Revolutionary self-cooling chip devices announced by Cambridge Bubble Radio

By 'Picasso'

After getting their fingers burned in recent years, investors in technology companies might have finally struck gold. Cambridge Bubble Radio (CBR) claims to be the first company in the world to develop new self-cooling chip technology, which uses tiny micro-machined water chambers with miniature fans on the surface of the chips. Wallace Pratt, cto of CBR stated "We stumbled across the technology by accident, when trying to reduce the high power dissipation of our single-chip radio frequency (RF) solution, which suffered from a considerably reduced operational life when installed in the field." One of CBR's engineers, working late into the night, floated the chips in a small puddle of spilled coffee by accident. It was found that not only was the power dissipation considerably reduced but the maximum operating frequency of the chip was substantially increased.

The company recently raised an additional round of venture capital money, their fourth, to pursue the experimental technology further. As a result, it found that this technology has more market potential than the company's original software-defined RF+ baseband chip which was delayed due to uncertainty regarding the benefits to mobile network operators (MNOs) for such advanced technology. CBR's ceo Mr. Ollie MacDonald commented "I have always had complete faith in our engineering team to come up with something that will allow us to differentiate ourselves from the competition. It shows how flexible our engineering team can be when faced with uncertain market conditions and severe competition from 50 to 60 software-defined RF+ baseband chip suppliers".

The self-cooling technology, code-named 'CoolSpurt' is creating a real stir in the venture capital community and VCs are scouring university laboratories to identify new, promising start-ups in this field. According to a well known VC, who refused to be identified (they already have three potential players in their portfolio), VCs have previously spent billions of dollars backing new, unproven technologies in markets that never materialised, but this time, the technology is so simple to understand, that people are forgoing the lengthy due diligence so as not to miss out on the next big technology of the future. "We do not need to pay huge due diligence fees to external consultants, as it is obvious that this simple technology has a definite future. Our limited partners are clamouring for some success stories and this could be it." The technology has the potential to make up for all the recent losses suffered by VC funds.

The cfo of CBR, Nacho Euro, is equally excited about the potential savings and its impact on the bottom line. "Now that the technology has been demonstrated in our labs, we feel confident that we will be able to reduce our shipping cost by a substantial margin. We were previously shipping our two-chip solution wrapped in £20 notes, as the market couldn't afford to pay £10 for our two-chip solution. The £20 bills were little sweeteners, sorry, incentives, to get our technology adopted widely". Willard Kurtz, vp of marketing, states "Our in-depth market research and customer interviews have shown that the market will explode if we can reduce the prices we charge to £5. With the self-cooling technology we will be able to reduce our two-chip solution into a single chip. This will mean that we longer need to wrap them in £20 notes before we ship our products. Instead we estimate that potential customers will be more than satisfied if we wrap them with £10 notes instead." This represents 2x savings for the company, for which patent applications are pending. MacDonald added, "Our engineers will soon master volume manufacturing of CoolSpurt, which is planned for second half of next year." Meanwhile Mr. Pekka Svenson of Kokia, a large OEM customer for the RF+baseband chip, commented "I always look forward to receiving a shipment from CBR, as £20 notes are easy to unwrap from the chips." However, with £10 notes soon to be rolled out, he will have to reduce the number of purchasing staff to reduce his cost base. He added "It is a pity, we got so used to the £20 bills, now we will have to completely retrain our staff to recognise the £10 bills. However, we anticipate our costs will drop once the UK decides to join the Euro."

© Chilli Publishing Ltd 2003

01APR2003