I meet with electronics companies all the time, both the established names and startups whose names you might or might not know. Lately, I've noticed quite an upswing in requests for meetings from the startups, most of which were launched in the depths of the electronics industry recession/depression. Their products and technologies are innovative, sometimes representing a breakthrough in a particular electronics segment. I thought I would briefly introduce these companies.

WiQuest Communications is a fabless semiconductor company based in Allen, Texas. Founded in September, 2003, the company designs ultrawideband (UWB) chips for PCs, consumer electronics, and mobile devices. I spoke with Dr. Matthew Shoemake, who is the founder, CEO and President of WiQuest. Dr. Shoemake had served as Director of Advanced Technology for Texas Instruments' WLAN Business Unit and also was one of the initial team members at Alantro Communications, which was acquired by Texas Instruments in 2000. WiQuest's WQST110 and WQST101 chipset, the Spotlight feature in our January issue, is the industry's first commercially available, high-performance silicon delivering ultrawideband (UWB) communications speeds up to one-gigabit per second.

Sirific Wireless is another fabless semiconductor company. Founded in 2000 by Dr. Tajindar Manku, Sirific has locations in Richardson, Texas and Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.  The company designs and develops RF transceiver ICs in CMOS for multi-mode mobile devices. I met with Kiran Konanur, Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, who introduced me to Sirific's SW3200, the industry’s first single-chip CMOS HSDPA / WEDGE RF Transceiver for 3.5G mobile handsets. The chip is featured on the cover of our February issue.

Cavium Networks, also a fabless semiconductor company, has built a portfolio of intelligent processors for security, network and communications processing. Established in 2001, the company recently released the OCTEON CN31XX and CN30XX family of processors. These processors are based on the custom cnMIPS64 CPU core, which has been developed from the ground up to deliver the highest networking and services performance with very low power consumption. Further details about these processors appear in our February issue. 

Beceem Communications was founded in October 2003 by Shahin Hedayat and Babu Mandava, both of whom also co-founded Centillium Communications, and Professor Arogyaswami Paulraj of Stanford University. Beceem intends to supply chipsets for the recently ratified IEEE 802.16e standard on which Mobile WiMAX is based. Beceem is a key contributor to the IEEE 802.16e standards effort and has also been instrumental in defining the first Mobile WiMAX profile for the WiMAX Forum. The company expects to be the first Mobile WiMAX chipset supplier to deliver a product that is fully compliant with the Mobile WiMAX profile. Beceem has already demonstrated its prototype chipsets to leading telecom equipment manufacturers that are participating in the development and deployment of Mobile WiMAX networks.

Aprio was co-founded by Dr. Clive Wu in January 2003. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, the company develops design-for-manufacturability (DFM) tools. Recently I spoke with Randy Smith, vice president, about a DFM tool called Halo iOPC (Incremental Optical Proximity Correction). Among other things, this tool creates libraries of cells with pre-approved OPC and works ten times faster than conventional OPC tools. Essentially, this tool is expected to help manufacturers improve their first-pass yields at 65 nm and below.

SiliconSystems is a solid state storage technology company founded by Michael Hajeck and Carl Swartz in 2002. Based in Aliso Viejo, California, Mr. Hajeck recently introduced, via a web conference, a breakthrough storage system monitoring and usage technology called SiSMART. This new technology accurately monitors storage system usage to predict useable life, and is incorporated into the company’s SiliconDrive product line. SiSMART technology constantly monitors and reports the exact amount of storage system useable life available, allowing users to make any necessary adjustments or schedule preventative maintenance to ensure system availability and data integrity.

That's it. Like Phoenix rising from the ashes, the electronics industry has given rise to new companies with innovative technologies and products during a time that was without doubt the worst period that the industry has ever experienced.