Valens (company)

Valens Semiconductor is an Israeli Fabless manufacturing company providing semiconductor solutions for the development of HDBaseT devices. Valens provides semiconductor products for the distribution of uncompressed ultra-high-definition (HD) multimedia content. The company is the creators of HDBaseT technology standard and is part of the HDBaseT Alliance.^[1][2]

History

Valens was founded in 2006 by a group of semiconductor industry veterans, to develop microchips that will enable high quality transmission of audio and video in a home networking environment.^[3]

In July 2007, Valens raised $7 million in its first financing round, from venture capital founds Genesis Partners and Magma Venture Partners^[4]

On June 14, 2010 Valens, together with Samsung Electronics, Sony Pictures Entertainment and LG Electronics incorporated the HDBaseT Alliance, to promote the HDBaseT standard created by Valens.^[5] The HDBaseT 1.0 specification was also finalized in June 2010.^[6] External accessories, such as dongles, were on the market in 2010 for devices not yet embedded with HDBaseT.^[7]

In July 2011, Valens raised $14 million in its second round of funding. The round of financing included previous investors Genesis Partners and Magma Venture Partners, as well as new investors Aviv Venture Capital, Taiwan electronics firm Pegatron and Japan's Mitsui & Co. Global Investment Ltd., and US venture capital fund Amiti Ventures.^[8]

In January 2013, HDBaseT products were first demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.^[9] In mid-2013, the HDBaseT Alliance issued Spec 2.0, an update to the original specification, which enriches the HDBaseT offering to the pro-AV market, and enables a multimedia home connectivity solution. Spec 2.0 specifies the HDBaseT network protocol, defining the required adaptations across all layers of the Generic OSI model, to provide the optimized services for time sensitive applications, such as high throughput video and audio. Spec 2.0 maintains all the features of Spec 1.0, but also adds networking, switching, and control-point capabilities such as flexible and fully utilized mesh topology, distributed routing, and end-to-end error handling, enabling multipoint-to-multipoint connectivity and multistreaming.

In September 2015, Valens won the Technology & Engineering Emmy Award, given by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) for outstanding achievement in the development and Standardization of HDBaseT Connectivity Technology for Commercial and Residential HDMI/DVI Installations.^[10]

In January 2016, Valens raised $20 million in its third round of funding and announced their intention to branch out and implement their solutions in automotive infrastructure, partnering with General Motors, Delphi Automotive, and Daimler AG. Valens' automotive solutions are used in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and infotainment systems. ^[11]

Technology

Valens' HDBaseT technology is used for transmitting uncompressed high quality images and audio from the base stations, potentially up to a distance of 100 meters (328 ft) through a single cable, to remote displays as a part of its 5PlayTM system. HDBaseT is transmitted over category 6a cables with 8P8C modular connectors of the type commonly used for Ethernet local area network connections.^[12][13] HDBaseT transmits uncompressed ultra-high-definition video (up to 4K), audio, power over HDBaseT (PoH - up to 100W), Ethernet, USB, and a series of controls such as RS and IR.

HDBaseT is complementary to standards such as HDMI, and it is an alternative to radio frequency, coaxial cable, composite video, S-Video, SCART, component video, D-Terminal, or VGA. HDBaseT connects and networks CE devices such as set-top boxes except Cisco and Scientific Atlantic boxes, DVD players, Blu-ray Disc players, personal computers (PCs), video game consoles, switches, matrices, projectors, and AV receivers to compatible digital audio devices, computer monitors, and digital televisions.^[14][15]

References

External links

Valens Website HDBaseT Alliance Website]