IMEC Licenses Low Power Design Tool Tech to Start-Up

Online Staff -- Electronic News, 1/26/2004

Leuven, Belgium-based R&D center IMEC has spun-out its low power design tool technology for data and memory optimization -- also known as ATOMIUM -- to Palo Alto, Calif.-based start-up PowerEscape Inc., the companies said today.

PowerEscape began last year, founded by Guido Arnout, president and CEO.

Companies interested in commercial deployment of IMEC's current memory analysis and optimization techniques for low power should contact PowerEscape, the R&D center said. The technology was developed by IMEC to optimize algorithms, software and memory sub-systems for lower power and improved performance in electronic devices such as digital audio, imaging, video and communications.

IMEC and its industrial research partners have used its ATOMIUM technology to develop low power devices in a wide range of applications such as digital audio, MPEG-4 and wireless communications. These power optimization projects have proven the technology's effectiveness, often reducing energy consumption by an order of magnitude while significantly boosting performance, according to IMEC.
 
PowerEscape used the technology licensed from IMEC as the starting point for its new PowerEscape Analyzer offering, an EDA product designed to reduce power consumption in designs. The company also rolled out the product today.

IMEC will continue its research in power-efficient design technologies such as optimization of the memory hierarchy in single and multi-processor systems, automation of energy-saving loop transformations and the exploitation of concurrency and dynamism in applications, the R&D house said.

"Given the vast experience and in-depth market knowledge of Guido Arnout, who is well known and well respected in the electronics and EDA industries as founder and chairman of CoWare and co-founder and resident of the Open SystemC Initiative, we are confident that PowerEscape will be successful in taking this technology to market," Rudy Lauwereins, a VP of design technology at IMEC, said in a statement. "Through PowerEscape, customers will have access to part of IMEC's memory optimization technology with the benefits of support and service from a commercial tool vendor."