AUSTIN, Texas—StarCore L.L.C. is closing up shop due to a lack of success in licensing its early digital signal processor family of chips. The company had hoped to eventually challenge Texas Instruments Inc.’s leadership position in the DSP market.
The shutdown is set for Aug. 15, with StarCore employees being offered the chance to seek jobs among the organization’s founders, which include Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Agere Systems Inc. and Infineon Technologies AG.
StarCore was formed in June 2002 and opened its doors for business on Oct. 1, 2002, as a stand-alone venture to develop and license DSP technologies for a variety of communications and consumer products, including cell phones. Customers, including mobile handset vendors, would use StarCore’s products to develop software to customize applications for their handsets. Freescale, Agere and Infineon founded StarCore to counter TI’s dominance in the DSP space.
StarCore did develop a high-performance DSP core in the form of Freescale’s MSC8144 quad-core 1GHz chip, but apparently Freescale, Agere and Infineon decided the joint effort was not worth continuing.
StarCore’s design team in Tel Aviv, Israel, will likely end up within one of the founding companies and continue to support StarCore’s existing customer base, according to Marketing Manager Allen Hyman.
“It’s unfortunate we have to do this, but that was the decision of StarCore’s board,” Hyman said.
