GigaOM

CNet has a great story about how stealthy Silicon Valley startup Montavlo is designing chips to compete with Intel and AMD. The company is using an asymmetrical design on multiple cores, so tasks requiring less processing power are offloaded onto a smaller and more energy efficient core. Sweet idea, but to illustrate my point about building leading-edge chips costing some serious cash, Montavlo has raised about $73 million. The money comes from New Enterprise Associates, Bay Partners, NewPath Ventures and U.S. Venture Partners. I guess the $30.55 billion worldwide processor market will continue to lure investors off that particular cliff.