Small Times - Discera raises $17.5 million, expands distribution for MEMS oscillators

Mar. 26, 2007 -- Discera Inc., developer of MEMS-based oscillators, has completed a $17.5 million Series C round of funding led by Scale Venture Partners. Discera recently began shipping its first products for direct replacement of quartz crystal oscillators for timing components in electronics devices; the company will use the funds to support increased production, distribution and marketing.

Scale Venture Partners joins previous investors 3i, Partech International and Ardesta LLC; new investor Horizon Ventures also participated in the round. Jim Jones, Managing Director with ScaleVP, has joined Discera's board of directors.

The company has also announced expansion of its distribution channel, with the addition of frequency control manufacturer ABRACON. With this move Discera says it has strengthened its channel to cover all key segments of the market. Discera breaks the estimated $1 billion oscillator market into four segments (multi-frequency; high performance; mid-range; and other, such as military, industrial and automotive), and says that with high performance partner Vectron and now industrial and commercial partner ABRACON, it has a strong presence in three. Discera has already established a worldwide channel with mid-range XO partners in Europe and Asia. ABRACON's channels include some of the top distributors in North America, including Digikey Corporation, Electrosonic, Future Electronics, Mouser Electronics, Richardson Electronics, Allied Electronics, and Newark Electronics.

Discera says that quartz crystal is considered to be one of the final hurdles of Moore's law of scalability. Discera began shipping its MOS1 oscillator after passing stringent reliability tests, with volume production starting in Q2 2007. Discera's technology consists of a silicon MEMS resonator and an ASIC embedded within a conventional QFN plastic package or ceramic package. Discera has been sampling its product since last year. Key target applications for MEMS-based timing devices are PCs, DVD players, gaming consoles, set top boxes, camcorders, PDAs and cameras as well a variety of industrial products.

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