Prelude Trust Share Discussion Threads

[timtom2] 03/7/2007 09:12

somebody should snap them up and do us all a favour.

[rivaldo] 03/7/2007 07:36

Nice to see M-Spatial rated as a top 10 search engine in such distinguished company as Google. Yahoo etc, and also looking at the rankings seemingly being the top independent mobile search engine...



"M-Spatial : M-Spatial mobile search is a local search, such as Google local. However, results are richer than Google Local (not only a text and small map)."

[rivaldo] 02/7/2007 14:54

Sounds good.... although DisplayLink is hardly a "startup"!



"Electronics News July 2, 2007

Chip startup aims for HD and wireless displays
Startup DisplayLink is working on a chip that will allow high definition TV to be sent over USB cables.

The company has already developed a semi-custom chip, the DL-120, that can support up to six separate monitors from a single USB port by just transmitting the differences. This is being used by global customers such as Toshiba for a universal docking station and by Samsung and LG for USB monitors.

The Samsung monitor integrates a USB flash disk to store the relevant drivers and download them automatically to the PC when the monitor is attached, making the screen 'plug and play'.

A second, more cost optimised version of this chip is being developed at the moment that will be able to handle wireless USB in a native mode, says Jason slaughter, senior product manager at DisplayLink. This will allow true wireless monitors and docking stations, although not with HDTV capabilities, he says.

The company has 55 employees and venture capital backing of $27m from global backers such as Atlas Ventures and Benchmark Capital. The key is low latency that allows the second screens to be easily controlled by the user. It started off with a design in a Xilinx Spartan FPGA but moved to a structured ASIC in November last year for the high volume Toshiba, Samsung and LG products.

The next generation chip will include more compression protocols that will allow higher resolutions than today's 1600 x 1200 and will support HDTV on the monitors. This will become more important as Blu Ray drives become more common on desktop PCs and in laptops, says Slaughter. This chip is being defined at the moment and is likely to be ready late next year."

[hvs] 02/7/2007 09:58

lol !!!

It was. And here I was all excited for some action.

Bloody alarms eh !!!

[rivaldo] 02/7/2007 09:58

:o))

Well, I did say it was unusual!

[orange1] 02/7/2007 09:52

I think you'll find that one of the MMs forgot to set their alarm and was late arriving at the office. Normal service now resumed.

[rivaldo] 02/7/2007 08:19

Hello....up for no apparent reason? Most unusual for PDT.

[rivaldo] 28/6/2007 12:17

Now this is good - Qinetiq have set up a new £40m Fund to accelerate progress at some of its investments more quickly...including its 31.6% investment in ZBD:



More here:


"Qinetiq to speed technology investment growth 27/06/2007

QinetiQ is creating a new technology venture fund in conjunction with Coller Capital to accelerate the development and realisation of seven of its venture investments. The fund will manage seven Qinetiq start ups, including ZBD Displays.
The fund, called Qinetiq Ventures, has been established to allow the investments to operate independently with a long term capital commitment. The fund, to be managed by an independent investment manager, will have initial assets of £40million, with QinetiQ and Coller each contributing up to £20m of follow on funding.
The fund will partially or wholly own seven of Qinetiq's venture assets. Alongside Omni-ID, which is developing low cost passive rfid technology, Quintel, which is working on next generation antenna systems, and ZBD Displays, which is developing bistable lcds, the fund will also manage Aurix, Metalysis, QinetiQ Nanomaterials and Stingray Geophysical.
QinetiQ had already invested another £3.5m in ZBD Displays in March as the lead in a £10.5m funding round. ZBD was the first spin out from QinetiQ in July 2000."

[rivaldo] 27/6/2007 11:49

Some additional info on Polatis' expansion:



"Polatis to make optical switches in Poland
Wednesday 20 June 2007
Optical switch maker Polatis is to open a production plant in Poland.

"We selected Poland as an ideal location for expansion due to its combination of a highly talented workforce and excellent cost advantages," said CEO Dave Lewis.

Polatis makes low-loss optical switching based on piezoelectric beam-steering under the brand DirectLight.

"The facility will enable us to ramp up production and scale our operations to meet both near-term customer needs, and large volume programmes where we are in trials now, such as those in fibre-to-the-home and backbone network operations," said Lewis.

The Polish site will eventually employ 100 people and will come on stream this autumn.

This week the firm is demonstrating two devices at NXTcomm in Chicago. Its 1x9 wavelength selective switch (WSS) for DWDM networks individually attenuates or blocks any wavelength and can pass or drop any wavelength with 3dB of optical insertion loss.

The other development is a latching switch which maintains connected paths without electrical power.

