Corporate Overview
Founded in March 2004, Auvitek International, Ltd is a privately-owned fabless semiconductor company dedicated to delivering the best in digital television signal demodulation technology. Our market leading HDTV receiver and interface solutions provide unprecedented levels of performance to manufacturers of digital televisions, set-top boxes and PC-TV applications. Through our global network of direct sales, distributors, and field support staff, we are able to provide the highest levels of design support and product performance to our customers and manufacturing partners.
Auvitek is backed by leading investors such as KLM Capital, Storm Ventures, VenGlobal, and Scale Venture Partners, and has offices in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Value Proposition
Television is changing. Tubes are being replaced by flat panels. Analog transmissions are giving way to Digital, and consumers are being offered an ever-increasing variety of ways in which to access and watch their choice of content. We are now firmly in the age of the digital television revolution. One constant defining factor is the need to receive the broadcast signal cleanly and reliably under a diverse range of conditions. In the world of analog TV, not all channels are crystal clear, and many consumers are forced to accept fuzzy, ghost-ridden, or snow-covered pictures. One of the many advantages of digital television broadcasting is the clarity and resolution of the image. However, many people fail to appreciate the on/off nature of digital reception. Where even a weak or degraded analog TV channel may still have acceptable audio and enough recognizable video quality to make it watchable, the more complex digital TV channel is either full quality or ‘over the digital cliff’ and unreceivable. Auvitek’s family of proprietary and patent pending digital television demodulator ICs are specifically designed to fix this problem and ensure crystal-clear reception of digital television signals in even the most adverse signal conditions. Simply put, we enable digital TV products to receive more channels more often.
Technology and Products
Auvitek’s mission is to be the leading semiconductor supplier of signal demodulation and front-end interface components to the global DTV receiver market.
We produce a broad range of products targeted at both the PC and CE sectors. When introduced in 2005, our AU850x family of demodulators offered the highest level of integration of any ‘front-end’ TV reception device. With integrated PCI interfaces, analog and digital TV signal demodulation, and analog video and audio decoding, these devices set new standards for receiver performance in the ATSC television market. With the introduction of our AU852x family, we have not only added the capability to reliably receive both digital cable and terrestrial broadcasts, but also pushed the boundaries of digital TV receiver performance even further. These devices are fully A/74 compliant, and offer the highest performance not only against all accepted industry benchmarks, but also in the real-world continuum of infinitely diverse reception conditions.
We offer the most highly-integrated and broadest range of solutions for the rapidly growing PCTV market, and support all OEM and aftermarket form-factors including USB, PCI, PCI-e, mini-PCI, ExpressCard, etc. with a variety of qualified reference designs. In addition, our solutions are compatible with all recognized PC media player applications, including TotalMedia, BeyondTV, PowerCinema, BlazeTV, Newsoft, and Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. All software drivers that we provide to support our devices in PC applications are WHQL and/or Microsoft Vista certified.
For the consumer electronics market sector, our ATSC demodulators are recognized as the highest performance solutions available. The CRC, an independent DTV testing authority, reported that “the (Auvitek) receiver has the longest echo span that CRC have tested.” We believe that receiver performance is a critical differentiating factor for suppliers of televisions, STBs, and PVRs. We work closely with our manufacturing partners and RF tuner suppliers to provide considerable advantages to our customers.
All of Auvitek’s TV demodulation technology is developed entirely in-house by a team of communications and modem design experts who comprise some of the most experienced and innovative engineers in the industry. This has allowed us to create both single-carrier and multi -carrier solutions based on extremely efficient, unique and proprietary architectures and algorithms. Our trademark ‘FADETM’ Fully Adaptive Demodulation and Equalization technology continuously monitors signal conditions and adapts to changes to ensure crystal clear, error-free images at all times. Until the global transition to digital television is complete, analog broadcast will co-exist with digital in many regions of the world. Our solutions reflect that need and also aim to deliver the best possible analog TV reception.
We are currently engaged in R&D on solutions for dual tuner, multi-standard reception, mobile, and China DTV – all which represent sizeable opportunities for further expansion of Auvitek’s technologies.
Demodulator performance can make or break the customer experience in DTV regardless of other components or technologies used. Auvitek delivers optimized solutions that allow consumers to maximize their enjoyment of the exciting display technologies available both today and in the future.
Key Management
Pete Birch – President & CEO
Pete previously served since August 2002 as vice president of consumer products with Genesis Microchip (Nasdaq: GNSS) where he was responsible for corporate development activities and strategic technology management, and was instrumental in building Genesis's first DTV product development team. He joined Genesis via the company's acquisition of the MPEG and DVD businesses from VM Labs. He served as executive vice president of business development at VM Labs.
