AActlight SA (Lausanne, Switzerland),founded in 2010, by SergueiOkhonin, is a fabless semiconductorcompany developing designs and in-tellectual property for the combina-tion of light and logic on siliconchips, including the use of CMOS foroptical conversion for use in energyharvesting. www.act-light.com

Adapteva Inc. (Lexington, Mass.),founded in 2008, Adapteva is a leanstartup that has developed theEpiphany architecture of multicoreprocessors. Adapteva, led byfounder Anders Olofsson, is target-ing defense and mobile consumerapplications. The company claims tohave reach the break-even point withless than $2 million of investment.www.adapteva.com

Adesto Technologies Corp.(Sunnyvale, Calif.) was founded byCEO Narbeh Derhacobian in 2006.The company is developing a non-volatile memory based on program-mable metallization cell technologylicensed from Axon TechnologiesCorp., a spinoff of Arizona StateUniversity. The company is backedby Arch Venture Partners andApplied Ventures amongst otherventure capital companies.www.adestotech.com

Altair Semiconductor Ltd.(Hod Hasharon, Israel), founded in2005, is a fabless chip companydeveloping 4G baseband processorsand RF transceivers, in particularsupporting LTE communications.www.altair-semi.com

Ambiq Micro Inc.(Westlake Hills, Texas) founded in2010, is a fabless chip companydeveloping low power wirelessprocessors based on ARMarchitecture and mixed-signalsystems. Investors include CiscoSystems and ARM Holdings.www.ambiqmicro.com

Andes Technology Corp.(Hsinchu, Taiwan), founded in 2005,is a developer and licensor of32-bit processor technology andassociated SoC platforms intendedfor a variety of embeddedapplications. The company’sU.S.-trained founders are aimingAndes cores at the borders of mar-kets owned by established licensorssuch ARM, MIPS and Tensilica.www.andestech.com

BBaolab Microsystems SL(Barcelona, Spain) is pioneering thecreation of MEMS devices within theback-end-of-line structure of CMOSwafers. The company, founded inJuly 2003, is initially applying itstechnology to switching for miniatureRF relays inside CMOS, enablingsmaller mobile phones. Baolab isbacked by FonsInnocat, a venturecapital fund. www.baolab.com

Boston Power Inc.(Westborough, Mass.) was foundedin 2005 and has made progress indeveloping longer lasting, fastercharging lithium-ion batteries.www.boston-power.com

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18 new companies join EETimes list of emerging startups

Version 13.0 of theEE Times 60 EmergingStartups, a list first pub-lished in April 2004, isthe latest iteration of ourroster of new technology

startups. The list reflects currentcorporate, commercial, technologyand market conditions.

As before, some companies havedropped off the list - also known asthe Silicon 60 – after either beingacquired, moving on to an initialpublic offering of shares or simplyoutgrowing our list as technologyevolves.

Eighteen new companies join version13.0 (highlighted in red below). Theywere selected by our editors basedon a mix of criteria including: tech-nology, intended market, maturity, fi-nancial position, investment profileand executive leadership.

The new startups on the Silicon 60list are focused on semiconductortechnologies for analog circuits,memory, logic, power, MEMS, opto-electronics, EDA software, foundrymanufacturing, semiconductor pro-duction equipment, electronic sub-systems, packaging and materials.They are emerging companies wedeem worthy of tracking.

Readers are invited to nominatetheir own emerging startups forinclusion in a future iteration of theEE Times 60 Emerging Startups list.Nominations should be supported bya short citation explaining why thecompany is suitable for inclusionon the list. Send comments and nominations toPeter Clarke (peter.clarke@ubm.com).

