SEMICONDUCTOR TIMES JUNE 2010 / 1 ® JUNE 2010 FOCUSED ON EMERGING SEMICONDUCTOR COMPANIES VOL 15 ISSUE 6 chain, which offer to embedded The company is funded by the Radar Scope systems designers a complete digital founders, and is forming a series of solution for all small- and mid-size synergistic corporate partnerships. The Kalray production series. Acuity team consists of the founders Kalray was founded in July 2008 to plus contractors. develop “the next generation of Joel Monnier, Ph.D., (former VP, programmable ICs for embedded com- Director of R&D Central ST Micro- Acuity is currently producing two puting.” The company’s mission is “to electronics) ultra-stable low-pressure MEMS Piezoresistive sensor die that are provide a new programmable logic Paris area: targeted to replace existing piezoresis- technology to serve the market demand 86 rue de Paris, F - 91 400 Orsay in high performance & flexible ICs.” tive pressure sensor die and open new Grenoble area: applications requiring very accurate Kalray is a spin off from CEA and the 445 rue Lavoisier low-pressure measurements. incubators Incuballiance & Grain, F - 38 330 Montbonnot Saint Martin The AC3030 is an advanced, low- capitalizing on 20 years of R&D. The Tel: +33 (0)4 76 18 09 18 pressure (20 to 100 mBar full-scale) company has received strong support Fax: +33 (0)4 76 18 94 71 sensor die, primarily meant for low- from CEA and CEA Leti, which has www.kalray.eu resulted in signing a contract for pressure differential pressure applica- technology transfer on 17 patents and tions such as breathing, sleep apnea, creation of a joint laboratory. industrial, and instrumentation. The Startup Profiles device is available in 20, 50 and 100 The company has raised euro 2.5 mil- mbar FS versions. lion in first round funding from a pool of investors, grouped around Rhone Acuity The AC3050 is a lower pressure (10 Alpes Creation, CEA Valorisation and Acuity (see July 2008 profile) was mBar FS) version of the AC3030, pri- ACE Management. Kalray will be founded in 2007 by MEMS industry marily meant for even lower-pressure seeking an additional 10 million euro veterans Jim Knutti and Henry Allen funding round in 2010. as a fabless provider of high perfor- mance, MEMS-based pressure sensors Kalray products include a family of and other MEMS devices that offer IN THIS ISSUE massively parallel multi-core proces- expanded capabilities, reliability, and Radar Scope .................................... 1 sors along with their software tools a solid source of supply. Startup Profiles .............................. 1 People ........................................... 10 SIA Mar.2010 Global Sales ($B) SEMI’s N. American Equipment Bk/Bl Funding & IPOs ............................. 10 25.0 1600 1.4 Mergers & Acquisitions ............... 12 1400 1.2 20.0 Business & Financials ................... 13 1200 1 Market Research .......................... 14 15.0 1000 0.8 Emerging Trends .......................... 15 800 Bk/Bl Ratio 10.0 0.6 Dollars (Millions) Dollars New Products ............................... 15 600 0.4 Licensing & Partnerships ............. 17 5.0 400 0.2 Design Wins ................................. 17 200 0.0 0 0 Company Financials ..................... 18 3/09 4/09 5/09 6/09 7/09 8/09 9/09 10/09 11/09 12/09 1/10 2/10 3/10 Apr-09 May-09 Jun-09 Jul-09 Aug-09 Sep-09 Oct-09 Nov-09 Dec-09 Jan-10 Feb-10 Mar-10 (final) Apr-10 (prelim.) Stock Charts ................................. 19 America Europe Japan Asia Pacific Bookings Billings Book-to-Bill Copyright 2010, Pinestream Communications, Inc. 52 Pine Street, Weston, Massachusetts 02493 USA Tel 781.647.8800 Fax 781.647.8825 www.pinestream.com [email protected] 2 / JUNE 2010 SEMICONDUCTOR TIMES performance and system level MEMS Cognovo believes that the time is ap- Startup Profiles niches. A number of Sensor OEMs cur- proaching where the demands on ter- (Continued from page 1) rently use Acuity’s die. minals to support myriad modes of differential pressure applications such wireless operation (eg. LTE, HSPA+, low-pressure instrumentation in indus- Dr. Jim Knutti, founder, President and E-GPRS, GSM, TD-SCDMA, trial measurement, medical and HVAC CEO (previously founder, President CDMA2000, WiFi and WiMAX, etc.) applications. Added stability enables and CEO of Silicon Microstructures, require the use of reconfigurable archi- amplified pressure parts with ranges which was acquired by Elmos Semi- tectures. At the same time, the devel- down to 2.5mbar FS. conductor, and founder and Presi- opment of semiconductor technologies dent of Transensory Devices, which and processor architectures has reached The devices feature very low zero-drift merged with IC Sensors, where he the point where it is possible to create and tight parameter distribution, en- served as president, which was sub- user terminals built on SDR techniques abling very accurate low-pressure mea- sequently acquired by EG&G) that are competitive in both cost and surements and are especially key in Dr. Henry Allen, Vice Founder and VP power consumption. many amplified designs. They have a (previously founder and VP of very low-mass diaphragm, which over- Transensory Devices, VP, IC Sen- To capitalize on this vision, Cognovo comes g-force and vibration errors, im- sors, and founder and VP of Silicon has created a software architecture that proving accuracy and reducing the Microstructures) complements the capability of the lat- costs associated with correction est generation of flexible baseband pro- schemes. 