Nova2
BANNED
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2014
- Messages
- 1,051
- Reaction score
- 1
- Country
- Location
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/thumb/msid-33457251,width-300,resizemode-4/chips.jpg
BANGALORE: It can't get better than this for India's emerging semiconductor eco-system. Wearable devices chip startup Ineda Systems of Hyderabad has received $17 million (Rs 102 crore) in funding from venture fund Walden-Riverwood Ventures, Samsung, Qualcomm and UK-based semiconductor R&D company Imagination Technologies.
This funding follows an earlier round in which two of the most high profile individuals in global mobility and semiconductor technologies invested in Ineda — Sanjay Jha, CEO of Global Foundries and former chairman and CEO of Motorola Mobility, and Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence Design Systems, one of the world's biggest providers of tools for chip design. TOI reported about this funding in October last year.
Ineda's chips will be applicable to a multitude of devices such as smartwatches, health and fitness trackers and other wearable devices, as well as the emerging internet-of-things space. "This is a breakthrough technology from India. I don't believe there is an equivalent product in the world," said Ineda founder Gude Dasaradha, whose previous venture Cute Solutions was acquired by chip maker AMD and who went on to be AMD India managing director before he left to start Ineda.
He said the world's top 20 companies looking at wearable devices were evaluating Ineda's products. "The feedback from everyone so far is that the processor systems are fantastic. We expect that the first products using these chips will come out by the end of this year," he said.
Wearable devices have made headlines particularly since the announcement of the Google Glass, a device that brings rich text and notifications as well as other information straight to your eyes, and the launch of smartwatches by Samsung and Sony. A number of wearable body-monitoring devices have also emerged.
Currently, wearable devices mostly use processors that were originally designed for smartphones. This makes for limited functionalities, high power consumption, and lower response times. "This is the reason why people don't find these devices worthwhile after a point," Dasaradha said.
At an event in Bangalore last year, Jha noted that the same thing happened initially during the PC to smartphone transition. "People used PC components for smartphones. But the dramatic migrations to smartphones started once components were developed specifically for smartphones. There will be as dramatic a migration to wearable devices once we have new chip architectures that can reduce power consumption by a factor of ten, and enable things like sunlight viewability," he had said, but without any reference to Ineda.
Dasaradha told TOI that his chip reduces power consumption by one-tenth to one-fiftieth depending on the nature of use, and has a variety of features integrated into it, including sensor subsystems (to monitor, say, body vitals or movements), speech recognition and always-on capability.
"It was ground-up architecture. We have used a method called hierarchical computing, which does not require high-end processors and where different processors use different light-weight operating systems. I believe we are the first in the world to attempt something like this," he said. The new funding will be used to further develop Ineda's semiconductor and software products.
India is a major global hub of semiconductor design services, but more recently, companies have started to create semiconductor IPs and products. Ineda could potentially turbo charge this process.
Samsung, Qualcomm invest Rs 102 crore in Indian wearable devices chip venture - The Times of India
BANGALORE: It can't get better than this for India's emerging semiconductor eco-system. Wearable devices chip startup Ineda Systems of Hyderabad has received $17 million (Rs 102 crore) in funding from venture fund Walden-Riverwood Ventures, Samsung, Qualcomm and UK-based semiconductor R&D company Imagination Technologies.
This funding follows an earlier round in which two of the most high profile individuals in global mobility and semiconductor technologies invested in Ineda — Sanjay Jha, CEO of Global Foundries and former chairman and CEO of Motorola Mobility, and Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Cadence Design Systems, one of the world's biggest providers of tools for chip design. TOI reported about this funding in October last year.
Ineda's chips will be applicable to a multitude of devices such as smartwatches, health and fitness trackers and other wearable devices, as well as the emerging internet-of-things space. "This is a breakthrough technology from India. I don't believe there is an equivalent product in the world," said Ineda founder Gude Dasaradha, whose previous venture Cute Solutions was acquired by chip maker AMD and who went on to be AMD India managing director before he left to start Ineda.
He said the world's top 20 companies looking at wearable devices were evaluating Ineda's products. "The feedback from everyone so far is that the processor systems are fantastic. We expect that the first products using these chips will come out by the end of this year," he said.
Wearable devices have made headlines particularly since the announcement of the Google Glass, a device that brings rich text and notifications as well as other information straight to your eyes, and the launch of smartwatches by Samsung and Sony. A number of wearable body-monitoring devices have also emerged.
Currently, wearable devices mostly use processors that were originally designed for smartphones. This makes for limited functionalities, high power consumption, and lower response times. "This is the reason why people don't find these devices worthwhile after a point," Dasaradha said.
At an event in Bangalore last year, Jha noted that the same thing happened initially during the PC to smartphone transition. "People used PC components for smartphones. But the dramatic migrations to smartphones started once components were developed specifically for smartphones. There will be as dramatic a migration to wearable devices once we have new chip architectures that can reduce power consumption by a factor of ten, and enable things like sunlight viewability," he had said, but without any reference to Ineda.
Dasaradha told TOI that his chip reduces power consumption by one-tenth to one-fiftieth depending on the nature of use, and has a variety of features integrated into it, including sensor subsystems (to monitor, say, body vitals or movements), speech recognition and always-on capability.
"It was ground-up architecture. We have used a method called hierarchical computing, which does not require high-end processors and where different processors use different light-weight operating systems. I believe we are the first in the world to attempt something like this," he said. The new funding will be used to further develop Ineda's semiconductor and software products.
India is a major global hub of semiconductor design services, but more recently, companies have started to create semiconductor IPs and products. Ineda could potentially turbo charge this process.
Samsung, Qualcomm invest Rs 102 crore in Indian wearable devices chip venture - The Times of India