CCalxeda Inc. (Austin, Texas), founded in2008 under the name Smooth-Stone,and is seeking to develop energy effi-cient server-on-a-chip processorsbased on multiple ARM processorcores. The company has received $48million in investments from venturecapital funds and strategic investorsincluding ARM, ATIC and Texas Instru-ments. www.calxeda.com

Cognovo Ltd. (Melbourn, England), wasfounded in July 2009, by the fourfounders of TTPCom, a developer ofprotocol stacks for mobile communica-tions that rose to prominence in the1990s. Cognovo plans to offer soft-ware for license for software-definedmodems with a business model similarto that of TTPcom but aimed at 4Gcommunications. ARM transferredsome personnel and intellectual prop-erty into the company and took an eq-uity stake in October 2009.www.cognovo.com

Cosmic Circuits Inc. (Bangalore, India),founded in 2005, is a licensor of analog and mixed-signal intellectualproperty circuits (IP cores). The company provides a broad spectrum of IP ranging from power management,audio and voice to data converters,clocking circuits and analog front-endsubsystems. www.cosmiccircuits.com

Cyclos Semiconductor Inc.(Berkeley, Calif.) was founded in 2006as a spinout from the University ofMichigan. Based in Berkeley and AnnArbor, Mich., Cyclos delivers resonantclock mesh semiconductor IP, designautomation tools, and design consult-ing services for resonant clock meshdesigns that can reduce the power consumption of clock circuits on ICs.www.cyclos-semi.com

EEfficient Power Conversion Corp. (El Segundo, Calif.) was founded in November 2007 by three engineers

with experience in advanced powermanagement devices. EPC’s CEO, AlexLidow, is the co-inventor of the HEXFETpower MOSFET and, in addition to holding positions in R&D, and manufacturing, was the CEO of International Rectifier for 12 years.www.epc-co.com

Eight19 Ltd. (Cambridge, England),founded in 2010 as a spinoff from thelocal university, is focused on thedevice designs and printing processesthat enable solar cells to be maderoll-to-roll using solution-based organicchemistry and room-temperatureprinting techniques. The company isnamed for the length of time it takeslight to travel from the sun to Earth:eight minutes and 19 seconds.www.eight19.com

EnVerv Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), foundedin 2009, is a fabless semiconductorcompany that offers power line commu-nications ICs for metering and othercontrol and monitoring applications.www.enverv.com.

EoSemi Ltd. (Congleton, England) wasfounded in 2005 and has developedan all-silicon replacement for quartzcrystal timing references with thepotential to save space and cost in avariety of applications.www.eosemi.com

EpiGaN NV (Hasselt, Belgium) is a spinoff formed to commercialize adecade of research into compoundsemiconductors at IMEC. Thecompany, formed in 2010 suppliesIII-nitride epitaxial materials forelectronic device manufacturing. www.epigan.com

F4M Wireless Ltd. (Luton, England) wasfounded in 2006. It designs anddevelops software products to enablefourth generation mobile wirelessbased on 3GPP Long Term Evolution(LTE) standards. www.4mwireless.com

Fresco Logic Inc. (Beaverton, Ore.) was founded in 2008 and hasdeveloped a controller chip for the USB

3.0 communication specification. www.frescologic.com

GGainSpan Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) is adeveloper of Wi-Fi sensor network technology. The company was an Intelincubator company before being spunout in 2006. The company's mainclaim is of a low power chip technologyand integrated networking stack thatallows Wi-Fi connections to be run frombattery-powered systems and to targetInternet of Things (IoT) applications.www.gainspan.com

Glo AB. (Lund, Sweden), foundedin 2005, is developing nanowiresemiconductor LEDs based on basedon proprietary heterostructuredsemiconductor nanowire epitaxialgrowth and process technologies.www.glo.se

GreenPeak Technologies BV(Utrecht, Netherlands) was formedthrough the merger of Xanadu Wirelessand Ubiwave in July 2007. Xanadu hadbeen operating in stealth mode sinceearly 2005. Ubiwave had been pioneer-ing wireless mesh protocols since2003. GreenPeak, backed by DJF Es-prit, GIMV, Motorola Ventures and Alle-gro Investment Fund offers wirelesstransceiver chips with energy harvest-ing ready interfaces for use in wirelesssensor networks. www.greenpeak.com

HHeliatek GmbH (Dresden, Germany)was formed in 2006 as a spinoff fromthe Universities of Dresden and Ulm.The company has developed organicsolar cells from small molecule organicdyes that are chemically synthesizedfrom hydrocarbons. The company hasbuilt an initial production facility inDresden where it is using its technol-ogy to produce, flexible photovoltaicmodules on a film substrate. www.heliatek.com

