Mirics Semiconductor, a Hampshire-based start-up firm, has got its first microchip ready for market in under 12 months. Such speed is virtually unheard of in the expensive and complex world of semiconductors.
But the company has not achieved this through amazing new technology or enormous injections of cash. It has benefited from an initiative aimed at getting start-ups in the British chip industry the contacts they need to be taken seriously and get off the ground quickly.
Mirics director Simon Atkinson says that British chip start-ups have always suffered from a lack of readily available investment, with the centre of such funds being the West Coast of the United States.
Without sizeable financial backing, the cost of complex chip design tools previously represented a barrier to British entrepreneurs entering the business.
"We didn’t go looking for any money because we knew we didn’t have a hope in hell of raising it," he says, of his experience with setting up his first company in the early 1990s. "Not a lot of the money comes out of Britain."
He says there is now a growing culture of entrepreneurialism with people like himself getting involved in second and third generation ventures.
Family
"There’s now a network of them," he says, all inter-related and willing to help one another. "It’s a bit like Rock Family Trees," he says, comparing the close-knit collaborative community to the intertwined members of 1970s rock bands documented in Pete Frame’s book that showed how band-hopping by musicians such as Eric Clapton linked groups together.
"For small companies networking is so much more important, it’s happening more and more now," he says. Getting access to the right kind of manufacturer for your product, and the right design tools that will allow you to interact with that manufacturer’s systems, is crucial.
"Big companies are starting to recognise the challenges of small companies and realise they have assets that they can leverage to their benefit," he adds.
This is where Mentor Graphics steps in. The Nasdaq-listed chip design tools company says it realised years ago that there was an untapped opportunity in the South West of England that was producing more and more small chip companies, later collectively known as "Silicon Gorge."
Carson Bradbury, previously business development manager at Mentor in the UK, says that for chip start-ups design tools are the second-largest expense.
