Another Israeli fabless chip maker to list on Nasdaq

Israeli fabless semiconductor and software company Wintegra has selected CSFB and Goldman Sachs as lead underwriters as it seeks to raise $75 million in an IPO on the Nasdaq exchange.

The company's value has been pegged at between $300 million and $350 million.

Since its founding in 2000, Wintegra has received financial backing from a group of Israeli venture capital funds, China Development Industrial Bank, Marvell/Galileo Technology, Texas Instruments and PMC-Sierra. It joins a long line of Israeli chip designers who have tapped the U.S. capital markets.

Wintegra, which specializes in network access processors, said there is a critical need to integrate new services with legacy systems and existing protocols. It was one of the first chip makers to focus on access protocol handling.

Wintegra's WinPath chips allow network equipment vendors to adapt their production lines to the next generation of access networks.

Wintegra recently announced a joint venture with U.K.-based picoChip to develop reference designs for a new generation of WiMAX basestations.

It has also joined with Ikanos Communications to develop a VDSL2 line card reference platform that targets access equipment designers.

- Joel Bainerman
EE Times