EE Times 60 Emerging Startups

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IImprint Energy (Alameda, Calif.) wasincorporated in 2010 to commercializea flexible, rechargeable batterytechnology developed by thecompany’s founders at the Universityof California at Berkeley. Imprint En-ergy’s polymer electrolyte technology issaid to enable scalable, print-basedmanufacturing of energy dense andultra-thin batteries based on non-lithium earth-abundant materials.www.imprintenergy.com

Ingenic Semiconductor Co. Ltd.(Beijing, China), founded in 2005, isa provider of embedded CPUs. It hasa low-power CPU architecture is calledXburst with a specialized pipelineengine. The solution has penetratedinto the e-dictionary, personal mediaplayer, e-book and tablet computermarkets, into which Ingenic claims tohave shipped more than 30 millionunits. Ingenic is now a licensee ofMIPS Technology. www.ingenic.cn

InVisage Technologies Inc.(Menlo Park, Calif.) is a fablesssemiconductor company developingQuantumFilm, an imaging-sensingtechnology that it claims will replacesilicon. Its first product enables thehigh-fidelity, high-resolution imagesfrom handheld devices like cameraphones and PDAs. Founded in 2006,InVisage Technologies is venturefunded by RockPort Capital, CharlesRiver Ventures, InterWest Partners,and OnPoint Technologies.www.invisageinc.com

Isorg SA (Grenoble, France), founded in2010 as a spin-off from CEA-LITEN,converts plastic and glass surfacesinto smart surfaces through the appli-cation of printed, organic optoelec-tronic sensors. The possibility of 3-Dproduct integration allows the recogni-tion of many shapes and form factors.The company name is a contraction ofImage Sensor ORGanic. www.isorg.fr

LLeyden Energy Inc. (Fremont, Calif.),formerly known as Mobius Power Inc.,was founded in 2007 to commercializetechnology covered by a lithium-ion celltechnology patent acquired fromchemical giant Dupont. The seedtechnology served as the foundationfor subsequent Leyden Energyresearch which has led to thecompany's Li-imide battery platform.www.leydenenergy.com

MmCube Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) wasfounded in September 2009 and hasdeveloped a method for integratingMEMS motion sensors above elec-tronic circuitry in a standard CMOSwafer fab. The mCube eMotion sensorplatform combines single-chip motionsensors with tuned softwarealgorithms. www.mcube-inc.com

Memoir Systems Inc.(Santa Clara, Calif.) is a 2009 startupcompany offering embedded memoryIP aimed at SoCs being designedfor the networking and multicoreprocessor markets. The companyclaims its "algorithmic" systemsapproach to embedded memoryprovision provides an order ofmagnitude increase in embeddedmemory performance.www.memoir-systems.com

MicroGen Systems Inc. (Ithaca, N.Y.)is developing products based onpiezoelectric vibrational energyharvester technology. The MEMScomponents serve as micro-powersources to extend rechargeable batterylifetime. They also could eliminatethe need for batteries in someapplications. The company wasfounded by Robert Andosca in 2007.www.microgensystems.com

MimoOn GmbH (Duisberg, Germany)was founded in 2006 and supplies asoftware implementation of the 3GPPLTE physical layer and protocol stack

for infrastructure devices andterminals. www.mimoon.de

Movea SA (Grenoble, France) providesmotion processing chips, software,embeddable firmware and IP forconsumer electronics. Formed inMarch 2007 as a spinout from theFrench research institute CEA-Leti,Movea acquired the Gyration consumerelectronics brand in 2008.www.movea.com

Movidius Ltd. (Dublin, Ireland), foundedas Movidia in 2005, is a fablesssemiconductor company whoseprocessor and application softwaredelivers video editing and post-production capabilities for the creationof user-generated content aimed atmobile social networking. With officesin Dublin and Hong Kong and a soft-ware development center in Romania,Movidius is backed by Celtic HouseVenture Partners, Capital-E, EmertecGestion, AIB Seed Capital Fund andEnterprise Ireland. www.movidius.com

