Optical Engine Startup "Ahura" Officially Debuts
CompoundSemi News StaffOctober 25, 2004...Ahura Corp of Wilmington,
Massachusetts USA has emerged from stealth mode. It's a highly innovative optical
subsystem startup, founded and managed by a team
slate of familiar names in the compound semi industry, and it's surprising far
along in its company organization, product development and deployment. Ahura
is very much into advanced lasers, taking their end product further up the supply
chain, with only one systems integrator between Ahura and the ultimate end user
of their exceptional portable, ruggedized, optical
engine technology. The diverse product line is targeted at supplying
such users as state and local governments first response teams (fire, police,
etc.) with a highly affordable, miniature subsystem that helps rescue and enforcement
professionals do their job better and faster. Ahura's optical engines will also
make their debut soon in manufacturing production lines where they'll perform
much the same thing (rescue, alert, etc.)... minus the human element.
As Dr. Daryoosh Vakhshoori, Ahura's co-founder and CEO puts it: “We
are committed to become the leader in innovative ultra compact portable optical
solutions. Our ‘optical engine’ approach is fundamentally different
from other companies and enables miniature high performance optical systems
across a number of industries. Our mission is to develop cost effective products
that improve the quality of people’s lives around the world. We will continue
to push the technological envelop on product performance while moving quickly
to transition our designs into production for customers in government and industry.”
Ahura has already raised more than $15M from top
tier USA venture capital firms including ARCH Venture Partners of Chicago,
Illinois; Castile Ventures of Waltham, Massachusetts; and ComVentures of Palo
Alto, California. The startup occupies a 30,000 square foot development and
manufacturing facility in Wilmington, Massachusetts, which includes an advanced
optoelectronic design center, semiconductor fabrication and growth, thin-film
optical coating, precision packaging, reliability testing, system design and
manufacturing. Company
news release
Showa Denko Officially Enters Manufacture of Blue LEDs
Jo Ann McDonald, EditorOctober 25, 2004...Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) of Japan has announced their entry into the blue spectrum
LED chip business with a 12mW flip chip component and also announced it is constructing
a plant in Chiba to produce 30 million units a month of their new GaN-based
blue LED chips, based on a proprietary SDK growth structure. Sample shipment
will begin in November this year, according to the company, and commercial production
will start next year. SDK is projecting ambitious sales levels of 30 million
units per month by year-end and has noted
in the Japanese trade press that their IP is their own and does not infringe
with Nichia, with none of the other "Big 5" players (Lumileds, TG,
Cree and Osram) being noted. In the official company
news release, SDK also made a point of noting that they are expanding their
long-standing epitaxial wafers business for laser diodes as used in DVD/CD optical
pickups as well as developing AlInGaP LEDs and GaN LEDs, both with exceptional
brightness. Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members... Osram Opto Introduces "Ostar" LED for Compact ProjectorsOctober 25, 2004...Meet "Ostar," Osram Opto Semiconductor's new high power LED aimed
at brightening up compact projection applications. Boasting a luminosity metric
of more than 120 lm and measuring only 3 x 1 cm, the new RGB light source emits
most all of its internally generated light through the top of the chip. According
to Osram Opto, this equates to being four times as bright as their Golden Dragon
and 50 times brighter than the Power TopLED. Target applications are for use
in mini projectors that can be installed, for example, in beamers no larger
than a pack of cards and projectors for digital cameras or personal computers
and the units can project images directly onto a wall. Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members... More Taiwan LED Q-3 Shipment Numbers Are In
LIGHTimes StaffOctober 25, 2004...As predicted at our Blue 2004
event in Taiwan last June, that the LED market in Taiwan and China would face
a definite slowdown in Q-3 and Q-4, more LED makers, namely Bright LED Electronics,
Harvatek, Everlight and Unity Opto have reported slow or flat LED shipment numbers,
with Unity Opto's white surface mount LED shipments numbers being the only ones
to look reasonably impressive. Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members... LRC and GELcore Look Into Putting LEDs in the Deep FreezeOctober 25, 2004...The Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New
York USA has been funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development
Authority (NYSERDA) to help evaluate LED technology for use in commercial display
freezers. The ensuing study will evaluate performance, energy savings, shopper
preferences, and product sales for this LED-based technology and compare it
with the fluorescent lighting currently found in popular use in supermarket
freezers. The LRC is collaborating on the project with GE's and Emcore's GELcore
LLC and the Golub Corporation, which owns a line of supermarkets, and Tyler
Refrigeration which is a division of Carrier Corporation. For starters, the
team recently installed a four-door freezer with a prototype LED lighting system
in the frozen-food aisle at an Albany, N.Y. area supermarket called Price
Chopper, the line owned by Golub. Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members... Osram OLEDs Making Initial Waves in High End Audio MarketOctober 25, 2004...Osram Opto Semiconductors Inc. of San Jose, California is first to move OLED
displays into the high end audio market. Osram's Pictiva line of 96x64
pixel graphic display OLEDs have been chosen by Fairlight (ref: news
release)
of Sydney, Australia, a leader in digital audio development, for integration
into Fairlight’s new Constellation-XT mixing system, which is a completely
integrated, large format audio mixer and multi-track editor. Fairlight has further
chosen to incorporate 72 individual Pictiva displays in its new In-line Channel
Panel (ILP) on the mixing surface to provide significant visual enhancements
to the mixing surface design. Content continues for LIGHTimes SecondPage members... Our news features are reported
by the CompoundSemi News staff writers.
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