News: Announcements

Lyric Semiconductor Named in Technology Review’s 2011 TR50 List of the World’s Most Innovative Companies

CAMBRIDGE Mass., February 22, 2011— Lyric Semiconductor, a DARPA and venture-funded MIT spin-out whose cutting-edge “probability processing” technology is poised to deliver a fundamental change in processing capabilities, speed, and power consumption, today announced its inclusion in the 2011 TR50, Technology Review’s annual list of the world’s most innovative technology companies. Lyric is being recognized for its development of probability processing, which was first announced in August of 2010 with its first commercial application, Lyric Error Correction (LEC™) for flash memory.

In selecting the TR50, the editors of Technology Review look for companies that are setting the agenda in an increasingly important market, on the verge of disrupting an established market, or creating an entirely new market. Spanning energy, computing, the Web, biomedicine, and materials, the companies on the list are using their inventions to reshape their industries and to transform how we live.

“Lyric Semiconductor’s innovative microprocessors, which rely on probabilities rather than binary 0s and 1s, could speed up important applications, such as fraud analysis and machine vision,” says Jason Pontin, editor in chief and publisher of Technology Review.

Lyric’s probability processing technology, which was conceived at MIT and spent over a decade in development, calculates in a completely new way, enabling orders-of-magnitude improvement in processor efficiency. LEC for flash memory is the first commercial application of probability processing. It offers a 30X reduction in die size and a 12X improvement in power consumption all at higher throughput compared to today’s digital solutions.

And this is only the beginning. Working with DARPA, Lyric is planning the GP5 – general-purpose programmable probability processing platform. The GP5 will be ideally suited to calculate probabilities for all types of applications – from web searches to genome sequencing – and will enable performance gains of over 1,000X compared to today’s digital processors like those from Intel and AMD.

“Probability processing rethinks computer design from the ground up to handle the computing challenges inherent in considering multiple possibilities given noisy, incomplete, or ambiguous data,” says Ben Vigoda, CEO, Lyric Semiconductor. “We have had the exciting opportunity to create an organization to bring world class research to market in cutting edge products, so we are proud to see our efforts recognized, as well as to be included alongside so many great companies.”

Lyric Semi and the other companies included in the 2011 TR50 will be featured in the March/April edition of Technology Review and is posted on the Web at http://www.technologyreview.com/companywatch/tr50/.

About Technology Review, Inc.

Technology Review is an independent media company owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). More than two million people around the globe read our publications, in five languages and on a variety of digital and print platforms. We publish Technology Review magazine, the world’s oldest technology magazine (established 1899); daily news, analysis, opinion, and video; and Business Impact, which explains how new technologies are transforming companies, disrupting markets, or creating entirely new industries. We also produce live events.

About Lyric Semiconductor, Inc.

For more information, please contact:

Tara Sims
siliconPR for Lyric Semiconductor
415-310-5779
tara.sims@siliconpr.com

For For Technology Review

Amy Lammers
(617) 475-8077
press@technologyreview.com

Lyric Semiconductor Named to the Prestigious EE Times Silicon 60 List

60 emerging startups list names Lyric as startup to watch

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 14, 2010 – Lyric Semiconductor, a DARPA and venture-funded MIT spin-out developing cutting-edge “probability processing” technology, today announced that it has been named to the prestigious EE Times 60 Emerging Startups list, informally known as the Silicon 60. Lyric Semiconductor emerged from stealth mode in August to announce a radical new technology called probability processing, which is poised to deliver a fundamental change in processing performance and power consumption.

With over a decade of development at MIT and at Lyric Semiconductor, Lyric’s probability processing technology calculates in a completely new way, enabling orders-of-magnitude improvement in processor efficiency. Lyric Error Correction (LEC™) for flash memory, the first commercial application of probability processing, offers a 30X reduction in die size and a 12X improvement in power consumption all at higher throughput compared to today’s digital solutions.

“We are thrilled to be recognized by EE Times, which is arguably the most well-respected electrical engineering news outlet in the world,” says Ben Vigoda, CEO, Lyric Semiconductor. “The list includes many great companies and technologies, so it is a real honor.”

Lyric’s first commercialization of its technology is Lyric Error Correction (LEC™) for flash memory, which is 30X smaller and has 12X lower power consumption that other error correctors, all at a higher bandwidth than the digital implementations currently available. Beyond today’s LEC technology, Lyric is developing the GP5™ – a general-purpose programmable probability processing platform. The GP5 will be ideally suited to calculate probabilities for all types of applications – from web searches to genome sequencing – and could enable performance gains of 1,000X over today’s digital x86-based systems such as the processors from Intel and AMD. The GP5 will run code written in Lyric’s own probability programming language called PSBL™ (Probability Synthesis to Bayesian Logic), an expressive computer programming language for working with probability based computations. Lyric will leverage its probability processor and programming technologies to deliver disruptive solutions to its customers.

