Air Semiconductor

About Air Semiconductor

Air Semiconductor was a fabless semiconductor company established in 2006, with its headquarters in Swindon, United Kingdom. The company was founded by David Tester and Stephen Graham, who spent 18 months developing a proprietary technology that utilized GPS satellite signals in a novel way.

The business operated as a GPS silicon supplier, focusing on developing location solutions for battery-operated devices. It functioned within the fabless semiconductor business model, meaning it designed its chips in-house but outsourced the manufacturing process. The company's target clients included manufacturers of portable devices, and it was in initial discussions with several digital camera manufacturers. The goal was to enable features like automatic geotagging of images and to allow mobile handset designers to incorporate instant location functionality without a significant impact on power budgets.

Air Semiconductor's main product was the Airwave-1 chip, which was based on its revolutionary 'Always-ON' technology. This technology was designed to allow battery-operated, mobile devices to be continuously aware of their location. A key benefit of the Airwave-1 was its extremely low power consumption, requiring as little as 1% of the power used by contemporary GPS solutions and consuming only 1mA when continuously tracking. This capability for continuous location tracking also eliminated the time-to-first-fix, providing instant location updates. The company, backed by Pond Venture Partners, announced that samples of the Airwave-1 chip would be available in the summer of 2008. Despite its early developments, Air Semiconductor ultimately shut down its operations in 2010 and is now considered a deadpooled company.