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In 2007, M2000, a programmable logic startup founded in France in 1996, moved its headquarters to Silicon Valley and said it was on the verge of launching what it described as "breakthrough" technology that would provide higher logic density, functionality and speed at less cost than competing solutions.
But since then, not much has been heard from M2000.
In fact, the company changed its name to Abound Logic last October. The company's website touts its Raptor family of FPGAs, which from the product description appears to be the breakthrough technology it talked about in late 2007.
Concern for FPGA startups is running high at Programmable Logic DesignLine, given the state of the economy and the fact that two of them, Mathstar and Ambric, folded last year. The big FPGA players (hopefully) are secure enough to weather the storm, but for the current crop of venture-funded startups, this recession could be make or break.
On Tuesday I put in a call to Francisco Moreno, director of strategic marketing at Abound Logic. Moreno assured me that the company is alive, "running lean," working with a number of customers and involved in some early evaluations.
But Moreno did not want to go into great detail about the company's fortunes, primarily because Frederic Reblewski, the company's co-founder and CEO, is participating in a panel discussion titled "FPGA Development: What is New?" at next week's Design, Automation & Test in Europe (DATE) conference being held in Nice, France.
Moreno said Abound Logic has been running in "semi-stealth mode" and he didn't want to preempt anything that Reblewski planned to disclose next week.
Fair enough. We'll catch up with Abound Logic in the near future. For now it's nice to know the company is still around, even if it's going by a whole new name.
Abound Logic (Santa Clara, Calif.) is backed by four venture capital firms—Tallwood Venture Capital, Doughty Hanson & Co., Galileo Partners and Venture Tech Alliance—as well as EDA vendor Mentor Graphics Corp.
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