[backprojection]

This sounds great, but why is it a kick starter project? If the claims they're making are reasonable, it seems to me that, for instance, Google would be more than a little interested, and could easily cough up $750K. What am I missing?

[ChuckMcM]

This is a really good question.

Not necessarily Google, they are famous for not investing in other people to do engineering, but it seems like a modest amount of money to get something that should be fairly widely applicable.

Of course if it is widely applicable and this investment gets to company what it needs to take off, well the folks who gave them the money aren't really going to benefit in a leveraged way. (No equity)

Perhaps they were hoping for a 'raspberry pi' like response (which would be hundreds of thousands of units) and be able to do a sort of stealth funding round kinda thing. No idea of course, but it would be a sweet result if it worked out for them right?

[mng2]

I also find it strange that a chip company is out on Kickstarter. From their website, though, apparently they started on an initial $2 million, which is peanuts for this industry. On some level I think it's an opportunistic marketing move, but it's possible that it was driven by necessity.

It's an interesting concept. If it's cheap enough, it's definitely useful as a DSP. But the custom instruction set is going to keep it away from general usage. They seem to be hoping to get their IP into a cellphone, but that's a seriously uphill battle.

[SamuelKillin]

I'd say they're looking for exposure/excitement in the hobbiest/startup datamining space. Partly marketing play, partly validation.

I backed $99. I'm very excited.

[wmf]

Perhaps the claims are not reasonable. Their site has a pretty high ratio of [citation needed] per page.