The complete EE Times 60 Emerging Startups list can be found here: http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4210527/EE-Times-updates--Silicon-60--list-of-emerging-startups?pageNumber=0

About Lyric Semiconductor, Inc.

For more information, please contact:

Tara Sims
siliconPR for Lyric Semiconductor
415-310-5779
tara.sims@siliconpr.com

Lyric Semiconductor Recognized for Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology at the 2010 Flash Memory Summit

Lyric Selected as Best of Show Awards Winner

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 18, 2010, FLASH MEMORY SUMMIT – Lyric Semiconductor, a DARPA and venture-funded MIT spin-out whose cutting-edge “probability processing” technology is poised to deliver a fundamental change in processing performance and power consumption, has been chosen by the Flash Memory Summit as a Best of Show award winner for 2010 in the category of Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology. The annual Best of Show award is a premier opportunity for industry recognition of innovative products and solutions. Lyric has been recognized for its Lyric Error Correction™ (LEC)—Lyric’s first commercial probability processor technology, for its ability to outpace all other error correctors currently available with 12X lower power consumption packed into a 30X smaller form factor. Lyric has been presented the Best of Show award for its development of LEC and the technical and business impact of this unique flash memory innovation.

Flash error rates have become increasingly problematic with each new each generation of the technology. Currently, data read out of a 30nm flash chip gets one bit wrong in every 1,000. When flash moves to 20nm processes for their next generation of memory, this error rate will climb to one bit wrong in every 100. Lyric’s LEC technology will allow flash manufacturers to correct these errors more efficiently than was possible before, driving the error rate down to 1 bit wrong in every 1,000 trillion.

Flash companies spend billions on new foundry processes in order to increase overall flash density, but then suffer from exponentially more errors. As a result, error correctors have had to become significantly larger, more complex and more expensive, making advanced error correction only viable for high-end solid-state drives. Lyric’s LEC technology enables advanced error correction at 30X lower cost to manufacture and 12X lower power consumption, allowing for unprecedented performance across all flash product lines.

“Flash Error Correction is ideally suited to our probability processor technology, which is why we chose it as our first commercial implementation,” says Lyric Semiconductor CEO and co-founder Ben Vigoda. “We are pleased and honored to be publicly recognized so soon after our emergence from stealth mode.”

“Flash Memory technology is currently experiencing a progression of innovation in addressing the needs for increased reliability, higher performance, along with power and cost efficiencies which is blazing a trail for next generation solutions,” said Jay Kramer, Chairman of the Awards Program and VP Worldwide Marketing of SEPATON. “We are proud to select Lyric with the LEC Lyric Error Correction for the best of show innovation award.”

Lyric was honored at the Flash Memory Summit Awards evening reception on Wednesday, August 18. For a complete list of all the Flash Memory Summit Best of Show awards winners, visit http://www.flashmemorysummit.com.

About Lyric Semiconductor, Inc.

For more information, please contact:

Tara Sims
siliconPR for Lyric Semiconductor
415-310-5779
tara.sims@siliconpr.com

MIT Spin-out Lyric Semiconductor Launches a New Kind of Computing with Probability Processing Circuits

Breakthrough Error Correction for Flash Memories Now Available; Future Technology to Enable 1,000X Performance Over Today’s Digital Processors

SANTA CLARA, Calif., and AUSTIN, Texas – August 17, 2010 – FLASH MEMORY SUMMIT and THE INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON LOW POWER ELECTRONICS AND DESIGN – Lyric Semiconductor, Inc. a DARPA- and venture-funded MIT spin-out, today emerged from stealth mode to launch a new technology called probability processing, which is poised to deliver a fundamental change in processing performance and power consumption. With over a decade of development at MIT and at Lyric Semiconductor, Lyric’s probability processing technology calculates in a completely new way, enabling orders-of-magnitude improvement in processor efficiency. Lyric Error Correction (LEC™) for flash memory, the first commercial application of probability processing, offers a 30X reduction in die size and a 12X improvement in power consumption all at higher throughput compared to today’s digital solutions. Lyric Semiconductor has developed an alternative to digital computing. The company is redesigning processing circuits from the ground up to natively process probabilities – from the gate circuits to the processor architecture to the programming language. As a result, many applications that today require a thousand conventional processors will soon run in just one Lyric processor, providing 1,000X efficiencies in cost, power, and size.

