Back in 2000, industry veteran Peter Claydon and wireless ‘guru’ Dr Doug Pulley joined forces as picoChip to create a solution to a digital signal processing need they had identified.
“We had developed the business concept and technology over a period of five or six months,” said Claydon. “We were using our own money and knew from the start that we could not afford to continue for more than a year before securing investment, so it was at this very early stage that we got in touch with Pond Ventures.”
According to Pond’s Richard Irving: “The market for dsps is huge – about $8billion a year and growing. But for hard tasks, current architectures have run out of steam. What the dsp market needs is a powerful engine that allows software to be written and then modified easily at a later date.
“The big companies generally can’t afford to develop and launch a new architecture: it is too risky and expensive,” he contended, “and takes away resources from existing product lines.”
Because of these market pressures, this problem has been addressed primarily by start ups – companies like Chameleon, Morphics, BOPS, Equator, Systolix and Chromatic Research have all taken up the challenge.