Photo by David Tenenbaum / University Communications

University of Wisconsin Associate Professor of Computer Science Karu Sankaralingam has launched SimpleMachines Inc. (SMI), a company that is building next-generation semiconductor chips targeted at data centers, UW-Madison recently announced.

SMI was a part of the Discovery to Product (D2P) program, which helped to shape its marketing strategy, and it received proof-of-concept funding from WARF’s accelerator program.

According to a release, SMI has produced a streamlined chip design that will run up to 10 times faster than those now inside data centers.

“Karu is one of the rare high-level scientists who quickly and intuitively grasps business concepts,” D2P Director John Biondi said in a statement. “We helped Karu shape his go-to-market strategy but he is a very quick study who needed minimal help.”

Sankaralingam is also working with co-founder Jeff Thomas, a former vice-president at Sun Microsystems.

To date, SMI has filed one patent with WARF and is exploring more.