Silicon Spice, home of Pentium design chief, breaks cover

Seriously enigmatic chip start-up Silicon Spice has broken cover - slightly, and indirectly. The company has been running one of the Web's more minimalist Web sites for some time now, and that doesn't tell you much more than it's engaged in something seriously revolutionary in wide area communications. Click here to watch paint dry. But it has a goodly wedge of VC money behind it, and just over a year ago appointed Vinod Dham as president and CEO. The good Mr Dham brings serious cred in his wake. He masterminded Pentium development at Intel, then went via NexGen to AMD, and silly old AMD let him slip through its fingers. The latest news of Silicon Spice comes via a boast by electronic design automation technology and tool developer Axis Systems, which proudly announces that it has sold Silicon Spice some gear. Axis' Xcite verification system is to be used by Silicon Spice to accelerate its "functional verification process and to streamline [its] design debugging flow." Clear? Not exactly, but it does suggest Silicon Spice now has something to verify. There are however more clues. Axis tells us Silicon's next generation chips incorporate "System-On-Chip (SOC) design methodology with high gate count," while in a rare piece of blabbing Silicon VP of IC development Jim Miller says: "At Silicon Spice we are designing a very high gate count product that pushes the envelope in verification. We need a revolutionary verification technology to achieve our quality goals." But back at Enigma City, Axis VP marketing Steve Wang adds: "Silicon Spice is pushing the limits of design technology." Right... ®