Demonstrated in an 80x80x4 version, it allows an operator to peer up or downstream at four points in an 80 fibre network. It can tap a portion of power, or fully switch a given link."

[rivaldo] 26/6/2007 22:39

Siconnect news:



"June 26, 2007 10:26 AM Eastern Daylight Time
SiConnect Recruits VP Marketing

SWINDON, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SiConnect, the leader in multimedia distribution technology for the home, has appointed Russell Haggar as Vice President of Marketing.

Russell joins the company from Esprit Capital Partners, one of Europe's largest tech-focused VC firms and a major investor in SiConnect. A founding partner of Esprit, he spent five years leading investments in early stage technology start-ups.

An experienced technology marketer, Russell previously worked with Element 14 (acquired by Broadcom), Scientific Generics, Madge Networks and Marconi. He holds a masters degree in computer science from Cambridge University.

Haggar commented, "I join SiConnect at an extremely exciting time in its development. First silicon and evaluation kits are already out in the market and the company is having a real influence on the development of the first international standard for powerline communication in the home. Our unique technology for supporting multimedia applications means that we are well placed to capitalise on the tremendous opportunity that exists in the market place over the next few years.""

[rivaldo] 26/6/2007 09:25

Agreed - this does sound very much like a pre-IPO funding round.

With 4 products in clinical trials, including one in P111 and one blockbuster candidate very advanced in P11 you'd hope that as long as the markets remain OK Kiadis could achieve 50%-100% uplift for PDT on IPO, say £2m-£3m.

Since Kiadis was on my (and most here's) write-off list not so long ago this is a definite result.

This again validates PDT's valuations and the 145p NAV, with no uplift for the stars in the portfolio.

In particular I'd say Polatis is now joining the likes of ZBD, DisplayLink, Oxfortd Immunotec as a potentially big winner.

[timtom2] 26/6/2007 08:56

500KE into Kiadis from PDT. Looks like a very useful new investor has joined - good validation - all we need is an IPO or sale - if there has been a round of funding would taht mean no IPO or sale withing 12 months or so?

If so they can be taken off the "soon to divest" list and increase the probability of it being another that will go out the door.

[timtom2] 25/6/2007 20:46

riv - thank you for the ground work. Interesting to see these tidbits of info.

[hvs] 25/6/2007 19:28

Thank you for the posts riv.

[rivaldo] 25/6/2007 09:54

New Polatis newsletter out here:


Including a nice testimonial:

"Optium Corporation provides a superior end-to-end solution for US defense Radio Frequency distribution system.

Optium Corporation recently selected the Polatis DirectLight switch for use in a dynamic Radio Frequency distribution system. The DirectLight all-optical switch, in conjunction with high performance RF to optical conversion products from Optium, provided a superior end to end solution for Optium's US defense customer.

The benefits of optically distributing RF signals include immunity from Electrormagnetic Interference (EMI), reduced cable size/weight/cost, and the ability to provide longer cable runs with improved RF link performance, as compared to more traditional coaxial based distribution systems.

In a photonic RF distribution system, RF-to-optical converters are located close to the antennae and fiber optic cables are used to distribute the RF signals. The low loss of the fiber optic cables, as compared to more traditional coaxial cables, allow antennae to be located much larger distances from receivers, with great reduction in the size, weight and cost of the distribution cabling.

The performance characteristics of the DirectLight switch make it a very high performance RF switch that works across an extremely broad frequency range (DC to 30+ GHz), thus allowing one switch to handle HF, UHF, VHF and even microwave frequencies. Traditional RF switches can only handle small portions of the total frequency band, suffer from much greater levels of interference from neighboring signals, and have greater signal loss.

In addition, traditional RF switches are only available in small port counts, are physically larger as compared to DirectLight optical switches, require more electrical power, and weigh more.

Applications that require high fidelity and dynamic distribution of RF signals while achieving minimum size, weight and power, can achieve great benefit from a photonic distribution system using the Optium RF to optical conversion products coupled with the Polatis DirectLight switch.

The ultra low insertion loss of the DirectLight switch products ensures that RF link performance is not compromised by signal loss. The unique non-dithered alignment technique employed in DirectLight products provides the only all-optical matrix switch that does not impose amplitude modulation on the signal as it traverses the switch. The low back reflection of DirectLight also ensures that the low noise lasers used in RF over fiber systems are not destabilized thus preserving low link noise margins.

"The Polatis switch is a high performance, all-optical matrix switch that offers all the characteristics required for photonic RF link distribution," said John DeAndrea, Director of Optical Systems for Optium Corporation."