Prior to 1995, he held various engineering and management positions with GEC Plessey Semiconductors' Consumer Electronics Division, which was recently acquired by Intel. He subsequently managed the sales and marketing operations for a leading audio licensing company before joining VM Labs.
Ping Dong – EVP & CTO, Principal Founder
Ping is an internationally recognized expert in modem technology with 13 patents issued and another 4 pending application. Previously, he was Sr. VP Engineering, Communications Products, at ESS Technology, where he led the development of numerous innovative and high-volume consumer electronics solutions including video decoders. He was founder and CEO of OSEE Technology, a V.34 data/fax/voice modem company which was acquired by ESS Technology in 1996. Prior to that Ping was a principal researcher in digital communication with Motorola.
Ping holds a PhD degree from University of Mass.
Irene Yum – CFO
Irene has more than 20 years of experience in consumer and technology financing and accounting, including 5 years with Arthur Young, before its merger into Ernst and Young. Previously, she was Finance Director at Sony Pictures TV International in Hong Kong and led the original implementation and administration of Sarbanes-Oxley. Ms. Yum was on the steering committee of Isys Controls, Inc., which was successfully merged with Cognex Corporation (Nasdaq: CGNX), where she held the Corporate Controller, SISD position.
Irene, CPA, holds an MBA from San Francisco University (Beta Gamma Sigma) and a BBA from Simon Fraser University.
Jon Zierk – VP Sales
Jon brings more than 20 years of semiconductor experience to Auvitek. He served since 1998 as vice president of sales & marketing for TeraLogic, a pioneer in digital television semiconductor solutions. He remained as vice president sales through TeraLogic's acquisition by Oak Technology, and again through Zoran's (Nasdaq: ZRAN) acquisition of Oak. Prior to TeraLogic, Mr. Zierk held a number of executive sales and marketing positions including vice president of sales at Information Storage Devices prior to its acquisition by Winbond. He began his career as an integrated circuit designer and Member, Technical Staff, with Mosel-Vitelic Corporation.
Mr. Zierk holds a BSEE and MSEE from Stanford University.
Board of Directors
Peter Mok (Chairman)
Peter Mok is the Co-Founder and Managing General Partner of KLM Capital. He is an accomplished corporate banker, investment banker and a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley and Asia. Peter founded Silicon Valley Bank's (NASDAQ) successful Pacific Rim Group and was responsible for structuring some key technology finance deals. Peter was formerly a Senior Vice President with Transpac Capital where he headed their U.S. technology venture capital investments.
Peter worked actively on the boards of CyberPlus, JemPac, Metrocom, MetroWave, Opulan, Radiant and V-Bits. He is a board member of Diyixian, GCS, Globitech, House18, Metrocom, Opcom, Syntricity YesVideo, and ESST (NASDAQ).
He holds a BS in Business Administration from California State University, San Jose, and is a 1987 graduate of the University of Washington's Pacific Coast Banking School.
Jim Jones (Scale Venture Partners)
Since joining Scale Venture Partners (formerly known as BA Venture Partners) in 2000, Jim helped recruit key marketing, finance, and board-level management as well as achieve Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for Monolithic Power Systems (Nasdaq: MPWR), prior to the company's successful IPO. For Entone and Xceive, he drove product roadmaps, made key customer introductions and led the search for VPs of Marketing and Sales. He actively supported Wayport in the exploration of business strategies that led to major partnerships and a profitable business model. In addition to Entone, Monolithic Power Systems and Xceive, Jim sits on the boards of Auvitek, Cornice, Enuclia, MaXXan and NComputing.
Prior to Scale Venture Partners, Jim led product management, product marketing, and business development groups for seven years at 3Com Corporation, where he managed a diverse $1.2 billion product line. He also spearheaded the company's entry into and market leadership of Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet solutions as well as its foray into the home networking market. Prior to 3Com, Jim spent five years in integrated circuit development and marketing with National Semiconductor, focusing on analog, ATM, FDDI, and Ethernet controller and transceiver solutions.
Jim holds a BSEE from the University of California, Davis.
Mike Aymar (Independent)
Mr. Aymar retired from Intel in 2002 after 26 years of executive management in engineering and marketing. His roles included General Manager of Intel's 486 and Pentium divisions as well as heading up Intel's WorldWide Consumer Business Group.
Mr. Aymar served on the board of ESST (NASDAQ) from 1993 to 1998.
Mr. Aymar holds BSEE and MSEE degrees from Stanford University.
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