Chip design firm Stream Processors shutting down and selling assets
Stream-prosessoria, a chip design firm focused on video processing, is shutting its doors and is engaged in an asset sale, VentureBeat has learned.
Jack Horng, an officer for the company, said that Stream Processors will be formally shut in a month or so. The former chief executive, Chip Stearns, is forming a new company to acquire all of the assets from Stream Processors. The new company is expected to continue to supply its current generation Storm-1 processors but it isn’t clear what will happen with the Storm-2 second-generation chips.
The closure is a blow to one of the biggest advocates of parallel processing, which uses many different processing cores, or brains, on a single chip. But rivals such as Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Intel have all adopted some of the parallel processing techniques that Stream Processors talked about. Tietenkin, the Stream Processors technology could live on if Stearns succeeds in acquiring the assets.
The San Jose, Calif.-based company was founded in 2004 by Bill Dally, dean of the computer science department at Stanford University. Dally left Stanford in January to become chief scientist at graphics chip maker Nvidia. The company churned out its first chip samples in 2006 and began shipping its Storm-1 series chips in 2007.
Attempts to reach the company were unsuccessful. The company focused on making video surveillance and high-end consumer electronics chips. Rivals include chip makers such as Stretch and Texas Instruments. Stream Processors had funding from Austin Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Woodside Fund.
The recession has not been kind to chip startups. Few chip makers are getting funding these days, since it can take tens of millions of dollars to fund a new chip company.
