Tier Logic had a unique value proposition: you could turn its FPGA into an ASIC in a predictable time and cost. It had a working silicon and a proven production tool, and achieved to do so with spending only $20M.

It is a pity to see that a company with such a good technology and such an attracting business proposition must shut down because of lack of interest from VCs. You have to wonder which strings you have to pull in the investment community to get the attention you deserve.

Although Tier Logic will likely attempt to sell its technology to a Xilinx or an Altera, it is also quite likely that whoever the buyer is will simply buy Tier Logic’s patents to bury them. Too bad.

After Abound Logic‘s shut down 6 weeks ago, another startup showing how hard it is to be successful in FPGA.

Related posts:

1. Can Tabula and Tier Logic be successful?
2. RIP Abound Logic
3. Why FPGA startups keep failing

The dominant factor in classical FPGA architecture is the interconnect: most of the die area is taken by the wires and the interconnect switches and muxes. If you can somehow reduce the area dedicated to interconnect, you can augment the logic density and lessen the cost of the device. Tabula and Tier Logic pitch a 3D architecture to address the interconnect bottleneck, albeit in very different flavors.

Tabula innovative design is based on its ability to reconfigure itself, up to 8 times with a clock running at 1.6GHz. At each cycle a cell can change its functionality, its latch configuration, and its interconnect. The time-multiplexing increases the amount of logic that can be fit on the same area. It is like having 8 layers (or “folds”) of cells stacked on top of each other along a time axis, with very short connection between cells at the same (x,y) coordinate but in two adjacent folds. At each cycle one jumps to the next fold and feeds the new configured logic with the results of the previous fold. Tabula claims they increase the logic density by 2.5x compared to classical FPGA architectures.

Tier Logic’s design idea is to place the SRAM cells that configure the interconnect muxes on top of the routing layers, instead of having them distributed throughout the logic die area. Doing so leaves more room for logic cells, increasing the cell density by about 50% according to the company. The design flow will not throw anybody off: it uses Mentor’s Precision for synthesis, and is followed by Tier Logic’s mapping and P&R.

A big plus touted by Tier Logic is the ability of moving painlessly from their device to an ASIC. Simply replace the interconnect configuration SRAM cells at the top with metal, and voila, you obtain an ASIC with no change in timing. This is a simple, predictable process: it takes about 4 weeks to go from the SRAM configuration to a top-layer mask, and you do not need to go through a timing closure flow again, which means a non-recurring engineering cost of about $50k. This is a real bargain when you consider that moving from FPGA to ASIC usually requires a redesign that can take as long as 9 months.

So who of Tabula and Tier Logic is best positioned to challenge the duopoly Xilinx/Altera?

Tabula made it clear that they are aiming at the high-end of the FPGA market. There are a number of FPGA startups that targeted the same niche, and none survived. One reason is that it is easy for Xilinx and Altera to increase the size of their device, by simply moving to the next technology node. Tabula’s design is innovative and pushes the limits, but how far is too far? It is unclear whether the company can deliver the design tools to match their device’s challenges –they went through a complete reset a few years ago, replacing the whole software team. Verifying a device that can reconfigure itself 8 times in a loop may be another challenging problem. Increased density is obtained by continuous reconfiguration, which means extra power consumption: is it still an acceptable tradeoff? Last but not least, with 100+ people in the US, it is a well-known fact in the Silicon Valley that Tabula burns cash fast, and their funding of $106 millions so far is about to come short.

Tier Logic’s FPGA can reduce the cost of the device for the same density. But their compelling value proposition is really their FPGA to ASIC translation. This is what Altera’s HardCopy was supposed to be, a seamless and risk-free migration from FPGA to ASIC. For anybody that wants to design an application and then migrate to a low/medium volume ASIC production, this could be the most cost efficient solution. I do not know the inside story regarding the financial aspect, but their business proposal looks more solid.

So who do you think has a chance here? Let’s meet again in 3-4 quarters and see how the two companies are doing.

Related posts:

1. RIP Tier Logic
2. Why FPGA startups keep failing
3. RIP Abound Logic

Continue reading What is Twitter’s next step?

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The breakroom had a tweeter wall with live reaction of the attendance –hashtag #tcm09, check it out.

The first to present was Mathias Roth from iOpus.com. His message was quite simple: if you are a startup that wants to get attention, be the first to develop for a new platform, any new platform. The rational: if you are among the first, chance is that you will stick. Look at the top 50 add-ons to Firefox today: half of them have been introduced within the year Firefox made its add-ons development platform available. Mathias’ recommendation: get on Chrome’s bandwagon and develop your add-on now –there are only about 25 Chrome add-ons today. Even though Chrome’s add-ons website will not come before the end of the year, it will pay to be among the first.

