EE Times updates list of 60 emerging startups


The EE Times 60 Emerging Startups list, first published as the Silicon Strategies 60 Emerging Startups list in April 2004, has been updated to version 3.0 to reflect the latest corporate, commercial and technological conditions.

Some companies have dropped off the list, otherwise known as The Silicon 60, because they have been acquired; some have moved to an initial public offering of shares; and others have moved beyond the list with the passage of time. As they have matured other younger startups have been nominated to move off the EE Times radar list and onto the main list.

In version 3.0 of EE Times 60 Emerging Startups, editors have selected companies based on a mix of criteria including: technology, intended market, maturity, financial position and investment profile. Startups on the Silicon 60 list include companies involved in semiconductors, fab equipment, packaging, foundry, materials, MEMS and EDA software that made an impression. They are emerging companies to watch for a wide variety of reasons.

EE Times welcomes the following companies to the 60 Emerging Startups list version 3.0: Advanced Mask Inspection Inc., Ageia Technologies Inc., Athena Semiconductors Inc., Brion Technologies Inc., Conformative Systems Inc., Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc., Dafca Inc., Emerging Memory Technologies Inc., Frontier Silicon Ltd., Handshake Solutions NV, Luminescent Technologies Inc., Luxtera Inc., Micromem Technologies Inc., Morpho Technologies Inc., Multibeam Systems Inc., Nanotech Corp., Novelx Inc., O2IC Co. Ltd., Open-Silicon Inc., Pulsic Ltd., Replisaurus Technologies AB, Siano Mobile Silicon Ltd., Silistix Ltd., Straatum Processware Ltd., T-RAM Semiconductor Inc.

Readers are welcome to nominate their own emerging startups for inclusion on a future iteration of the EE Times 60 Emerging Startups list. Nominations should be accompanied by a short explanation supporting a company nomination. Send comments and nominations to Peter Clarke (pclarke@cmp.com) or Mark Lapedus (mlapedus@cmp.com).

Advanced Mask Inspection Inc. (Tokyo) A joint venture between NEC Corp. and Toshiba Corp. with funding from the Japanese government, AMI has been developing what it calls a novel 198-nm wavelength mask inspection system for the 65-nm manufacturing process node and beyond.

device that is intended to accelerate attributes of games software coding to support more life-like action and graphics. www.ageia.com

** Alereon Inc. (Austin, Texas), a fabless semiconductor company seeking to compete in the ultra wideband (UWB) market, raised $31.5 million in first round funding announced January 2004. www.alereon.com

* Analogix Semiconductor Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif., and Beijing, China) a start-up with operations split between Silicon Valley and Beijing, has introduced physical-layer transceiver ICs that can achieve up to 25-Gbit/s data rate over copper wire. www.analogix.com

* Apache Design Solutions Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) Apache is a provider of physical power integrity software. www.apache-da.com

* Arteris SA (Paris) is an intellectual-property vendor that is commercializing a packet-based on-chip network. It's founders are the beneficiaries of the sell off of a previous startup, Tsqware Inc. www.arteris.net

Athena Semiconductors Inc. (Fremont, Calif.) Greco-Indian startup has worked with Samsung Electronics' digital media R&D center to develop a single-chip RF CMOS transceiver for up to three input and output signals as part of a Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) approach to wireless LAN. www.athenasemi.com

* BridgeCo AG (Zurich, Switzerland) is developing consumer electronics based on proprietary networking and signal processor technology. The company has received investment from Intel Capital in multiple rounds. www.bridgeco.net

Brion Technologies Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) has developed a lithography simulation platform, dubbed Tachyon, which claims to be faster than the competitive products, according to a paper at SPIE 2005. www.briontech.com

* Cambridge Semiconductor Ltd. (Cambridge, England) was founded in August 2000 as a fabless power semiconductor spin-off company from the local university. It appointed former LSI Logic executive and Cantab-man David Baillie as its chief executive officer in March 2004. www.camsemi.co.uk

Conformative Systems Inc. (Austin, Texas), a developer of an XML processor, has accepted former Sun Microsystems executive, John Shoemaker, on to its board of directors. www.conformative.com

** CriticalBlue Ltd. (Edinburgh, Scotland) EDA and IP for hardware acceleration, co-processing. www.criticalblue.com

Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc. (Foxborough, Mass.) has demonstrated the use of an implantable microelectrode array that combined with a digital signal processing system forms its so-called "BrainGate" interface, which has been used to allow thought to control a television. www.cyberkineticsinc.com

Dafca Inc. (Framingham Mass.), a startup provider of EDA software tools, has received grant of $1.9 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The money is to fund a three-year program to extend the applicability of the company's reconfigurable infrastructure platform for system-on-chip devices. STMicroelectronics is one of 14 companies that have signed letters of intent to use Dafca's tool. www.dafca.com

