UCD research firm secures first commercial contract

University College Dublin-based research company Neosera Systems has signed a commercial deal with groups from the Technical University of Graz in Austria.

The project will see Neosrea's APPLES system (Associative Parallel Processor for Logic Event-driven Simulation) used to accelerate simulation of circuits in automobile applications and Smart Card Technology.

The processor research firm believes this can reduce chip development time and enable chip manufacturers to deliver their products sooner to the market.

According to Dr Pat Frain, Director of NovaUCD: "Our APPLES platform currently offers a 10-fold increase in processing speed compared to a Pentium processor and the feedback to date augurs well for a bright future for the company."

Neosera was founded in June 2001 by Dr Damian Dalton of UCD's Department of Computer Science with Paul Birkett and Ann O'Hanlon and has raised €950,000 in investment to date.

It has a research team of ten located in NovaUCD, the University’s innovation and technology transfer centre, while another research group is located at the Technical University of Graz, Austria.

The company also has a commercial office on the West Coast of America. In 2002 Neosera became the first Irish company to be accepted into the Cadence's Connections Programme.

Cadence is the largest EDA (Electronic Design Automation) company in the world.