SiBEAM Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of

Lattice Semiconductor Lattice Semiconductor Corporation is an American semiconductor company specializing in the design and manufacturing of low power field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Headquartered in the Silicon Forest area of Hillsboro, Oregon, the company a ...

, is a fabless semiconductor company that provides integrated circuits and system products for millimeter-wave (mmWave) wireless communications and sensing. SiBEAM was founded to commercialize pioneering millimeter wave wireless technology developed at the labs of

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. The company was also first to market with wireless gigabit mobile video products. SiBEAM is based in

Sunnyvale Sunnyvale () is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States. Sunnyvale lies along the historic El Camino Real and Highway 101 and is bordered by portions of San Jose to the north, ...

History

SiBEAM was founded in 2004 by researchers in wireless communications from the

. Backed by companies including

Panasonic is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Japan. It was founded in 1918 as in Fukushima-ku, Osaka, Fukushima by Kōnosuke Matsushita. The company was incorporated in 1935 and renamed and c ...

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

, and

Best Buy Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was r ...

. The company raised over $112 million of

venture capital financing Venture may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music *The Ventures, an American instrumental rock band formed in 1958 *"A Venture", 1971 song by the band Yes *''Venture'', a 2010 EP by AJR Games * ''Venture'' (video game), a 1981 arcade g ...

from U.S. Venture Partners,

New Enterprise Associates New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With over $25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of t ...

Foundation Capital Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley. The firm was founded in 1995, and in 2012 managed more than $2.4 billion in investment capital. As of 2023, the firm has over $6 billion in assets under management. Histor ...

, and

Lux Capital Lux Capital is a venture capital firm based in New York City. It was founded in 2000, and focuses on investments in emerging technologies. History Lux Capital was founded in 2000 by Peter Hébert, Robert Paull and Josh Wolfe. In April 2011, for ...

in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2010. SiBEAM was noted by several publications as one of the promising startup companies in its industry. In April, 2011 SiBEAM was acquired by Silicon Image for $25.5 million in cash and Silicon Image stock. On January 5, 2015

Silicon Image Silicon Image Inc. was an American fabless semiconductor company based in Hillsboro, Oregon, and active from 1995 to 2015. The company designed circuits for mobile phones, consumer electronics and personal computers (PCs). It also manufactured wi ...

Re-Launched SiBEAM, Inc. as a wholly owned subsidiary to drive market development of millimeter-wave products, technologies and solutions On March 15, 2015,

was acquired by

in an all-cash acquisition, valued at approximately $606.6 million (or approximately $466.6 million on an enterprise value basis). SiBEAM became a direct wholly owned subsidiary of Lattice Semiconductor on June 1, 2015. On July 18, 2018

announced that they "will discontinue its millimeter wave business, which is expected to result in approximately $25 million of primarily non-cash restructuring and impairment charges in the second quarter of 2018, and an annualized reduction in operating expenses of approximately $13 million."

Products

When SiBeam was active the company focused on products using the 60

Ghz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or Cycle per second, cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in ter ...

-Range, including the low-range "Snap" family used in wireless connectors which were thought to be able to replace

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

ports, chips transmitting video data to enable wireless monitors, as well as modules supporting transmission ranges up to 300m, like the 2017 launched MOD65412. SiBEAM's

WirelessHD WirelessHD, also known as UltraGig, is a proprietary standard owned by Silicon Image (originally SiBeam) for wireless transmission of high-definition video content for consumer electronics products. The consortium currently has over 40 adopters; k ...

protcocol was used in notebooks, like the

Alienware Alienware Corporation is an American computer hardware subsidiary brand, but not of Dell. Their product range is dedicated to gaming computers and accessories and can be identified by their Extraterrestrial life, alien-themed designs. Alienware ...

M17x R3 or the G73JW and is still an alternative to video transmissions over the 5GHz

WiFi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

band.

References

Wireless HD coming to homes
CNN / Fortune, February 18, 2009
SiBeam takes wraps off Wireless HD technology
EETimes, June 27, 2007
Amimon makes headway with high-speed home video networking
Venture Beat, December 9, 2008
SiBEAM Goes 60 GHz
DailyWireless, June 27, 2007 {{refend Electronics companies established in 2004 Private equity portfolio companies Fabless semiconductor companies Companies based in Sunnyvale, California Semiconductor companies of the United States