Hot Summer, Hot Valley

Welcome to the Summer edition of Nuvation’s CURRENT.  This year has been flying by and it’s hard to believe we’re in Q3 of 2006 already.  We have a record number of electronic design projects underway and have been adding more incredibly talented engineers in both our Waterloo and San Jose design centers.  It’s always very gratifying to see the technical innovation, professionalism, and execution culture demonstrated by our staff.  And we all greatly appreciate the confidence our clients place in us to develop leading-edge technologies on challenging schedules.  It’s a great synergy and we enjoy working with all of you.

I’m always glad to be able to connect with all of you through this column and appreciate you taking the time to read our newsletter.  In this issue, Ben continues his 3-part article on Power Supply designs, Faisal shines the device spotlight on Gennum’s impressive VXP chipset, and Nuvation introduces its Algorithm Acceleration services. 

Algorithm Acceleration is a new service we announced at the start of the year, akin to our Signal Integrity service bureau within Nuvation.  Recently, there have been a number of significant advancements in technology for accelerating algorithms, and Nuvation has been investing in developing our capabilities within these new technologies for the benefit of our clients.  We have completed some very advanced DSP/FPGA algorithm acceleration platforms in the past and there are a number of new technology platforms such as FPGAs that drop into AMD Opteron sockets for High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems, new hybrid FPGA-processors, and continued advancement of multi-processor chips, DSPs, FPGAs, and development languages and tools.  Hope you find the introductory article interesting.

On other Nuvation tangents, we participated in this year’s Providian Relay, a 199 mile footrace from Calistoga to Santa Cruz for the benefit of organ transplants.  We are now gearing up for our sixth-annual Hike-for-a-Cure on September 24th.  It’s an 18+ mile hike to the top of HalfDome in Yosemite, with nearly a mile of elevation gain.  Last year we had over 170 hikers and raised a record amount for the Histiocytosis Association of America.  Hope you can join us for the hike this year or at least make a pledge for a good cause.  More information can be found at http://www.hikeforacure.com/ . 

Our combat robots are doing incredibly well.  For those of you who follow the Nuvation-CM Robotics ‘Battlebot’ team, we now have three competition robots in three weight classes.  Our middleweight, Texas Heat, is a TI-sponsored flame-thrower that won its debut fight last month and wow’d the fans with a 9 foot flame emanating from a 60 pound robot.  Cyclonebot continues to shred its competition and is now ranked 4th worldwide for heavyweight bots.  The new ½” titanium shell is so far unpenetrated and we’re dishing out 200g’s of hitting power.  Ziggy, our new Freescale-sponsored super-heavyweight, is dominating as well.  This 340-lb champ is ZigBee-wireless controlled and features a pneumatic flipper powerful enough to toss a pickup truck.  Ziggy is undefeated in the last two events and is now ranked 2nd worldwide.  We’re challenging the #1-ranked bot to step into the ring with us but so far the competition has made itself scarce.  I should also add that Cyclonebot and Texas Heat made an appearance at our Cinco de Mayo Open House in San Jose and soundly defeated the stationary piñatas.  Thanks to all who attended our little fiesta and made it such a memorable event.

That’s all for now.  Thanks again for all of your support and best wishes for a successful finish to 2006.

Kind regards,
Michael Worry
Nuvation CEO