NNeul. Ltd. (Cambridge, England),founded in 2010 by several originalfounders of Cambridge Silicon Radio,is working on radio network standardsand terminals to exploit "white-space"spectrum at around 400 to 800 MHz.This spectrum is only partially used inmany countries for analog and digitalTV broadcasts. Neul is proposing anadaptive protocol that can be used forcommunications between IP-addressedobjects in the Internet of Things.www.neul.com

Nufront Co. Ltd. (Beijing, China),founded in 2004, works in wirelessbroadband communications andbroadcast IC design, video search anddigital imaging technologies. Itdeveloped TMMB, a mobile TV systembefore CMMB finally became China'sstandard. The company recentlyannounced the development of a 40-nm dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processorSoC that operates at up to 2 GHz.www.nufront.com

EE Times 60 Emerging Startups

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OOpen Kernel Labs (Chicago), with origins in Australia, develops "virtualization software" for mobilephones and broadband devices. Thecompany was founded in 2006; its OKLabs software has been deployed onmore than 1.5 billion devices world-wide. www.ok-labs.com

Ozmo Devices Inc. (Palo Alto, Calif.),founded in 2004 as H-Stream Wireless, develops wireless personalarea network connectivity for battery-operated devices based on Wi-Fi communications.www.ozmodevices.com

PPelican Imaging Corp.(Mountain View, Calif.), founded in 2008, is commercializing computational array cameras for themobile market. Pelican’s array camera,essentially replacing a single imagesensor with 25 devices, addresseschallenges posed by conventional camera design and small pixels. www.pelicanimaging.com

Pixel Qi Corp. (San Bruno, Calif.)designs liquid crystal displays that canbe manufactured on conventionalfabrication machinery while reducingthe need for a back light. The ability toturn off the backlight and switch to amonochrome reflective mode inambient light allows for significantpower saving. The company wasformed in 2008 by Mary Lou Jepson,who previously served as CTO of theOne Laptop Per Child project.www.pixelqi.com

poLight AS (Horten, Norway) has developed optical MEMS-actuated autofocus lenses for use in cameraphones and other consumer applica-tions. The company, founded in 2006and formerly known as Ignis Display AS,claims its TLens products are faster anduse less energy to achieve focus thantraditional voice-coil motor autofocus

systems. www.polight.no

QQuantance Inc. (San Mateo, Calif.),founded in December 2005, developedpatented several RF and DC powersupply techniques as the basis of aninstantaneous envelope-tracking technology known as qBoost. Designedspecifically for mobile devices, qBoostprovides power supply technology forenvelope tracking for 3G and 4G poweramplifiers, thereby reducing power consumption. www.quantance.com

Quantenna Communications Inc.(Fremont, Calif.), founded in 2006, develops silicon for wireless network-ing. The company has developed802.11n and 802.11ac Wi-Fi chipsetsthat include 4 x 4 multiple input, multiple output capability and dynamicdigital beamforming.www.quantenna.com

RRFaxis Inc. (Irvine, Calif.) was foundedJanuary 2008. The company uses BiCMOS process technology in conjunction with its own technology tocreate integrated RF front-end ICs forwireless standards including Bluetooth, WLAN, Zigbee, WiMax andmobile phone markets www.rfaxis.com

SSamplify Systems Inc.(Santa Clara, Calif.), founded in 2006,is a fabless mixed-signal semiconductor company with expertisecompression that combines digital processing and high performance ana-log to create intelligent data convertersand energy efficient data handling systems. www.samplify.com

Seeo Inc. (Hayward, Calif.) wasfounded in 2007 with an exclusive license for advanced technology from

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratoryand the goal of creating high-energyrechargeable lithium-ion batteries.Seeo was established with initiafunding from Khosla Ventures.www.seeo.com

Skorpios Technologies Inc.(Albuquerque, N.M.) was foundedin 2009 and is focused oncommercializing monolithicallyintegrated active photonics into wafer-scale standard CMOS processes.Skorpios has received venture capitalfrom Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson,Nokia Siemens Networks, CottonwoodTechnology Fund and Sun MountainCapital. www.skorpiosinc.com