** Elixent Ltd. (Bristol, England) Reconfigurable parallel processing fabric. Deal to combine technology with Toshiba's MeP multimedia processor. www.elixent.com

Emerging Memory Technologies Inc. (Kanata, Ontario) A fabless design house that is developing intellectual-property (IP) cores and other products for the embedded DRAM and related memory space. www.emergingmemory.com

** Fab Solutions Co. Ltd. (Kanagawa, Japan) Fab Solutions was established in February 2002 as a spin-off from NEC and markets an electron beam metrology system. www.fabsol.com

Frontier Silicon Ltd. (Watford, England) a fabless chip company founded in 2001 that has produced digital audio broadcast and digital terrestrial television receiver chips, has closed a $28 million venture capital investment round, one of the largest ever secured by a U.K. based chip company. www.frontier-silicon.com

Handshake Solutions NV (Eindhoven, Netherlands) ARM Holdings plc is working with Handshake Solutions NV and an un-named lead customer to produce an ARM 32-bit RISC processor that does not require a clock signal to operate. Handshake is wholly-owned spin-off from Royal Philips Electronics NV set up to commercialize clock-less logic. www.handshakesolutions.com

** Icera Semiconductor Ltd. (Bristol, England) is a DSP for 3G company founded by, amongst others, the founder of Element14 Ltd., which was eventually sold to Broadcom Corp. www.icerasemi.com

* Ignios Ltd. (Oxford, England) a company formed in 2003 is developing a scheduling and monitoring hardware and software infrastructure, called SystemWeaver, which is intended to ease the use multiple cores on a single chip. www.ignios.com

** Innovative Silicon Inc. (Lausanne, Switzerland) is a 2002 start-up founded by Pierre Fazan (CEO) developing SOI-based single-transistor memory reportedly denser than DRAM. www.innovativesilicon.com

* Inovys Corp. (Pleasanton, Calif.), a supplier of automatic test equipment (ATE) raised $16.3 million dollars in Series C finance in February 2004. First customer is Motorola. www.inovys.com

** Kilopass Technology Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) was founded in early 2001 to develop and market non-volatile memory technology, manufactured in standard commercial CMOS logic manufacturing processes. Announced first round venture capital funding in January 2004. www.kilopass.com

Luminescent Technologies Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.), is backed by Sevin Rosen Funds and developing a line of RET software products for use in optical proximity correction (OPC) and phase-shift photomask (PSM) applications. www.luminescent.com

Luxtera Inc. (Carlsbad, Calif.) A fabless semiconductor company formed in 2001. claimed to have devised a 10-gigabit-per-second optical modulation device, based on a standard CMOS fabrication process. www.luxtera.com

* Magnetic Solutions Ltd. (Dublin, Ireland) designs and builds magnetic annealing systems. www.magnetic-solutions.com

** Mapper Lithography BV (Delft, Netherlands) is a lithography start-up working on multi-beam, maskless lithography technology. www.mapperlithography.com

** Matrix Semiconductor Inc. (Santa Clara, California) Founded in 1998 and the recipient of over $150 million in funding. The company claimed to have shipped multi-layered three-dimensional memory devices in 2003. In 2004 Matrix migrated its multi-layer, antifuse-based ROM from 0.25-micron manufacturing process to a 0.15-micron process. www.matrixsemi.com

** Memsic Inc. (Norwood, Mass. and Wuxi, China) is a 1999 spin off from Analog Devices Inc. with a wholly owned subsidiary (Memsic Semiconductor Ltd.) located in Wuxi, China. CMOS circuitry is set down on wafers by technology partner TSMC with space left for micromachining at Wuxi. www.memsic.com

Micromem Technologies Inc. (Toronto) After five years in research and development, claimed it has come one step closer in producing an MRAM for use radio-frequency identification (RFID) applications. www.micromeminc.com

** Molecular Imprints Inc. (Austin, Texas) was founded in 2001 to design, develop, manufacture and support imprint lithography systems to be used by semiconductor device and other industry manufacturers. The company claims to be the largest organization in the world, working solely on imprint lithography. www.molecularimprints.com

Morpho Technologies Inc. (Irvine, Calif.) has announced that former ARM executive John Rayfield is joining the company as chief executive officer. It is develop technologies for Software Defined Radio (SDR) and has investment from, and development deals with, Motorola, Freescale and Cadence Design Systems Inc. www.morphotech.com

Multibeam Systems Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) is developing an e-beam tool that utilizes an array of 10 electron beam columns for use in high-throughput maskless lithography applications. www.multibeamsystems.com

* Nanonex Corp. (Princeton, N.J) provides a line of nanoimprint lithography technology, including tools, resists, masks, and processes. Spun out of Princeton University. www.nanonex.com

