mSilica supplies system-centric mixed-signal power management ICs to the light-emitting diode (LED) backlight market. This broad-based and rapidly growing market includes liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs; specialty panels (industrial, military, instrumental and avionics); and general illumination (commercial, residential, industrial and government). mSilica's LED display drivers utilize a proprietary and patent-protected combination of analog and digital circuit techniques. The company's products embody a system-centric approach and provide on-chip solutions for local and global dimming, power management, signal conditioning and smart interfacing. This allows electronic equipment manufacturers to significantly enhance product features, while improving power efficiency, reliability and cost/performance.

Founded in 2006, the company has raised over $20 million in two rounds of funding. mSilica is engaged with leading users of LED backlighting ICs worldwide and is shipping its products in production volume. mSilica's team comes from leading analog and mixed-signal semiconductor companies. Their combined experience empowers the company to deliver industry-leading products based on detailed system-level expertise, proven IC design know-how and extensive customer application knowledge. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California in the heart of Silicon Valley, mSilica offers worldwide technical support through its headquarters and offices in Korea, Japan and Taiwan. The company also supports its customers with sales representatives and distributors throughout Asia, North America and Europe.

"mSilica is proud to be a member of GSA. Our association with GSA has helped connect us with semiconductor manufacturing partners. GSA has also been invaluable in providing data to benchmark our internal processes and remain competitive in the semiconductor industry."

– Dilip Sangam, Chief Technology Officer & Vice President, Engineering, mSilica

In February 2010, Octasic announced its second-generation Opus2 digital signal processor (DSP) core, a high-performance, ultra low-power, asynchronous DSP architecture optimized for baseband processing and multimedia transcoding. The Opus2 core, based on Octasic's unique asynchronous Opus DSP architecture, offers the lowest power consumption available in a fully programmable, high-performance DSP. Incorporating the experience gained from extensive application development on Opus1 and improvements to the asynchronous design, Octasic has doubled the platform's performance, while improving its power efficiency. For example, a single device based on Opus2 can provide all the necessary processing for a complete 64-user High-Speed Packet Access+/Long-Term Evolution (HSPA+/LTE) base station while consuming less than 2.5W.

At Mobile World Congress, Octasic demonstrated an integrated reference platform with partners Continuous Computing and Analog Devices to wireless developers looking for high-performance, low-power solutions for their picocell and femtocell 3G applications. Opus2 is fully supported by a rich, highly integrated software development environment that includes an optimizing C compiler and timing-accurate simulator. Opus2-based devices will be available from Octasic later this year for use in wireless baseband, media gateway, private branch exchange (PBX) and video products.

"Octasic joined GSA in 2006 to connect with other members and gain valuable information and insight into the industry. GSA provides us with various forums to network with players in the semiconductor industry and helps us identify new market opportunities and drive our growth."

– Robert Blake, Chief Executive Officer, Octasic