Israeli start-up Commex does not yet have a product, but it does have at least one significant contract. The chip company, currently operating under the RAD Group "incubator" has reached a collaboration agreement with chip giant AMD. Under the deal, the chipset which Commex develops for multi-core processors will be distributed together with AMD's processor solutions.
The significance for Commex is an impressive future income stream, which could potentially reach tens of millions of dollars per year. Commex is expected to begin continuous production in May.
Commex was founded two years ago by president & CEO Tal Horowitz together with brothers Yehuda and Zohar Zisapel who joined him as seed investors in the company. Horowitz comes from the Intel development center in Haifa, where he was involved as a senior member of the development team of the dual core processors.
Two cores working on the same chip only function at 60-70% of total capacity they can produce when placed alone on a chip, but working together they only require minimal energy. Horowitz found a solution to increase the efficiency of a number of cores on a chip, without changing the energy consumption. Such a solution can provide a performance leap for multi-core processors, thus the interest by AMD.
Horowitz explained: "Currently we are not intended for portable computers since that raises price issues as well. That is the reason we first looked to the servers market." With regard to applications as well, the company's chipset solution is not appropriate for everything. It is most suitable for security, multimedia, storage and database solutions.
The company completed an initial financing round of $8 million from Genesis Partners III and Vertex Israel III, and it intends to conduct another one soon. This time, Horowitz is interested in a strategic investor, maybe not AMD yet, but one of the large chipset makers.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on December 31, 2007
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