoft Word, Excel andPowerpoint, and Adobe PDFs, as wellas newspapers, periodicals and books.It has an easy gesture-based user inter-face and powerful software tools thatwill help business users to organize andmanage their information.

Plastic Logic’s display technology, firstdeveloped at Cambridge University, useshigh-resolution transistor arrays on flex-ible plastic substrates, manufactured ata low temperature. The reader incorpo-rates E Ink technology for great read-ability and features low powerconsumption and long battery life. ThePlastic Logic reader is scheduled to shipin the Q2’09. Plastic Logic’s go-to-mar-ket strategy will include direct e-com-merce as well as partnerships withpublishing, distribution, retail, and oth-er information services companies. Ri-chard Archuleta, CEO. www.plasticlogic.com

RMI has launched a complete productsolution for Media Personal NavigationDevices (mPND), driving lower costGPS implementations. Based on the RMIAlchemy Au1250 and Au1210 SoC Pro-cessors, these high-performance pow-er-optimized processing engines allowmPND manufacturers the ability to dif-ferentiate their products with new con-sumer-centric innovations including avariety of performance, power and in-tegration features previously unavailableand to avoid the eroding margins thatare typical of single-purpose GPSdevices.

New Products(Continued from page 19)



cy (1-125 MHz), operating voltage(1.8V, 2.5V, 3.3V), frequency tolerance(±100 PPM and ±500 PPM) and stand-by or output enable modes. Samplesnow; production in Q4. Piyush Sevalia,VP of marketing. www.sitime.com

Staccato has introduced the Ripcord2family of single-chip, all-CMOS solu-tions targeted for WiMedia UWB andWireless USB applications. This second-generation family is the industry’s firstimplementation utilizing 65nm CMOSprocess technology. Staccato’s Rip-cord2 supports multiple protocols, in-cluding Wireless USB, High-SpeedBluetooth, Wireless IP and Wireless Au-dio/Video. In addition, several featureswere added to Ripcord2 including sup-port for WiMedia Band Groups 1, 3 and6, as well as the capability for detectionand avoidance (DAA). Staccato has al-ready shipped samples and developmentkits to key customers and is currentlydeveloping several reference designs tobe released in the coming months. Mar-ty Colombatto, CEO. www.staccatocommunications.com

Tilera has introduced its TILEPro fam-ily, comprised of two new processors.The TILEPro family improves the per-formance of highly threaded and shared-memory applications through theintroduction of Dynamic DistributedCache (DDC) technology. Further, theTILEPro processors have twice the L1cache size, double the L2 cache asso-ciativity, and incorporate an additionalon-chip communication network dedi-cated to cache management. The newprocessors are equipped with additionalinstruction set extensions for audio andvideo that deliver up to 2X improvementin multimedia signal processing.

The new devices offer double the per-formance of Tilera’s first generationTILE64 processors, which have beenemployed by more than 45 customers,with less than a 5% increase in powerconsumption. The TILEPro64 delivers35X better performance per-watt over

The mPND reference design from RMIimplements the lowest cost alternativesto replace expensive GPS modules. TheAu1250 media processor provides am-ple processing headroom to perform thecomplex baseband function in software,removing the need for external basebandhardware. For soft GPS, RMI workswith GPS partners such as CSR, a leaderin software GPS technology. For HostGPS, RMI works with GPS partnerssuch as Nemerix and Atheros. For hard-ware GPS, RMI works with partnerssuch as SiGe Semiconductor. BehroozAbdi, president and CEO. www.RMICorp.com

Silicon Labs has entered the consumertiming market with the introduction ofthe industry’s highest stability 100%CMOS oscillator, offering a replacementfor crystal oscillators (XOs) with short-er lead times, lower cost, higher reli-ability and higher performance. The newSi500 family has the widest frequencyrange, widest selection of differential andsingle-ended clock formats, low totalpower consumption and the lowest jit-ter of any oscillator targeted at high vol-ume consumer applications. Theproduct family supports frequency sta-bility options ranging from +/-100 to +/-150 ppm. Samples now; production inQ4. Dave Bresemann, VP. www.silabs.com

SiTime has introduced the world’s thin-nest clock oscillator, which is one-thirdthe height of quartz-based oscillators.The SiT8002XT measures 3.5 mm by3.0 mm, with a typical height of 0.25mmand is packaged in a four-pad XLLGApackage. The devices offers 10X betterreliability and shock resistance thanquartz oscillators.

