Spiral Gateway, the reconfigurable image processing fabless chip company, has got a second funding round of £730,000 from Braveheart Investments, Imperial Innovations, Bank of Scotland, and Scottish Enterprise's Scottish Co-investment Fund.
Last month, the company announced it had got fully functional and validated samples of its RICA (Reconfigurable Instruction Cell Array) test chip which proved the concepts of the underlying technology, including full dynamic reconfigurability and multiple application capability.
"We are looking forward to strengthening our relationship with our investors as we develop our technology to a commercial level," said Graham Townsend, CEO of Spiral Gateway.
RICA is a reconfigurable silicon fabric programmed at the algorithmic level in C which removes the need for mapping software completely, requiring only an open source C compiler allowing any existing or new C code to load straight onto the fabric. It replaces hardwired ASICs or software programmable DSPs.
The technology delivers reconfigurable logic which uses an order of magnitude less power than FPGA with very high performance, and requiring minimal hardware design and no need for large design teams.
Spiral Gateway hopes to get RICA into next generation of mobile phones to provide image processing.
Spiral Gateway was founded in 2004 as a spin-out from Edinburgh University from whom it licenses its technology.
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