Nanotech Corp. (Changzhou, China), a semiconductor foundry best known for having obtained manufacturing process technology, 0.35- and 0.25-micron CMOS, from Intel Corp. www.nanotech-corp.com

** Nantero Inc. (Woburn, Mass.) is developing a non-volatile memory based on the bi-modal stability of a carbon nanotube matrix laid across an etched trench. www.nantero.com

Novelx Inc. (Lafayette, Calif.) is developing what the three-year-old company calls "monolithic microfabricated electron-beam arrays." Considered by some as a maskless-on-a-module approach, the arrays themselves are manufactured, by using a combination of MEMS and RF ceramic technologies. www.novelx.com

* Novocell Semiconductor Inc. (Pittsburgh) Founded in September 2002 Novocell has developed and shipped a low-density non-volatile memory. www.novocellsemi.com

O2IC Co. Ltd. (Seoul, South Korea) has received an $8 million Series A round of funding intended to help the company complete its McRAM non-volatile memory technology development. O2IC is a fabless company with offices located in Seoul, South Korea and Santa Clara, California. www.o2ic.com

Open-Silicon Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) ASIC startup. says it is developing a way to lower chip costs by using masks that are peppered with errors. www.open-silicon.com

** Plastic Logic Ltd. (Cambridge, England) is a spin-off from Cambridge University that aims to combine plastic electronics with printing for low cost. www.plasticlogic.com

** Polymer Vision NV (Eindhoven, Netherlands) Polymer Vision is a business initiative within the Philips Technology Incubator aiming to bring flexible displays to market by combining polymer electronics with electronic ink. www.polymervision.com

Pulsic Ltd. (Bristol, England) Pulsic Ltd is a provider of physical design tools for complex IC designs. Pulsic was launched in January 2002, and develops, markets and sells physical design tools incorporating leading design methodologies for complex analog, custom, digital, mixed signal and system-on-chip (SoC) design. www.pulsic.com

Replisaurus Technologies AB (Kista, Sweden) describes its electrochemical pattern replication (ECPR) process as metal printing for microelectronics and claims that it can reduce the cost of metallization for electronic applications and microdevices significantly compared to the costs using traditional lithography based processes. www.replisaurus.com

** Revera Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) A start-up involved in surface and compositional metrology. www.revera.com

** Saifun Semiconductor Ltd. (Netanya, Israel) Developer of flash technology now licensed to many major players in flash market, but not Intel Corp. www.saifun.com

Siano Mobile Silicon Ltd. (Netanya, Israel), founded in June 2004 digital television receiver tailored specifically for mobile communications and entertainment devices. Ulrich Schumacher, former Infineon CEO, is on the board of directors. www.siano-ms.com

** Silecs Inc. (San Jose, Calif., and Espoo, Finland) is a specialist in low-k materials, working with Cypress. www.silecs.com

** Si-Light Technologies Ltd. (Guildford, England) is a spin-off from the University of Surrey, formed to investigate the application of 'dislocation engineering' to enable light emission from silicon at wavelengths between 1.1-micron to 1.6-micron. www.si-light.net

Silistix Ltd. (Manchester, England) a spin-out company from the Amulet asynchronous logic research group at the University of Manchester in England founded in December 2003, has received backing from Intel Capital. www.silistix.com

Straatum Processware Ltd. (Dublin, Ireland) A supplier of fault detection and classification software for semiconductor manufacturing, has received US$5.65 million in third-round venture funding from lead investor Vision Capital, existing investor ACT Venture Capital, and new investor Intel Capital. www.straatum.com

* TeraView Ltd. (Cambridge, England) A spin-off from Toshiba Europe Laboratories working on the application of terahertz frequency waves for vision through optically opaque objects and for chemical analysis. The technology could have long-term implications for communications. www.teraview.com

T-RAM Semiconductor Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) Five-year old startup that has raised $40 million in a single round to help speed it to market. www.t-ram.com

* Transfer Devices Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) A spin off from Stanford University, the company is involved in "pseudo-maskless" mask technology for nano-imprint lithography. www.transferdevices.com

* Xelerated Inc. (Concord, Mass.) founded in Sweden in August 2000 to develop network processors. Xelerated's investors include Atlas Venture, Alta Partners and Startupfactory. www.xelerated.com

** Xignal Technologies AG (Munich, Germany) provides analog and mixed-signal intellectual property for broadband serial links www.xignal.com

** ZBD Displays Ltd. (Malvern, England) A spin-off from U.K. government owned defense research establishments has developed a non-volatile LCD. www.zbddisplays.com

** Zettacore Inc. (Denver) is a developer of a molecular memory array. www.zettacore.com