A particularly interesting transition from the IP to the fabless model is the two year-old Edinburgh start-up Spiral Gateway, which has a C-programmable technology for image processors.
Spiral Gateway started licensing a clever piece of software, called reconfigurable instruction cell array (RICA), which removes the need for mapping software, requiring only an open source C compiler allowing code to load straight onto the silicon fabric.
The company first thought it could get FPGA companies, and SOC companies wanting to add reprogrammability to ASICs, interested in licensing the technology. But licensing has rarely been a satisfactory business model.
Then Spiral Gateway decided to move to the fabless semiconductor model and, depending on the funding it can attract, it will spin its first chip either next year or in 2009.
With a new CEO, Graham Townsend, on-board, who was CTO of camera-on-a-chip imaging sensor specialist Vision, which was sold to STMicroelectronics, Spiral Gateway is now raising funds.
Both Vision and Spiral Gateway were Edinburgh University spin-offs.
Although Spiral Gateway's technology is generic, applicable to any kind of IC design, the company is focussing on image processing which is a market with which Townsend, obviously, is very familiar.
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