NeoMagic expands customer base for MiMagic family, development continues

NeoMagic (PINK:NMGC) is a company with a host of potentially lucrative software and hardware products, including a family of system-on-chip (SOC) processors that can be used for a wide number of applications, from vehicle toll collection services and remote controllers to smart home technology.

The applications processors/micro controllers, sold under the MiMagic brand name, enable high-performance processing within a low power consumption environment.

The "highly integrated powered efficient chips", says CEO Syed Zaidi, are ideal for handheld battery-operated applications, such as touch screen remote controllers and embedded applications.

NeoMagic also provides design services to its consumers for system and software development/customization to accelerate their time-to-market for their products.

The MiMagic 3, which is shipping right now, is a 110 MHz 32-bit ARM V4T compliant RISC processor (ARM720T) with two independent bus architecture, providing separate interfaces for simultaneous access to program store and system memory - eliminating shared bandwidth bottleneck.

The product, which continues to be shipped to NeoMagic's Asia Pacific customer, is used for electronic toll collection in Singapore with a smart card-based electronic system.

But the company's main focus now remains boosting the number of customers for its "competitively priced" MiMagic 6 product, which is a 200MHz ARM926EJ RISC processor for embedded applications.

NeoMagic has already announced one client - ViV Systems - for which it is developing the M-Book – a hand held 7 inch touch screen that controls the audio and video settings of the Karaoke machine and is capable of organizing more than 30 thousand songs by title, producer or lyrics.

The M-Book product is expected to come onto market this summer. 

Zaidi says NeoMagic is hoping to announce at least one more customer this year as the company continues to have discussions with potential strategic partners to commercially advance both MiMagic 3 and MiMagic 6.The company currently operates its sales through distributors and reps in Asia, the UK, and US.

"Our engineering support includes complete hardware and software - we work closely with customers and have the capability of designing a complete system for their products," says Zaidi.

On the development side, Zaidi says the company has developed the "very exciting" MagicVaultTM, its USB 3.0-based UFD USB Flash Drive Controller, which delivers "almost two times the performance of any other USB 3.0 UFD controller on the market right now".

"It's not even a complete chip yet - but it is showing very good performance compared to others on the market," says the company's CEO.

Indeed, NeoMagic recently announced that field programmable gate array (FPGA) platform test results for the MagicVault flash drive solution indicated a "significant performance improvement" over currently available products.
The field programmable gate array (FPGA) platform is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by the customer or designer after manufacturing.
The company is actively looking for a partner to take MagicVault into production. It has already finished demonstrating the product to a few potential customers.
Zaidi says NeoMagic's long-term goal is to move on from USB to SSD, which is a solid state drive that acts like a hard drive - with "a lot more flash" on it, used in devices like iPads. The SSD market has even greater potential than the UFD market, he adds.

California-based NeoMagic, which was incorporated in 1993 and demonstrated one of the first solutions used for H.264 video decoding in a mobile digital TV phone, made $1.5 million in revenues in 2010. Zaidi says the company has enough cash to sustain itself, with strategic partners expected to take the company to its next level.

"We are focused on bringing the magic back into NeoMagic," he concludes.