The CompanyLucid develops the first Parallel Graphics Unit (PGU). The PGU is a high-performance System on a Chip (SoC) and parallel architecture that turns traditional off-the-shelve graphic cards, graphic processor units (GPU) and graphic cores into powerful and scalable visualization solution, transparently to existing applications, enabling price-performance ratios never considered possible before.
The Problem
Despite the demand for greater and growing graphic performance, it is becoming increasing difficult for customers to justify the purchase of a new graphic system when the improvement in performance is not as dramatic as in the past. On the other hand, GPU manufacturers find it more and more challenging and costly to meet the seemingly insatiable desire for greater graphic performance. Die size and heat problems continues to delay the introduction of newer, faster, discrete silicon. Current solutions that answer the need for significantly more performance are way too expensive or yield poor price/performance results.
Market Potential
Lucid’s Total Available Market (TAM) is $8B annual. Out of which, $3.3B is mid to low end graphics chips, $2.7B is the high-end enthusiasts and $2B is for mobile graphics chips.
Lucid’s initial objective is to serve the performance users of PC enthusiast, game consoles and Workstation markets. The PC and Workstation markets alone accounts for about 10% of total PC market or 18.4 million units according to Bear, Stearns & Co. With no known direct silicon based competitors, Lucid’s unit sale potential is over 20 million annual reflecting an addressable market that is well beyond $1B (excluding game consoles).
Technology (product) Description
Lucid developed and designed a unique approach in order to keep up the pace of innovation and satisfy the desire for more performance. Lucid’s PGU technology enables existing GPUs to deploy and be deployed in new innovative ways and significantly boost the pace of graphic-processing improvement, at a much lower cost.
Lucid’s solution is built to meet the most demanding three dimensional photorealism graphic tasks. Multiple off-the-shelf GPUs are driven by Lucid’s PGU, performing scalable rendering of a single very complex scene. Based on a cluster of unique adaptive decomposition and acceleration schemes, we overcome different bottlenecks and handle the database of each GPU and its associated overhead and latency.
The company protected its intellectual property using top tier patent offices. Seven patents where filed and at different PCT and localization stages. More patents are in the pipeline as this field is thirsty for development.
Competition
NVidia’s SLI and ATI’s Crossfire technology and the only indirect competition.
The Team
Two experienced entrepreneurs, Dr. Reuven Bakalash (CTO) and Mr. Offir Remez (President), co-founded Lucid. Both are experts in visualization system, graphics, chip development, parallel computing and compression. Together they have proven track records for growing companies from a vision into a revenue generating business. Early on, a new leading talent, Efi Fogel, joined as a founding member. Efi Fogel is a world leading graphic specialist and a game developer with 10 years experience from SGI, where he defined the world leading graphics standard.
Lucid’s experienced management includes Moshe Steiner, CEO, an Intel veteran and former co-GM of Marvell Israel/Galileo ($2.7B M&A by Marvell) and former COO of Oplus (recently acquired by Intel). Lucid is also backed with a strong technology team lead by Alex Tal. Alex is one of Israel’s leading chip designers who co-founded EZChip.
Together the team holds over 40 patents in the fields of parallel processing, communication, geometry, animation and video compression, caching and graphics; many of which are selling products today.
Chairman George Haber supports the management team at the Board of Directors. George is an industry expert and repeat entrepreneur, former founder and CEO of GigaPixel (M&A to 3DFX ~$200M) and former founder and CEO of CompCore (M&A to Zoran ~$100M).
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