Icera Semiconductor is a "big,
hairy, audacious plan", according to one of its venture capital
backers, Martin Gibson of Atlas Ventures, which has
helped make Icera Europe's best-funded fabless semiconductor
start-up company amassing $142.5m in VC funding.
Gibson told the International System and SoC Conference in
Prague: "For many companies the VC-backed start-up model is broken.
I don't want to focus on large, fixed function chips for
medium-sized niches," said Gibson.
"What works is big audacious plays," said Stan Boland, CEO of
Icera. "If a company's market is big enough, and its technology
differentiated enough to drive you to market leadership, then you
make a spectacular return for investors."
Icera is still chasing its first handset design-in. "It always
takes longer than you expect in cellular," said Boland.
However, with handset designers now prepared to buy chips from
the fabless community, with handset designers finding their chip
suppliers stumbling over delivery dates, with an extensive
programme of certification completed, with 65nm chips imminent, and
with the smallest baseband processor die in the market, Icera is
well-placed to crack the handset market.
Before that, it hopes to have cracked the laptop computer market
with a cellular datacomms chip.