Socowave Ltd. (Dublin, Ireland),founded in 2008, has connectionswith University College Dublin. Foundedby CEO Joe Moore, Socowave offersactive-panel antenna technology, whichallows mobile phone operators toapply beamforming to improve cellularefficiency as basestationscommunicate with handsets.www.socowave.com

Solido Design Automation Inc.(San Jose, Calif.) was founded in 2005to address process variation fortransistor-level designers. Solido hasdeveloped a proprietary set ofalgorithms. www.solidodesign.com

Spin Transfer Technologies Inc.(Boston) was founded in 2007, tocommercialize orthogonal spin transfermagnetoresistive random accessmemory, a technology originallydiscovered by Andrew Kent at New YorkUniversity. www.spintransfer.com

Stion Corp. (San Jose, Calif.)manufactures thin-film solar modules.Stion was founded in 2006 and isbacked by venture capital investors,including Khosla Ventures, VentureTechAlliance, Lightspeed Venture Partners,General Catalyst Partners, andBraemar Energy Ventures. Stion alsohas a strategic partnership with TaiwanSemiconductor Manufacturing Co.www.stion.corp.

EE Times 60 Emerging Startups

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SuVolta Inc. (Los Gatos, Calif.), formed in 2005 under the name DSMSolutions Inc., has announced itsPowerShrink process technology.PowerShrink is based on a deeplydepleted channel (DDC) transistor thatis manufactured in epitaxially grown,doped silicon on the surface of aconventional bulk CMOS wafer.www.suvolta.com

TTilera Corp. (San Jose, Calif.) wasfounded in 2004 to develop multicoreprocessors and associated compilersfor the networking, wireless andmultimedia infrastructure markets.The company was founded by AnantAgarwal, professor of computerscience at the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology, who serves as chieftechnology officer. www.tilera.com

Transphorm Inc. (Goleta, Calif.) wasfounded in 2007 to make use of theinherent power efficiency of galliumnitride for power applications. Thecompany is taking a systems-levelapproach to create a process itintends to scale beyond 600-Vbreakdown voltage. It is developingmanufacturing facility at its Goletalocation and is backed by several VCfirms including Google Ventures andKleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.www.transphormusa.com

VVayavya Labs Pvt. Ltd.(Belgaum, Karnataka, India), foundedin 2006, the company derives its namefrom the Sanskrit word for northwest.The ESL-oriented company focuseson providing tools to enhance theproductivity of embedded systemdesigners and programmers. Vayavyaprovides customers with ESL productsand engineering services.www.vayavyalabs.com

Vector Fabrics BV(Eindhoven, Netherlands) is developingtools for the design and implementa-tion of multicore, multi-threaded applications and embedded systems.Founded in 2007 the company re-leased its first product, vfAnalyst, inMay 2010. www.vectorfabrics.com

Verayo Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), formedin 2005 as PUFCO, is targeting a rangeof security and authenticationtechnologies based on “physical,unclonable functions. These “PUFs”are physical aspects of a device thatare readily evaluated but hard topredict or build in. As such, thephysical characteristic can become thebasis of a security key. The technologyis based on work originally performedat MIT by Professor Srini Devadas andhis team. www.verayo.com

Vivante Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) wasfounded in 2004 as GiQuila focusedon the portable gaming market. Thecompany changed its name anddirection in 2007 and since thenhas developed a range of graphicprocessor cores. www.vivantecorp.com

WWilocity Ltd. (Caesarea, Israel),founded in March 2007 by executivesand engineers from Intel's Wi-FiCentrino group, Wilocity is developing60-GHz multi-gigabit wireless chipsetsbased on the Wireless Gigabit Alliance(WiGig) specification, for both themobile computing platform andperipheral markets. www.wilocity.com

XXMOS Semiconductor Ltd.(Bristol, England) is a fablesssemiconductor company founded bycomputer scientist David May in 2006.The company has developed a range ofICs based on multiple event-drivenprocessors. Designs are created inhigh-level languages, deliveringhardware from a software-baseddesign flow. www.xmos.com

Note: The previous version of theSilicon 60, version 12.5, was publishedin April 2011.

EE Times 60 Emerging Startups

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