sorted by: recent | see : popular

Content Tagged with broadcom + startups

Many people are familiar with the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi, while others even know how to set up a simple home network. Pretty much everyone, however, knows that Wi-Fi is what makes it all possible. That ubiquity is what many venture firms are counting on as they invest in a group of startups putting Wi-Fi into cameras, televisions and even keyboards and mice.

The number of Wi-Fi chips sold is expected to top 1 billion this year, up from more than 200 million sold in 2006, according to data from ABI Research. Beyond computers, WiFi-enabled televisions, set-top boxes and cars are entering the market. That’s good news for those backing the standard, but it could pose a problem for the multiple startups betting on different wireless standards for connecting computers to peripherals, transmitting wireless video and managing home-automation networks.

Carl Showalter, founding general partner with Opus Capital, says the current and next-generation versions of Wi-Fi have the bandwidth to offer video and can do a variety of things at lower power; energy use and wireless bandwidth have been the most common stumbling blocks to using the technology in more applications. For Opus, Wi-Fi’s primacy in the market has translated into investments in Eye-Fi, which announced an $11 million Series B round this month for a card that WiFi-enables a digital camera, and in GainSpan, which raised $20 million at the end of 2007 for its ultra-low-powered Wi-Fi chipset, which could be used in sensor networks and home automation.

So where in the home might Wi-Fi work? First, it’s good to recall that Wi-Fi currently allows us to transmit a lot of data, really quickly, over distances of about 120 feet. In each generation of the technology standard, the amount of data that can be transmitted has expanded, essentially enabling the networks to carry more information, faster. Some companies are now working on ways to use the proposed 802.11n next-generation Wi-Fi standard, set by the IEEE, to transfer high-definition video to televisions.

Wi-Fi started out in the home office, linking computers to broadband connections, then to each other without cables. It could soon replace technologies such as Bluetooth or proprietary lasers in wireless keyboards and mice, thanks to a new project at Intel called Cliffside. Researchers on the project are developing technology to add short-range transmission to Wi-Fi’s capabilities. In June, Ozmo Devices came out of stealth mode with $12.5 million in funding from Intel Capital, Tallwood Venture Capital and Granite Ventures with plans to use Cliffside technology in developing a line of WiFi-enabled keyboards and mice. Products should be available later this year.

The office conquered, Wi-Fi is now making a beeline for the living room with attempts to deliver high-definition video to the television from set-top boxes, PCs or DVD players. Samsung and Philips already offer Wi-Fi chips in televisions for standard-definition content. In late July, Cisco (which has a pretty hefty stake in Wi-Fi with its Linksys-brand routers) led a $16 million round for Celeno Communications, a startup trying to make WiFi-based home entertainment networks a reality. It’s worth noting that several other technical standards are trying to win out when it comes to replacing the wires associated with televisions and their accoutrements. Those include Ultra-wideband, Wireless HD and the newly formed WHDI Special Interest Group.

Eric Zimits, a managing director with Granite Ventures, says the market for cable replacement between the TV and DVD player might end up using a specialized standard developed by the consumer electronics device makers, but he also says Wi-Fi provides more value by allowing content to move between more devices around the home. Standards such as Ultra-wideband and Wireless HD only travel distances of a few feet, making it impossible to use them to send a movie playing on the DVD player to a TV elsewhere in the home. In contrast, standards such as Wi-Fi or WHDI would make it possible to have just one set-top box that could wirelessly transmit content to all home screens.

The final potential home networking coup for Wi-Fi would be in the home-automation market, where emerging standards such as Zigbee and Z-wave are trying to succeed. As Wi-Fi sheds its power-sucking problems, it could also wirelessly control battery-powered thermostats, surveillance cameras and other sensors. As your home fills up with gadgets running on the Wi-Fi network, venture firms will need to look for startups that can set bandwidth priorities among devices so that your television signal doesn’t break up when your thermostat kicks on.

This was originally published on BusinessWeek.com

If this story interests you, check out our upcoming conference:
Mobilize — Mobile Web Today and Tomorrow

Solarflare Communications, a chip startup in Irvine, Calif., has raised $26 million in a third round of funding. That brings the total the company’s raised to $126 million, which is a lot of money for a chip startup, even when you consider that the amount includes money raised by Level 5 Networks, which Solarflare acquired in April 2006. But the startup is hoping to use that money to attack a big problem in the data center at prices lower than the current technology offers. And if it succeeds, it’ll make computing faster and data center operations more flexible.

Like many other communications chip companies, Solarflare is working on a way to deliver 10 Gigabit Ethernet over copper, which is cheaper than delivering it via fiber. That enables the high-speed transport technology to move outside of the telecommunications networks, where companies such as Infinera are already pursuing 100 Gigabit Ethernet over fiber, and into mass adoption in the data center. Getting the technology into servers at a reasonable cost would create a market 10 times bigger than that of networking switches.

Others chasing mass adoption of 10 GigE on the server side are Intel and Broadcom, which like Solarflare, have controller chips. Broadcom and Solarflare also have PHY chips sampling with customers. Solarflare CEO Russell Stern plans to integrate the PHY with the controller chip in 2009, beating Broadcom to the market. He will use some of the funding for that purpose.

It’s likely Broadcom will end up attempting an integrated 10 GigE over copper chip as well. Broadcom doesn’t talk about its chips until they’re sampling, but the company did make a mint by cornering the market for integrated 1 Gigabit Ethernet chips for servers. However, success for Solarflare or Broadcom is probably three years out and depends on creating an energy-efficient chip at the 32 nanometer process node, according to Bob Wheeler, an analyst at The Linley Group.

Power consumption is a big challenge for these chips because unless it’s managed properly, they run too hot for servers and switches. And because technology doesn’t stand still in the data center, where virtualization and ever-increasing amounts of data are screaming for fatter pipes, hybrid forms of networking technologies that mix fiber or Fibre Channel with Ethernet are emerging to bridge the Gigabit gap between servers and networking equipment. Broadcom has several products that take advantage of such a hybrid networking environment. Startups such as Arastra and Woven Systems are also in that sector, and may see gains at the expense of a unified 10GigE world, which means Solarflare’s market opportunity could fragment if cheap, integrated 10 GigE takes too long.

If this story interests you then you should definitely check out our upcoming conference, Structure 08.