A Bristol entrepreneur is setting up a company targeting the high volume consumer PC market.

Nick Weiner, former chief technology officer and founder of Phyworks, is targeting 6 to 8Gbit/s serial interfaces such as USB3.0, PCIexpress3.0 and next generation FireWire and serial attached SCSI (SAS) hard drives.

The company, Atempo, will design and make chips for 65nm standard CMOS, rather than BiCMOS or gallium arsenide, so the technology can be integrated into the bridge chips or graphics chip in the PC.

"We are at least a generation ahead on the technology and these standards will need high performance equalisation," he said. "There are opportunities for the IP in system chips in the PC and for chips in the peripheral equipment."

The first chips will be ready in the middle of next year, he said. USB3.0 will run at 4.8Gbit/s while PCIexpress 3.0 will run at 8Gbit/s.

"The standards are being worked on at the moment but they will almost certainly need adaptive equalisation," said Weiner. The 4Gbit/s FireWire3200 standard and 6Gbit/s SAS-2 have already specified this.

See also: Electronics Weekly's Technology Start-ups, where you can find articles on technology start-ups in the UK, an interactive map showing the location and business sector of each start-up, and links to useful websites for the technology entrepreneur.