BritChips

If anyone should be known as the godfather of the Brazilian semiconductor industry, my vote would go to Brazil-born tech industry veteran Julio Leão da Silva Jr (or simply, Julio Leão). But he would be too modest to accept.

Julio is Director of Engineering - Design Services BU & Brazil Design Centre Director at Abingdon-based, AIM-listed 'fabless' semiconductor design and supply start-up (and now scale-up) EnSilica. Basically, he fo...

How do you squeeze a quart into a pint pot?

This is one of the fundamental problems facing semiconductor designers when trying to squeeze more circuits onto a chip.

It's a particular challenge for processor chip designers because they need to locate high-speed cache memory circuits very close to the logic circuits.

And the more powerful and faster the processor, the more cache you need. So space on the chip can really become a problem...

How can you tell if the seemingly crystal-clear waters of a fish farm are not hiding traces of chemicals that could harm marine life?

University of Edinburgh spinout, Kāhu SiliconBio, is developing biosensor technology capable of detecting and measuring trace chemicals in liquids in real time and at point of use.

The technology is a unique melding of biotech and electronics, which can ‘eavesdrop’ on the metabolic processes of live ba...

“What we tell our startups is they need to start fast and stay fast – time is not their friend.”

This is the sage advice that Sean Redmond gives to founders and entrepreneurs that have been selected to participate in the Silicon Catalyst.UK accelerator and the ChipStartUK incubator.

Redmond is managing partner at Silicon Catalyst.UK, the UK arm of the eponymous US-based semiconductor incubator and accelerator, whose mission statement...

Timings are approximate:

00:00 - Intro

00:35 - How KuasaSemi became a family affair

04:52 - Aquarius

10:55 - KuasaSemi's relationship with SMD

18:09 - Validating Aquarius

21:18 - How KuasaSemi got its name

21:56 - How KuasaSemi got involved with Silicon Catalyst

26:10 - Funding background

28:55 - Phil's role

30:26 - Who does the cooking and who does the washing up?

31:33 - Their advice to family founders

35:49 - Outro

Mahmoud Wagih was born in Egypt, freelanced as a graphic designer, studied in Malaysia, worked for ARM, had a research fellowship at Southampton University, and is now the founder and CEO of Glasgow-based wireless power startup, RX Watt.

How did all that happen?

In this podcast, Wagih explains how he met advisors while at university who believed in the commercial benefit of wireless power sensors and encouraged him to pursue developm...

Here’s a handy mantra for any tech startup: “Let’s finish what we started”.

This was the advice Jonathan Reeves gave to the engineering team after joining Edinburgh-based underwater wireless tech start-up CSignum, originally as an investor and advisor.

As he puts it, tech startups have a tendency to ‘chase the shiny new thing’. What is needed, he says, is to, ‘take what you've got, polish it a little bit, finish it and see it through...

Welcome to my new podcast series BritChips - conversations with movers and shakers in the UK semiconductor startup scene.The first is with Noel McKenna, CEO at Glasgow-based biotech startup, Neuranics and you can listen to it exclusively here on Substack. There’ll be more conversations coming very soon and you can find them all in the BritChips section on Substack.