[rivaldo] 20/6/2007 17:46

Another 17k of buys at the full offer and a second 10k buy from yesterday were reported today. A bit of demand should go a long way with regards to PDT imo.

More on Polatis' expansion:


"Polatis to make optical switches in Poland
Wednesday 20 June 2007
Optical switch maker Polatis is to open a production plant in Poland.

"We selected Poland as an ideal location for expansion due to its combination of a highly talented workforce and excellent cost advantages," said CEO Dave Lewis.

Polatis makes low-loss optical switching based on piezoelectric beam-steering under the brand DirectLight.

"The facility will enable us to ramp up production and scale our operations to meet both near-term customer needs, and large volume programmes where we are in trials now, such as those in fibre-to-the-home and backbone network operations," said Lewis.

The Polish site will eventually employ 100 people and will come on stream this autumn.

This week the firm is demonstrating two devices at NXTcomm in Chicago. Its 1x9 wavelength selective switch (WSS) for DWDM networks individually attenuates or blocks any wavelength and can pass or drop any wavelength with 3dB of optical insertion loss.

The other development is a latching switch which maintains connected paths without electrical power.

Demonstrated in an 80x80x4 version, it allows an operator to peer up or downstream at four points in an 80 fibre network. It can tap a portion of power, or fully switch a given link."

[rivaldo] 20/6/2007 07:37

More on Polatis' expansion:


"By Sam Fountain, 20 June 2007, emailed 2 times

An anticipated tripling of demand in the optical switch market has led Cambridge-based Polatis to open a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Poland, to be staffed by Cambridge-trained operatives.

The new facility, planned to begin production this autumn, will be manned by around 50 locally sourced staff, who have spent the last year in Cambridge receiving cutting-edge training, with the number reaching over 100 when operation begins.

The photonic switching solutions firm plans to move its standard telecom and instr-umentation products manuf-acturing to the new facility, where cost advantages will enable it to ramp up production to meet escalating market demand.

Polatis CEO, Dave Lewis said: "This is an exciting period of growth for our company and the new facility in Poland illustrates the increasing demand for our high performance products in the marketplace.

"The new facility will enable us to ramp up production and scale our operations to meet both near-term customer needs, and large volume programmes where we are in trials now."

Poland is becoming the destination of choice for firms in the UK seeking low-cost infrastructure and talent, whilst remaining on England's doorstep compared to manufacturing destinations like China and Thailand.

Lewis said: "We selected Poland as an ideal location for expansion due to its combination of a highly talented workforce and excellent cost advantages."

2005 saw the merger of Polatis with Boston-based Continuum and the two cities will remain the hubs for the group's existing specialised defence and advanced engineering technology development.

Founded in 2000, Polatis has become a leader in in ultra-low loss optical switching, with its 'DirectLight' optical beam steering technology powering the creation of highly reliable and compact photonic switching solutions. The firm counts 3i, Alta Berkley and Esprit Capital Partners among its investors.

Polatis has been attending NXTcomm in Chicago this week, showcasing the next generation of optical switch technology."

[rivaldo] 19/6/2007 19:05

:o)) Tiltonboy, you'll get PDT up to the 145p NAV on your own at this rate.....

[hvs] 19/6/2007 14:34

Nice one tiltonboy,

Keep on buying mate we need further upticks.

[tiltonboy] 19/6/2007 14:24

riv,

My buy.

tiltonboy

[rivaldo] 19/6/2007 13:51

Looking interesting - up 1p on a 10k buy.

Hashertu, great post - thx from a complete non-techie. Sounds like XMOS is a possible winner then. I can certainly confirm that the web site is in "Stealth" mode because XMOS are about to launch rather than anything else.

[hashertu] 18/6/2007 21:59

Rivaldo. I had a look at the XMOS web site to see if there was more information there, but the site is in "STEALTH" mode. I don't know whether this indicates that breaking news is imminent or that they are about to disappear without trace.
What the company is trying to achieve is highly desirable if their product is reliable, relatively straightforward to use and at a price that is competitive with the alternative solutions.
Apologies if I am teaching you to suck eggs but here goes.
ASIC, SoC or FPGAs would used where an application required a lot of calculations to be done in a very short time.
ASIC and SoC usually yield the lowest unit cost but high upfront development costs and an relatively inflexible end product.
FPGAs (Field programmable gate arrays) have a medium to high unit cost, lower upfront costs, very flexible if you have the design resources and usually the quickest route to market. However, as the article says, they can be (very) complex to program.
I am guessing, but the XMOS product appears to provide the computational capability of an FPGA but using a processor to interface between the designer and the grunt electronics. The programming language used by the designer is probably at a much higher level than is currently available, easier to use and test. Therefore changes are easier to implement.