Guillaume d’Eyssautier has been appointed executive chairman of Xintronix, the Bristol-based start-up specialising in high performance I/O.
d’Eyssautier, with extensive semiconductor industry experience, brings a deep knowledge of the Xintronix customer base.
“Our customers are semiconductor companies and Guillaume is ideal for us, he’s worked for Cadence and IBM and has extensive contacts within our customer base”, Steve Cliffe, CEO of Xintronix told
EW.
Xintronix expects to close its first round of funding within the next few weeks. “The money’s not in the bank yet, but it should be in the next four weeks”, said Cliffe, adding that it will be enough to see Xintronix through its first year of trading.
Xintronix is initially going for USB 3.0, but then sees PCI Express as the next market.
So the company’s first product is targeted at 5Gbit/sec which meets the USB 3.0 spec, and the second product is targeted sat 8Gbit/sec which is the PCI Express specification.
The USB 3.0 speed is a massive jump from the 480Mbit/sec spec of USB 2.0. However Xintronix reckons it will have the best performing IC on the market at 5Gbits/sec.
Performance here is measured by two things: how much noise and cross-talk are interfering with the signal, and how bad can the channel be? The better the performance of the IC, the cheaper and lower quality the cables and connectors can be.
“We expect to tape out at the end of this year,” said Cliffe.
Xintronix’s first chip is mostly an analogue IC but will be made in 65nm, an advanced process technology for analogue, in order to minimise power.
“We’re talking to about a dozen potential USB customers”, said Cliffe, who leaves tomorrow to talk to the Taiwanese producers.