Samsung, Qualcomm back wearable chip startup

The small Santa Clara, Calif.- startup, Ineda Systems, will make chips for wearables that offer long battery life.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor

Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.

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Brooke Crothers

April 8, 2014 4:30 p.m. PT

Ineda's Hierarchical Computing architecture, part of the Dhanush 'WPU,' a Wearable system-on-a-chip Ineda

Samsung and Qualcomm are backing a small wearable chip startup that has developed a processor targeted specifically at wearables.

Santa Clara Calif.-based Ineda Systems on Tuesday announced that an investment group, which includes Samsung and Qualcomm, have agreed to $17 million in funding.

Along with the investment disclosure, Ineda announced a Wearable Processor Unit (WPU) that allows an always-on wearable to achieve battery life of up to one month. Today, wearable device battery life is typically anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on the device.

The Dhanush WPU familyconsists of four products, which are designed for different product segments.

The chips are based on its Hierarchical Computing architecture.

"Hierarchical Computing is a tiered multi-CPU architecture with shared peripherals and memory...all the CPUs can be individually or simultaneously active, working in sync while handling specific tasks assigned to them independently," the company said in a statement.

Ineda's management team includes board chairman Sanjay Jha, who is also Globalfoundries CEO. And board member Krishna Yarlagadda is president at graphics chip supplier Imagination Technologies.

Ineda plans to begin producing its WPU later this year.