Cambridge spin out Cognovo has launched a Software Defined Modem (SDM) platform design for next generation LTE wireless broadband data systems using technology it acquired last year from ARM.Half the 30-strong design team comes from ARM's Argberg vector processor development team in Leuven, Belgium, joining a team of ex TTPcom engineers who were laid off after the acquisition by Motorola 18 months ago. The venture is funded by the founders and an unspecified equity stake from ARM.
"We see ourselves not as a startup but a spin out with 150 man years of development behind us and a mature technology developed in ARM," said CEO Gordon Aspin, pictured above.
"It was all a little bit hand in hand as we had the idea to start up Cognovo 18 months ago as we could see there was an opportunity with vector processing becoming achievable. We were in discussion with ARM on using the Ardberg processor and as we talked it made sense to spin the technology out into a venture dedicated to wireless products."
The SDM platform is already under evaluation at handset makers and is expected to appear in products during 2012 through third party chips.
"Our platform for LTE handsets is a ground-up design, not just a re-targeting of a legacy product, and the Modem Compute Engine is more than just a processor, it's a platform solution for SDM." said Aspin.
"The SDM-OS operating system and the ARM-compatible tools make the Cognovo solution very easy to use, so existing development teams can very quickly adapt to the new way of implementing modems."
"We would look in various places for future funding," said Aspin. "There's further strategic investment from ARM and venture capitalists and customers are always a good potential source, and that's something was a looking at right now."
Nick Flaherty has been covering technology and startups since 1990 and is based in Bristol, where he co-founded the SiliconSouthWest network. During that time he has worked for most of the electronics magazines and newspapers in the UK and several in Europe and the US, covering all areas of the industry. He blogs at The Embedded blog www.embeddedblog.blogspot.com and Portable Multimedia www.portablemultimedia.blogspot.com and at www.flaherty.co.uk.
"It was all a little bit hand in hand as we had the idea to start up Cognovo 18 months ago as we could see there was an opportunity with vector processing becoming achievable. We were in discussion with ARM on using the Ardberg processor and as we talked it made sense to spin the technology out into a venture dedicated to wireless products."
The SDM platform is already under evaluation at handset makers and is expected to appear in products during 2012 through third party chips.
"Our platform for LTE handsets is a ground-up design, not just a re-targeting of a legacy product, and the Modem Compute Engine is more than just a processor, it's a platform solution for SDM." said Aspin.
"The SDM-OS operating system and the ARM-compatible tools make the Cognovo solution very easy to use, so existing development teams can very quickly adapt to the new way of implementing modems."
"We would look in various places for future funding," said Aspin. "There's further strategic investment from ARM and venture capitalists and customers are always a good potential source, and that's something was a looking at right now."
Nick Flaherty has been covering technology and startups since 1990 and is based in Bristol, where he co-founded the SiliconSouthWest network. During that time he has worked for most of the electronics magazines and newspapers in the UK and several in Europe and the US, covering all areas of the industry. He blogs at The Embedded blog www.embeddedblog.blogspot.com and Portable Multimedia www.portablemultimedia.blogspot.com and at www.flaherty.co.uk.
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