Message from Nuvation’s CEO

Happy Holidays to our amazing clients & partners! We appreciate your continued support and hope that your businesses are stronger as a result of our relationship.

2009 was a remarkable year. The financial crisis rippled across nearly every sector of our economy and put a damper on new product development. However, the impact on technology markets was less severe than the dot-com crash of 2001-2002, and our business has been steadily growing this year. We hope you are also seeing strong signs of a rebound and renewed growth.

We’ve enjoyed working with our clients on a multitude of new product developments this year. We are seeing strength in the telecom/datacom sector, including some new products using FPGA PHYs at >8GHz. Our defense business continues to grow through our International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) facilities in San Jose as well as the Canadian Controlled Goods Program (CGP) in our Waterloo center. We are involved with several medical projects involving video/imaging, and we recently completed a medical metering prototype. Broadcast video is another hot area. We’ve done work on leading-edge video FPGAs, 3D-TV, a DOCSIS cable product, and a set-top-box design. We are also working on a number of projects in the security field that involve video, imaging, and ultrasound. Some of these designs leverage our high-volume/low-cost design capabilities, making these products more affordable than ever—a benefit that we hope will increase security worldwide. We also have some novel products under development involving custom RF implementations of UWB. And we have been busy implementing TI’s new OMAP3 in a variety of handheld/low-power applications.

We continue to keep our skills sharp while having fun with our battlebots hobby. Our Freescale-sponsored super-heavy weight (340 lb class) bot Ziggy remains undefeated, and it won its 4^th consecutive gold medal at the 2009 Robogames. This robotics Olympics is the world’s largest robot competition, with nineteen countries competing. Meanwhile, our TI-sponsored lightweight (60 lb) bot Texas Heat used its MSP430-controlled flame thrower to maintain its top-three global standing as well as its status as a crowd favorite.

We are now involved in a side project to develop an advanced electric race car and compete for the Progressive Automotive X-Prize. Using a T-Rex frame, we ripped out the combustion engine and replaced it with a powerful electric drive. We just finished showing the car in a series of press events through New York City and Las Vegas. We expect our 0-60 speeds to be under 4 seconds when we race this summer. I’m not sure who will test the top speed, but we have a team opening for a professional driver!

Our ninth-annual “Hike for a Cure” was another great success in raising funds and awareness for the Histiocytosis Association. We had over 250 hikers this year safely ascend and descend Half Dome in Yosemite Park, a hike of over 18 miles and nearly a mile of elevation gain. It is an incredibly rewarding event that reminds us of the challenges faced by the families dealing with Histiocytosis. Our hike has now raised over $1.2 million to fund research for a cure to Histiocytosis.

In this Holiday edition of Nuvation’s CURRENT, Murat Ozkan shares insights into low- power design methodologies, with a focus on processor approaches. Our VP of Engineering Operations Mike Hermann expounds on the virtues of Altium Designer for PCB design. After an extensive bake-off process, we found this tool to be truly superior for most PCB design flows. Next, we shine the spotlight on some new fixed/floating-point processors from TI and give a nod to TechBites.com, an informative tech site with a Facebook-like social networking flair.

All the best to you and yours for the holiday season. If we can assist with any new product development for you in 2010, give us a call!

Warm regards,
Michael Worry
CEO, Nuvation Engineering