The SiT8002XT is fully factory-pro-grammable, allowing samples to be de-livered in 24 to 48 hours, which issignificantly faster than the 8- to16-week lead times for quartz oscillators.Factory-programmable features includea highly accurate output clock frequen-

the Intel Quad-Core Xeon and 15X theperformance of TI’s DaVinci DM6467series DSP.

The TILEPro64 is a multicore embed-ded processor that integrates 64 full-fea-tured cores, four 800MHz DDR2memory controllers and a complete ar-ray of high speed I/O and PCI Expressinterfaces. It can encode 12 streams of1080p H.264 video (baseline profile) andexecute over 20Gbps of pattern match-ing in networking applications. TheTILEPro36 offers the same new fea-tures as the TILEPro64, scaled to 36cores, and is ideal for mid-range (1-to-5 Gbps) networking and security appli-cations, video-conferencing endpoints,and midrange multimedia applications.It can deliver 5Gbps of Snort intrusionprevention processing and 6 streams ofH.264 1080p video encode (baselineprofile).

The 2.0 version of Tilera’s MulticoreDevelopment Environment supports theTILEPro family and includes enhance-ments to the development tools and run-time software. A new “zero overheadLinux” option offers all the benefits of arich Linux operating system environ-ment, with the timing predictability of astripped-down task scheduler. MDE 2.0also supports a “bare metal” program-ming environment with a thin serviceslayer for signal processing and data planeapplications. TILEPro64 samples nextmonth; TILEPro36 in Q4. Omid Taher-nia, president and CEO. tilera.com ■

Licensing & PartnershipsKotura, a provider of silicon photoniccomponents, announced that SunMicrosystems has signed a five year$14M development contract with Ko-tura for DARPA’s UltraperformanceNanophotonic Intrachip Communica-tions (UNIC) program. Previously, Sunannounced its participation in DARPA’s$44M program to advance a virtual su-percomputer using an on-chip networkof low-cost optical interconnects.



Licensing & Partnerships(Continued from page 21)

combined strengths of high performancedevices from NEC Electronics, like the8- to 32-bit microcontroller series, to-gether with robust and reliable applica-tion-specific, analog/mixed-signal chipsfrom ELMOS. www.necel.com,www.elmos.de

The Storage Networking IndustryAssociation (SNIA) has formed theSolid State Storage Initiative (SSSI),which will serve to foster the growthand success of the market for solid-statestorage in both commercial and consum-er environments. www.snia.org/sssi ■

Design WinsBroadLight announced that DASANhas selected BroadLight’s end-to-end(E2E) GPON technology in their FTTHproducts for deployment at HanaroTelecom planned for later this year.DASAN has incorporated BroadLight’sBL3458 4-port GPON OLT controllerfor OLT Equipment and the BL2345 forthe ONU. DASAN is the largest broad-band equipment manufacturer in Korea.Siemens acquired DASAN Networks inMay 2004. Didi Ivancovsky, Founderand VP of Marketing

Newport Media is providing the sys-tem solutions for Longcheer Holdings,a Chinese manufacturer of 2G and 3Gcellular handsets, upcoming release ofTV-enabled 2G handsets. The TV350GSM/GPRS handset supports the widelydeployed DVB-T digital television stan-dard using Newport Media’s NMI305DVB-T SOC. The DT100 GSM/GPRShandset supports DVB-H as well asDVB-T using the NMI310 DVB-T/H IC.

Kotura has been in mass production ofsilicon photonics components for morethan three years, and is an active partic-ipant in the IEEE 802.3 Higher SpeedStudy Group (HSSG), the Video Elec-tronics Standards Association (VESA)and the Silicon Photonics Alliance. Jean-Louis Malinge, CEO. www.kotura.com

