Plurality Ltd. has raised $8 million from Libot, a group of private investors. The company's Hypercore multicore processor is a scalable, easily programmable, general-purpose processor.
Plurality was founded in 2004 on the basis of a decade of research to develop a 256-core processor by the company's founders, CTO Nimrod Bayer and Prof. Ran Ginosar. The company has raised $9.5 million to date, including the current round.
Plurality plans to reach market in early 2009, initially with a 64-core processor and then with a 256-core processor. For the sake of comparison, Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD) have two, four and eight-core processors.
Plurality's technology is heavy, but the concept - massive parallel processing - is to use hardware development that simulates the activity of a supercomputer's operating system to run an unlimited number of processors in the same way that current systems simultaneously run thousands of supercomputers.
Plurality chairman and CEO Igor Peer said, "When we began to work, we only had the task of realization, which was simpler than the research that designed the architecture. Since we want to achieve a generic processor we sought a wide direction. This is one reason why we're one of the only small, specialized companies, especially from Israel, that is a member of the Multicore Association."
Peer added, "The company was founded like any start-up. We worked from home, and in 2006 closed our first investment at $1.5 million. The effort was not only to bring the hardware, but also the tools that would enable the development of applications that do not exist in the market at present."
Peer said that Plurality had contacted several venture capital funds for financing, but that they ultimately decided to continue with private investors. Ronen Hoffman organized investors from the US, South Africa, and Australia. Peer said, "In many ways, we're Cinderella."
A few months ago, Plurality signed a cooperation agreement with AMD under which Plurality's multicore processors will be integrated into AMD's circuit boards.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 30, 2008
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2008