47166 Crucillo Ct. cessing engines. At the heart of Fremont, CA 94539 Cognovo’s products are two decades The very small footprint (1.6 to 1.9 Tel: 510.943.6205, Fax: 510.894.7848 of experience in highly parallel proces- 2 mm ) reduces the effects of package www.AcuityMicro.com sor and tools development, combined stress and lowers chip costs while fea- with modem and protocol stack design turing sensitivity and stability exceed- in standards encompassing GSM, 3G, ing that of much larger traditional low Cognovo LTE and TD-SCDMA. pressure sensor die. Cognovo was formed in 2009 to “change the cellular and wireless in- The Cognovo SoftModem Platform is Acuity’s device structures rely on sev- dustries through Software Defined Mo- a fully programmable solution support- eral proprietary process steps to achieve dem (SDM) techniques.” Cognovo’s ing flexible multi-mode modems from higher stability while reducing die size. founding team formed TTPCom over Layer 4/NAS to Layer 0/PHY. The so- MEMS foundry Semefab fabricates the 20 years ago, which grew into the larg- lution delivers software-defined multi- wafers. Semefab is currently building est provider of IP in the cellular world. mode in comparable silicon area and a new separate MEMS fab to supple- TTPCom was floated on the London power consumption to the typical sin- ment its existing fab. Stock Exchange in October 2000, grew gle mode hardware designs that exist The primary competitors are vertically to 700 people with revenues in excess today and in a fraction of the time. Cog- integrated traditional MEMS sensor of US$100M, and was ultimately ac- novo licenses a range of products in- product companies. Acuity argues that quired by Motorola in 2006. cluding silicon designs, software and the emergence of a mature MEMS in- tools to support the Cognovo VSP- Post TTPCom, the Cognovo founders frastructure enables the company to op- based Softmodem Platform. decided to build a business around a erate as a fabless standard product software defined modem. Its search for The SoftModem Platform is comprised MEMS supplier without the develop- processor technology led to ARM and of Layer1 and Physical Layer process- ment, cost, capitalization and capacity in October 2009 Cognovo was formed ing carried out by the L1PHY Com- utilization burden of its vertically in- when ARM transferred its Vector Sig- pute Engine, supported by the L1PHY tegrated competitors. The company’s nal Processor (VSP) technology and runtime software, together with the products offers higher performance and VSP core engineering team to Cogno- Protocol Plane (P-Plane) processing stability. vo in return for an equity stake. Cog- subsystem and Protocol Framework. Additional product families are under novo is currently funded by the The modem hardware is a generic com- development and qualification. The founders and ARM. The company has puting platform, which means that im- company’s focus on high performance 30 employees. plementation of the actual Radio pressure will lead to other special Access Technologies (RAT) standard Copyright 2010, Pinestream Communications, Inc. 52 Pine Street, Weston, Massachusetts 02493 USA Tel 781.647.8800 Fax 781.647.8825 www.pinestream.com [email protected] SEMICONDUCTOR TIMES JUNE 2010 / 3 is purely a software development task. efficient means of controlling the in- de modems. Key advantages include The Protocol Framework is an object dividual PHY tasks running on the the team’s unique heritage, a combi- oriented software framework to sup- VSP, especially in low power states nation of low-power processor exper- port modular multi-mode protocol such as idle mode and sleep mode. tise from ARM and cellular modem stack development. expertise from TTPCom. Its fully Soft- The Protocol Plane (P-Plane) is an ware Defined Modem approach has Based on the Cognovo Vector Signal ARM processor-based subsystem de- key advantages in the multimode mo- Processor (VSP), the L1Phy Compute signed to support integration of multi- dem market (e.g. LTE plus legacy cel- Engine is a high-level programmable ple protocol stacks and efficient lular modes) where it achieves major computing platform for both Data- inter-RAT operation, coupled with in- advantages in die size, flexibility, and Plane and Control-Plane processing of telligent Layer 2 MAC data process- development efficiency. modern multi-mode wireless standards ing and movement at 100’s of Mbps. in cellular (GSM/E-GPRS, W-CDMA/ In April 2010, the first full release of TD-SCDMA, HSPA/HSPA+, LTE, Development of the modem is support- Cognovo’s technology was released to LTE-A), wireless (WiFi, WiMAX) and ed by two SDKs, one focused on Phys- selected customers for trials.