In brief: Nuvia’s goal is to take the lessons the team learned from developing mobile processors for battery-powered devices and apply them to electricity-hungry data centers. Efficiency gains could be highly attractive to data center operators.
Look out AMD and Intel, there’s a new competitor in town.
Three former semiconductor executives that worked on Apple’s iPhone chips launched a startup earlier this year called Nuvia Inc. that aims to design processors for use in data centers. On Friday, the trio – John Bruno, Manu Gulati and Gerard Williams III – announced they have raised $53 million in funding to help expand their outfit to around 100 employees by the end of the year.
In an interview with Reuters, Williams said this area is ripe for innovation and advancement. Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategies, believes the company could be on to something.
“I’ve been in and around semiconductor companies for 30 years. There are never any guarantees, but one thread that I’ve seen is that the most successful chip companies have rock star architects and developers,” Moorhead said.
Interestingly enough, one of Nuvia’s key investors is Dell Technologies Capital which is one of Intel’s biggest customers. That doesn’t necessarily mean Dell will use Nuvia’s chips, however.
Scott Darling, president of the venture group, said you have to have a world-class team to do something disruptive enough that it will prevail despite the response of competitors. “At Nuvia, we think we have found one,” he added.
Masthead credit: CPUs by Yurchanka Sisrhei
https://www.techspot.com/news/82796-former-apple-chip-execs-launch-startup-take-amd.html
