research

Out of curiousity, I researched some of the smaller, privately held, semiconductor companies in Texas in order to see which of them were working in my areas of interest. Unfortunately I’ve lost the source of the original list; these notes are from paper. (The result so far: there are two in alternative energy, namely EEStor and HelioVolt, and two in audio, D2Audio and JamTech. All three are here in Austin.)

Here’s the rest of the list, in case anyone is interested.

• Alereon
• Bandspeed
• ColdWatt
• Innovative Fluidics
• Intinsity
• Keterex
• Legerity
• Mimix Broadband
• Molecular Imprints
• nanoCoders
• NetEffect
• NextIO
• Pintail Technologies
• PulseWave RF
• Pyxis Technology
• Quickfilter Technologies
• Rivlan
• Syndiant
• Tehuti Networks
• VizionWare
• Wintegra

UPDATE: I found a more complete version of this list here. I’m not sure how long that link will be valid, and I don’t see any copyright issues with this, so I’m going to duplicate that information here.

Alereon, Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company using revolutionary ultrawideband (UWB) radio technology to develop high-bandwidth, low-power, low-cost Wireless USB and WiMedia UWB chipsets that are ideal for today’s portable products, like digital cameras, mp3 players and cell phones. Our mission is to replace the complex tangle of wires that interconnect today’s electronic devices with wireless links. www.alereon.com

Bandspeed is the leader in next-generation Wi-Fi® management, providing access point (AP) solutions that make possible mission-critical Wi-Fi voice, data and video applications for the business mass market.www.bandspeed.com

ColdWatt’s focus on innovative power conversion technologies deliver market leading energy efficient and power density solutions for the computing, networking, storage and telecommunications markets. System design engineers rely on ColdWatt to answer the challenge for reliable power conversion solutions that minimize heat dissipation and reduce space requirements. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, ColdWatt has technology centers in Dallas and Bangalore. www.coldwatt.com

D2Audio®, maker of the world’s only Intelligent Digital Amplifiers™, creates digital amplification and audio processing products and solutions for consumer digital media applications. With $50 million in funding, an established brand and robust IP technology, D2Audio addresses a total market of over $2B. www.d2audio.com

HelioVolt has developed the fastest, most efficient way to manufacture CIGS (Copper Indium Gallium Selenide), the most reliable, best-performing thin film material for PV. With a photovoltaic layer that is 100 times thinner than conventional silicon solar energy systems, CIGS thin-film drives substantial material efficiencies. www.heliovolt.com

Innovative Fluidics is a venture-backed electronics thermal management company located in Austin, Texas. The patented SynJet (Synthetic Jet) air-based cooling technology is enabling new designs for products in next generation lighting devices, automotive electronics, medical and electronic instrumentation, military, telecommunications and computer equipment. www.innovativefluidics.com

Intrinsity develops the fastest and most efficient popular embedded RTL processor core designs – FastCores - using Intrinsity’s proprietary Fast14 technology, high-speed memories, and design expertise. FastCores provide the means to trade off speed, power and area to achieve optimal solutions to customer embedded core design targets. www.intrinsity.com

JamTech’s semiconductor amplifier products deliver the audio fidelity of analog, power efficiency of Class D, and economic scalability of digital, reshaping what’s possible with today’s digital consumer electronics products. www.jam-tech.com

Keterex is a fabless semiconductor company that designs and manufactures mixed-signal integrated circuits for industrial and consumer applications. Our products apply a high degree of integration and systems expertise to specific target applications, lowering costs and improving performance. www.keterex.com

Legerity is a global leader in high-voltage, analog, mixed-signal semiconductor and software technologies focusing on the “edge” of the WAN, LAN, and home communication network. Legerity’s heritage is being the inventor of the silicon architecture for voice telephony over 25 years ago, and we remain the world’s most trusted name in voice integrated circuits. www.legerity.com

Mimix Broadband, Inc., an ISO 9001-registered company, designs, develops and supplies high performance gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductors from DC to 50 GHz for microwave and millimeter-wave wireless communications applications - as bare die or in surface mount packages. www.mimixbroadband.com

Molecular Imprints is a start up company which is developing, building and selling high resolution lithography tools for the silicon and nano industries. In 2006 it expects to do $15M in revenue, has 80 employees and has raised about $60M in venture funding. www.molecularimprints.com

NanoCoolers is developing thin film thermoelectric devices which have efficiency and thermal capacity substantially superior to technology currently available. These devices are applicable to many cooling markets and applications. www.nanocoolers.com

NetEffect, Inc. is a developer and manufacturer of high-performance networking adapters for use in the data center for networking, storage, and clustering applications. www.NetEffect.com

NextIO has developed a single chip solution that paves the way for Shared I/O in enterprise-class blade servers. The NextIO solution is protocol agnostic, supporting all server I/O technologies, including Ethernet, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, iSCSI, SAS and any new technologies developed in the foreseeable future. www.nextio.com

Pintail Technologies provides real-time software to the semiconductor industry that enables chip manufacturers to reduce their cost of test, improve their quality and manage their global test resources more efficiently. www.pintail.com

Pyxis Technology is creating software to address the problems that chip designers and foundries face in the physical design, layout, and routing of nanometer-scale integrated circuits (ICs) and systems on a chip (SoCs). The company is focused on DFM routing technology based on a new software architecture optimized for design for manufacturability, which reduces design closure cycle time while improving overall design yield. Pyxis has offices in Santa Clara, California and Austin, Texas. www.pyxistech.com

PulseWave RF Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company in the final stages of development of the first all digital, self-linearizing wireless infrastructure power amplifier module. This technology will be sold to all major wirless OEMs and merchant power amplifier companies and will be applicable to all current and future CDMA or OFDM based 2G / 3G and WiMax applications. www.pulsewaverf.com

Quickfilter Technologies offers a family of mixed signal integrated circuits (ICs) for analog signal conditioning and digital signal processing. Precision programmable digital filters allow the designer to complete his design in minutes, not days - without the need to write a single line of code. www.quickfiltertech.com

Rivlan, Inc., ­­an analog and RF IC design house, provides top quality IC design services, delivers effective high-performance designs and supply modestly priced ASIC turnkey solutions. Our prime focus is chip projects for clients without in-house Analog/RF IC design expertise and highly specialized designs aimed at semiconductor industry. Our goal is to develop our own IP core designs and eventually develop our own chip products that we’ll market and sell. www.rivlan.com

Syndiant Inc. a fabless semiconductor company founded in October 2004, has developed a breakthrough all-digital microdisplay architecture that solves the key challenges required for Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) technology to provide the highest quality full 1080P High Definition Television (HDTV) image at a cost which will allow it to become the consumer’s choice. www.syndiant.com

Tehuti Networks developed a single chip, low power, small footprint, and low cost 10GbE technology that will facilitate adoption of 10GbE in high volume servers and blade servers. www.tehutinetworks.net

VizionWare’s™ base technology is noise reduction and high performance interconnect extension. The technology is implemented in chips and those chips are embedded into many different types of digital interconnects, such as cables, adapters, and signal management products. www.vizionware.com

Wintegra is a leading provider of access processing semiconductors enabling the delivery of new services for the evolving communications network infrastructure. Its access processors and networking software provide the essential intelligence and upgradeability for infrastructure equipment to support the emerging networks based on the convergence of voice, video, data and wireless services. www.wintegra.com