For over 60 years, computers have been based on digital computing principles. Data is represented as bits (1s and 0s). Boolean logic gates perform operations on these bits. Lyric has invented a new kind of logic gate circuit that uses transistors as dimmer switches instead of as on/off switches. These circuits can accept inputs and calculate outputs that are between 0 and 1, directly representing probabilities - levels of certainty.

A digital processor steps through these operations serially in order to perform a function. In order to improve efficiency even further, Lyric’s processors are designed to perform many probability computations in parallel.

Lyric’s approach can accelerate search, fraud detection, spam filtering, financial modeling, genome sequence analysis, and many other important present and future applications that involve simultaneously considering many possible alternatives and deciding on the best fit – the best guess for the answer. In theory, digital processors can perform these calculations, but in practice, they do so very inefficiently. As a result, a huge amount of processing overhead is required, costing an enormous amount of space, power and money.

“After a decade of development, we have no shortage of opportunities for our probability processing technology, but we are currently focused on a modest list of both short and long-term applications that will see enormous gains in performance,” says Lyric Semiconductor CEO and co-founder Ben Vigoda. “We are starting with Lyric Error Correction but ultimately plan to develop a more general purpose probability processor that will truly change the landscape for many applications.”

Lyric Error Correction (LEC™) for Flash Memory

Flash error rates have become increasingly problematic with each new generation of the technology. Today, one in every thousand bits stored in a flash memory comes out wrong when the memory is read. In the next generation, the number of errors will approach one bit wrong in every hundred. Flash companies spend billions of dollars on new foundry processes in order to increase overall flash density, but then suffer from increasing error rates. As a result, “advanced” error correctors have had to become significantly larger, more complex and more expensive. LEC is Lyric’s first commercial probability processing offering– an advanced error corrector for flash memories that is 30X smaller and has 12X lower power consumption, all at a higher bandwidth than the digital implementations currently available.

The GP5™

Beyond today’s LEC technology, Lyric is developing the GP5™ – a general-purpose programmable probability processing platform. The GP5 will be ideally suited to calculate probabilities for all types of applications – from web searches to genome sequencing – and could enable performance gains of 1,000X over today’s digital x86-based systems such as the processors from Intel and AMD. The GP5 will run code written in Lyric’s own probability programming language called PSBL™ (Probability Synthesis to Bayesian Logic), an expressive computer programming language for working with probability based computations. Lyric will leverage its probability processor and programming technologies to deliver disruptive total systems to its customers.

Availability

Lyric’s LEC technology is currently available for license, accompanied by support services enabling product integration within 12 months. Beyond LEC, the first GP5 will begin sampling in 2013.

About Lyric Semiconductor

Lyric Semiconductor is a fabless semiconductor company founded in 2006 by MIT Ph.D. Ben Vigoda and semiconductor industry veteran David Reynolds, and is located in Cambridge, Mass. Lyric’s probability processing technology was first envisioned by Vigoda at MIT. Lyric’s lead investor and chairman of the board is Ray Stata, founder and 30-plus year CEO of Analog Devices and lead partner of Stata Venture Partners. Lyric currently employs 30 people and has received more than $20 million in government funding from DARPA and other agencies and venture investment from Stata Venture Partners. Lyric Semiconductor maintains a growing IP portfolio of 50 fundamental patent filings in the field of probability processing. Executives from Lyric Semiconductor will be speaking at the Flash Memory Summit in the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, Calif., and the International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design in Austin, Texas. CEO Ben Vigoda will be presenting at the Flash Memory Summit’s exhibit hall theatre on Wednesday, August 18 at 12:45 p.m. Pacific, and as a panelist at Session 201, Error Correcting Codes, on Thursday, August 19 at 9:50 a.m. Pacific. Also on Thursday, Théophane Weber, Lyric research scientist, will present “Low Power Logic for Statistical Signal Processing,” at Special Session One on energy-efficiency via error-resiliency at 3 p.m. Central at the Omni Hotel, Downtown Austin, Texas in Capital Ballroom A.

More information on the company and its probability processing technology can be found at its new web site, also launched today, at www.lyricsemiconductor.com.

About Lyric Semiconductor, Inc.

For more information, please contact:

Tara Sims
siliconPR for Lyric Semiconductor
415-310-5779
tara.sims@siliconpr.com

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