NanoGram has selected OTB as oneof its contributing partners in buildingout the company’s solar pilot plant cur-rently under construction in Milpitas,CA. NanoGram will use the facility toscale-up their SilFoil technology for so-lar modules that will deliver the productperformance and reliability of wafer-based crystalline silicon modules at pric-es competitive with thin film modules.OTB has the process engineering knowhow as well as proprietary inkjet print-ing and laser technologies to build theequipment that effectively produces thisnext generation solar cell with higherefficiency at lower costs. The Nano-Gram solar pilot plant is expected to becommissioned in Q2’09. Dr. KieranDrain, president and CEO. www.nanogram.com, www.otb-group.nl

NEC Electronics and ELMOS Semi-conductor are going to join forces dem-onstrated by entering into a worldwidelong-term partnership. The agreementwill encompass the joint development,cross-use of engineering and manufac-turing services as well as common mar-keting of products for the automotiveand industrial markets. Customers ofboth companies will benefit from the

The IT100 GSM/GPRS handset sup-ports the Brazilian ISDB-T mobile digi-tal television standard using the NMI320ISDB-T IC. Longcheer’s clients includemajor Chinese telecom companies suchas ZTE, Konka, TCL and Gionee.

Open-Silicon, a fabless ASIC compa-ny, has completed its 100th tapeout. Thecompany, founded in 2003, reached thishistoric milestone in its fifth year ofoperations. Naveed Sherwani, CEO andpresident. www.open-silicon.com

Siano’s DVB-H silicon receiver chipstogether with the SMS8021 internal chipantenna have been integrated into a newPersonal TV Media Player by Quantum,becoming the first connected PMP inthe world featuring OSF IPDC and OMABCAST personal mobile TV and GPSnavigation. The move introduces a newrealm in portable entertainment, intro-ducing high quality live mobile TV broad-casting of up to 30 channels onto aGPS-enabled device offering navigation,personal assistance and location based-services. Alon Ironi, CEO.

u-blox’s latest positioning engine, u-blox5, has been selected by Microsoft for anew “GPS Locator” USB stick, whichwill be bundled with the next release ofMapPoint, Microsoft’s business traveland map software package. The new u-blox 5 GPS chipset is a highly integrat-ed, cost-efficient GPS engine that offersusers accurate positioning in a smallpackage without compromising on per-formance. Nikolaos Papadopoulos, pres-ident of u-blox America. www.u-blox.com ■

Company FinancialsNext Qtr Current Qtr Last Qtr Yr-ago Qtr Sales

Company Symbol Outlook Sales Net Margin GM Sales Net Sales Net GM Growth Qtr EndingAvago n/a n/a 439 44.0 10% 39% 411 17.0 381 -167.0 -3% 15% 2Q08 2-AugGennum GND n/a 34 6.4 19% 76% 33 4.8 26 -1.5 73% 31% 3Q08 31-AugMetalink MTLK n/a 3 -6.6 -244% 63% 1 -9.8 3 -5.6 44% 8% 2Q08 30-Jun



Micron – DRAM Barometer

Qualcomm

SanDisk – Flash Barometer

TSMC – Foundry BarometerPhiladelphia SOX Index

Intel

Analog DevicesSTMicroelectronics



Startups In This Issue✔✔✔✔✔ Achronix – Ultra High Performance FPGAs

✔✔✔✔✔ Confluence Solar – Premium Quality, Low-Cost Single Crystal Silicon

✔✔✔✔✔ Enphase – Micro-Inverter-based Solar Energy Mgmt. Systems

✔✔✔✔✔ Immedia – Video ICs?

✔✔✔✔✔ Infinisim – High-speed, High Cap. SPICE-Accurate Simulator

✔✔✔✔✔ Lakota Technologies – Diodes for Power Electronics

✔✔✔✔✔ Nemochips – Mobile Multimedia Application Processors

✔✔✔✔✔ Passif – Unknown

✔✔✔✔✔ Powervation – Auto-control™ Digital Power ICs

✔✔✔✔✔ Quantum – Silicon Chips for Light Absorption & Emission

✔✔✔✔✔ SandLinks – Active-RFID (Class 4) Networks using UWB

✔✔✔✔✔ SiTune – Hybrid (universal) CMOS TV Tuner

✔✔✔✔✔ TJet – Manufacturing Equipment for OLED Displays

✔✔✔✔✔ Vubiq – 60GHz Radio Modules

✔✔✔✔✔ Wi-Chi – Energy Harvesting ICs

✔✔✔✔✔ WideSail – Error Correction Semiconductor IP

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