HDMI chip firm Redmere closes US$5.6-million funding round

10 Dec 2009

An Irish electronics firm that designs and manufactures chip products for the consumer electronics industry has secured US$5.6 million in Series “B” funding which was led by Celtic House Venture Partners, Toronto.

The round follows major design wins for the company’s products in US and European markets for HDMI smart cables.

EdgeStone Capital Partners (Toronto) and Enterprise Equity (Dublin) also participated in this funding round.

Making a connection

RedMere enables easy-to-use, high-quality, smart connectivity for the home, the office and on the move.

These new active cable systems deliver compact digital connectivity over HDMI, DisplayPort and USB for video and still cameras, smart phones, HDTV, Blu-Ray DVD, PS3 and Xbox, as well as enterprise solutions using Infiniband and PCI Express.

“Our EyeWire active chipset has now been adopted in home theatre and camera cable applications worldwide,” said Peter Smyth, co-founder and CEO of RedMere.

“The thin nature of the cables makes them easy to route and hide, and their reduced weight makes them ideal for portability. This funding round will be used primarily to expand our penetration into the camera and mobile handset (smart phone) markets.

“These cables are ultra thin, about 2mm in diameter, perfect for carrying with these portable applications,” Smyth said.

From copper to chip

RedMere’s EyeWire chip technology removes up to 80pc of the copper used in hi-definition video cables by placing a self-powered chip in cables.

The chip embeds signal processing technology directly into the cable structure to improve bandwidth performance and guarantees support for all HDMI data rates including the latest HDMI V1.4.

RedMere provides cable-embedded semiconductors and advanced cable reference designs to cable industry leaders and manufacturing partners.

By John Kennedy

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com