Artimi, the Cambridge UWB/Bluetooth start-up, has raised an additional $5m in funding, bringing its Series B financing to $31.5m. Artimi's overall financing now totals $50m.
“With more than a billion portable consumer electronic devices shipped each year, and consumers' need to transfer media-rich content, the market opportunity for wireless connectivity is very large," said Colin Macnab, CEO of Artimi. "This additional funding allows us to support volume production through 2008 and stay focused on building the business."
Artimi expects to have will have an integrated UWB/Bluetooth chipset in products by the second half of this year.
According to Macnab, these products will include wireless thumb drives, docks, media servers, media drives and storage.
The $15 chipset delivers 480Mb/s data rates with peak power of 60mW in a 10mm by 10mm footprint. Both the UWB and the Bluetooth use the same antenna.
The two chip chipset comprises a SiGe RF chip and a CMOS chip, but the plan is to integrate them both onto one CMOS chip at the 65nm process node. Next year is pencilled in for first silicon.
The chipset conforms to the Wimedia Alliance requirements for which inter-operability between partners is part of the agenda.
The Bluetooth is next-generation Bluetooth 3 for which the UWB PHY has been mandated.
A key benefit to consumers is that the technology can allow them to discard the multitude of cables with which each product connects to other products. Every consumer device comes with its own cable, these days, and every cable is different. The chipset allows a Gbyte of data to be transferred in 30 seconds.
Artimi is addressing one of the consumer wireless industry’s most fundamental problems, getting wireless pairings to work.
Artimi’s solution is to introduce an NFC (Near Field Communications) die into the package of its UWB/Bluetooth chips.
“When you pull it out of the box, and put it within an inch of the device with which you want to establish a connection, the NFC radio will do all the pairing,” said Macnab.
Artimi will be putting the NFC die into the package of its UWB/Bluetooth chip, the A-150, this year. Next year it is intended to incorporate the NFC radio on the same die as the UWB/Bluetooth radios.