Next speaker was Rainer Maerkle from Holtzbrinck Ventures. He gave a great talk about what it takes to launch a startup. I will not do justice by trying to reduce his talk to a few words, but it would come as something like: do your homework, focus, take risks, focus, execute, focus. Oh, and don’t wait for VC money, or don’t over-specify your product: just do it and get it out, then release often.

Then come the exciting part: 12 startups pitching for 3mn each + 1mn for question. Some did great, some did not do as well, but all show the enthusiasm of the entrepreneur. Disclaimer: I am sharing what I thought of the presentations and of the startups ideas and business models; this is a very subjective digest, go visit these sites and make up your own mind.

1. Goutez (food for friends). They provide an on-line market place to buy local food products. Lots of people tried to be on-line food resellers, but only a fraction is still alive. I don’t know whether there is a market large enough to have a sustainable business here.
2. Communote. They propose an enterprise microblogging platform. Basically, a secured place where people can collaborate and share info. It looks pretty slick, and it has already a few customers. But having a Twitter for enterprise might not be enough. They had quite a number of questions regarding their differentiation with respect to other enterprise collaborative platforms. Also, may I ask what if GoogleWave goes enterprise?
3. Graph.me. Good presentation on a platform that enables users to build up their own poll, which they ask friends or social network members to answer (Facebook, MySpace). Business model is to sell the resulting data pool to marketing research. Neat idea. Obvious question is the privacy problem.
4. CaptchaAd. Propose a video ad CAPTCHA. Instead of your usual textual CAPTCHA, a short ad video is played and the used must answer a simple question (e.g., what was the brand of the car in the video?) to prove she is not a spambot. Clever idea, but will the users enjoy watching 10 seconds of video ad to fill in a form?
5. Red Panda. Intentional browsing add-on for Firefox: it instantaneously shows on a side-bar links (news, product reviews, Wikipedia articles, tweets, etc) that are relevant to whatever web page you are currently displaying. Very cool. Business model is targeted ad.
6. intelliAd. They have a web platform to optimize SEM campaign, e.g., determine the best bid for a keyword to optimize CPI. Easy setup, nice GUI, these guys are flying with 20 customers and are looking in expanding in the US. Very solid product and business plan, a success in the making.
7. Vicommerce.com. They provide a layer on top of video players that is used to define clickable area by the on-line resellers. This results in a very entertaining on-line shopping experience. They already have some major customers, solid business plan.
8. Getyourguide.com. A platform to get travelers and local activity providers together. Nice but is that enough differentiation with Yahoo! travel and Tripadvisor, to name only two?
9. Directededge.com. They provide a user recommendation plug-in to businesses. Based on the fact that 20% of Amazon’s revenue comes from user recommendation click-throughs, this is definitely a good idea. The product is still in an early stage, stay tuned.
10. SnipClip.com. They aim at monetizing brands on social networks (Facebook, MySpace), which are known to have a very low clock-through rate. The idea is to sell branded virtual goods (mostly media). Creative, let’s see whether the social network community will bite.
11. Terminii. Propose a web-based appointment services for small and mid-size business. Definitely useful. Disastrous presentation: the presenter stopped his talk because of slides issue. Mike Butcher, the host of the event, did a great job to bring back the speaker and let him explain his business.
12. Valuescope. A news aggregator filtered with natural language analysis, targeted at sales and marketing. Extremely good presentation, very focused.

Mike Butcher’s top 5 picks were:

• #5: Vicommerce.com
• #4: Directededge.com
• #3: Valuescope
• #2: CaptchaAd

and his top one pick was (drum roll please):

• #1: Graph.me

Overall a very interesting day, very well organized, with a great host. It showed that Munich has talents and a good VC structure to produce a dynamic startup environment. Congratulations to the speakers and to those that came to pitch their startups!

