VentureBeat

Quartz has ruled for a long time as the clock inside semiconductor chips. But companies are now trying to design better and more efficient clocks out of silicon as timing becomes a more critical issue in the newest chips. Multigig is one of them and the company says it has dozens of patents on such clocks.

VentureBeat has learned that the company is in the midst of raising its second round of funding. The company has already raised $8 million of a $14 million round from investors including CMEA Ventures, High-Tech Venture Partners, and Mobius Investments. A spokeswoman confirmed that the company is in the middle of raising money but declined further comment.

The company is tackling a tough problem. Modern clocks made of crystal often account for as much of 50 percent of the power dissipated by a chip. Clocks thus hold up the chip designers who want to create designs with higher performance.

Multigig’s patented RotaryWave technology enables clocks with time slices of a pico second, or a trillionth of a second. It does so in part by recycling its electrical charge rather than continuously requiring more power. It is planning to create solutions that can address a variety of both wired and wireless communications. The clocks will theoretically reduce costs and allow chipmakers to integrate more functions onto a single chip than they can do today.