Samsung invests in picoChip

Samsung manufactures 3G base transceiver stations and basestation controllers, as well as basestations for WiMAX. The company is one of the suppliers for Sprint’s $3bn nationwide mobile WiMAX network rollout in the USA to deploy in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Providence, R.I., and recently won the contract for New York.

“Samsung is a world leader in wireless infrastructure, and it is a testament to picoChip’s prominence as a silicon vendor for this market that Samsung has chosen to invest in us,” said Guillaume d'Eyssautier, president and CEO of picoChip. “The new round of funding reaffirms our leadership in multi-core DSP for advanced wireless markets with our WiMAX, HSPA and femtocell products.”

“Our strategic investment in picoChip represents Samsung's commitment to advanced wireless, said Brian Kang, principal investment manager at Samsung Ventures America. picoChip is a key player with leading edge solutions for both WiMAX and femtocells, and we are delighted to be working with them as we address these growing wireless markets.

Founded in 2000, picoChip has developed the world’s highest performance multi-core DSP, and is a supplier of complete femtocell, picocell and macrocell reference designs for WiMAX and HSPA. The company’s technology is being used by over a hundred manufacturers, including Tier 1s, in both WiMAX and 3G. picoChip femtocell customers include Axiom, ipAccess (supplying Thomson), Ubiquisys (supplying NEC and Motorola) and a number of other major OEMs and ODMs. Recently Google announced a strategic investment in Ubiquisys, who use picoChips’s HSPA femtocell product. In WiMAX, picoChip most recently won the Chip Design, Industry Innovation and Industry Choice Awards at the Best of WiMAX World Awards 2007, taking home 50% of the awards available. In addition picoChip was recently awarded a place on LIGHT READING’s prestigious “Top Ten Private Companies” list.