Related posts:

1. What to see at the TechCrunch Munich event?
2. Why FPGA startups keep failing

The gathering is an opportunity for local entrepreneurs and techies to network, as well as a few selected startups to pitch in front of their peers. Present also will be a few VC firms. The highlights:

• 14.30 Welcome: Mike Butcher (Editor TechCrunch Europe)
• 14.40 Mathias Roth (iOpus.com) “Chrome: Why creating products for a brand new platform can supercharge their service”
• 15.00 Rainer Maerkle (Holtzbrinck Ventures) “Copy, adapt or innovate – which type of business should you start?”
• 15.20 Startup Pitches
• 17.00 Panel of Startup Support Schemes in Bavaria interrogated by Mike Butcher
• 17.20 Matthias Kroener (CEO, Fidor Bank, Munich) “With traditional banking dying, and community banking up, what does this mean for the startup economy”
• 17.45 Finger food, drinks, and more networking

One of the exciting parts in that kind of event is of course the startups pitches. There will be 11 startups going for the seduction exercise, speed-dating style: 3mn presentation + 1mn for question! It is tough to convey the message with that time constraint, but only the best shall survive. The chosen ones are:

1. Communote –enterprise microblogging platform
2. Graph.me –rate your social network reach
3. CaptchaAd –CAPTCHA with video and ads
4. Red Panda –intentional browsing
5. intelliAd –bid management for Internet marketing
6. Vicommerce.com –in-video shopping
7. Getyourguide.com –on-line booking for tours, attractions and activities
8. Directededge.com –users recommendation plug-in
9. SnipClip.com –virtual goods selling platform for social networks
10. Terminii –web-based appointment services for small and mid-size companies
11. Valuescope –info aggregation and analysis for marketing and sales decisions

I will share what I saw and what I liked after the event –that is, if I can get in! The on-line registration closed unexpectedly, I hope that showing at the door will demonstrate enough motivation for me to attend. Stay tuned.

Related posts:

1. What was hot at the TechCrunch Munich event?
2. What is Twitter’s next step?

There have been attempts to challenge the comfortable equilibrium between the two FPGA giants Xilinx and Altera.  Indeed, the number of FPGA startups increased after the 2000 downturn.  Over the past 7-9 years it looks like VCs founded FPGA startups one after another.  Beside the attraction of a programmable logic market that has been growing a healthy 8-11%, compared to a stalled ASIC market, the availability of engineers and executives from the most prestigious firms (Xilinx, Altera, Intel, LSI, etc) may have been a factor in driving more VC money in FPGA startups.

However, most of these startups die after a few years.  The list includes Chameleon Systems, which died in 2002; the promising Velogix, formerly known as Flexlogics, created in 2002, and which eventually ran out of funds; Ambric Inc, whose assets were acquired by Nethra in 2008; Mathstar Inc, which stopped operating in 2008; and CSwitch, which closed the doors this summer.

Still, there are a number of active FPGA startups.  Among the most notable, one can cite Abound Logic, formerly known as M2000, which started back in 1996, and claims high density FPGA for high-end customers; Tabula, which had to go through a full reset, raised a considerable amount of money, and from which a product is expected sometime later this year; eAsic, still on going after a few misfires; Achronix, which promises a throughput of up to 1.5GHz; SiliconBlue, which aims at low power application; and certainly more companies lesser known or still in stealth mode, like Tier Logic.

All these attempts failed so far to jeopardize the duopoly Xilinx/Altera.  Why is it so?  Any new venture needs to come with a significant differentiation if it wants to challenge the existing competitors.  Many FPGA startups came out with claims of higher densities and better clock cycles.  But regardless of how you look at FPGA architectures, it is not a fundamentally difficult hardware to design, especially with the profusion of expert layout engineers that exists in this field.  One cannot expect a revolution that would bring a 10x better density.  Startups’ claims of 2x or higher density eventually have to face the harsh reality that Xilinx and Altera just need to move to the next technology node to match or substantially reduce the performance claims.  Moving to the next technology node is certainly more accessible to a Xilinx or an Altera giant than to a startup for which a new mask can consume half of a second- or third-round financing.  The bottom line is that displacing a well established vendor requires more than a 2x density improvement.  First of all, you need to make sure you have the software that can exploit that extra density to deliver better results; second, for most applications, density becomes secondary as long as it fits on a board, and the ever-increasing size of the Xilinx and Altera devices makes capacity a hard sell, except possibly for a small fraction of the high-end customers; third, capacity is even more secondary when power consumption comes into play.

In a consumer electronics market more and more dictated by portable and wireless products, power is a factor that is more important that raw performance.  In that regard, SiliconBlue looks the best positioned to distinguish itself from its peers, and proposes a value that both Xilinx and Altera cannot meet, at least for the moment.  They are the ones to watch.

Related posts:

1. Can Tabula and Tier Logic be successful?
2. Is FPGA a sustainable market for EDA?
3. RIP Tier Logic