David Manners writes about the future of VC-backed semiconductor start-ups. In spite of the fact that there is some pessimism in some quarters of the industry, there are some industry insiders who paint a much brighter picture about the sector.

You can view the article here.

The big surprises last week in Silicon Valley were Apple's purchase of PA Semi, and Sun buying Montalvo's technology assets.

Why did these OEMs buy their own processor? How much did they pay and did that constitute a good exit for the entrepreneurs and investors?

Until recently the conventional wisdom was that the x86 architecture reigned supreme in the computing space (all PCs and most servers), ARM-based processors led in mobile and low-power apps, and only comms infrastructure and industrial control remained CPU battlegrounds. Then Qualcomm launched Snapdragon and Intel its Atom, and the embedded space suddenly faced competition.

The technology-focused investment group Ascendant Technology carried out the research and it reported that technology investment in the UK and Ireland started strongly in 2008 with an increase in both the value and volume of deals.

"Although the number of active number of active investors declined, VCs and private investors increased the capital they invested in Q1 by 15 per cent to £357m, backing 13 per cent more companies which rose to 72 businesses", said Stuart McKnight, CEO of Ascendant.

Recently, we finally had confirmation of what most of us have known for a while: the US economy is in a downturn.

The credit crisis is clearly the cause, and we have not hit bottom yet, but how will this slowdown affect those of us involved in technology?

Let's start with venture capital. While I have heard from some venture capitalists that they intend to sit on the sidelines for a while, this is unlikely to result in a major funding slowdown unless the environment deteriorates significantly further.

Check out an in-depth article looking at Scottish start-ups, as part of series on career development.

As well as looking at a number of companies - such as SFX Technologies, Design LED Products and D-TACQ - it highlights one Perth-based inventor. Tanya Ewing won the top female inventor prize at the Biggart Baillie Innovation Awards last year with Ewgeco (pictured), her energy monitoring device.

The article begins:

This month saw the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, formerly known as 3GSM. Along with the Consumer Electronics Show, these shows are probably the main events for the global electronics industry.

As everyone knows, the cutting-edge of the mobile world is in Europe or Asia, and while MWC has about a third of CES’s attendees, Barcelona is also a much nicer place than Las Vegas (receptions in an 11th century monastery certainly beat anything in Vegas!), so there is an amazing number of US VCs and entrepreneurs who head over each year.

And while it seemed a little more subdued than last year, there were several things worth noticing.

The competition offers London-based technology start-ups the chance to share up to £1m in investment, participate in exciting workshops worth more than £100,000 and also confer with leading players in the technology world.

The vast Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas each January is always a crowded, frenzied affair - hundreds of thousands of people swarming over literally thousands of exhibit stands scattered all over the city. And of course there is the surreal insanity of Las Vegas, about as different from a normal city as could be imagined, only adds to the frenzy.

As we enter 2008, the chip industry hopes for continued consumer demand, since this has become the source of most of its growth prospects. Much of this comes from the US, whose economy now faces a credit crisis, election year uncertainty and more.