Irvine-based startup Quartics Inc., a maker of chips that help consumer electronics stream high-definition video, raised $6.5 million in a recent round of venture funding, according to reports.
News of the funding was disclosed in a regulatory filing and reported on Southern California technology news web site socaltech.com on Tuesday.
Calls to Quartics to confirm weren’t immediately returned.
Quartics’ chips are designed to improve both standard and high-definition video content from a variety of sources, including online streaming video, as well as Blu-ray discs and high definition movies and games stored on computers.
Quartics is aiming to sell its chips to companies that make PCs, digital TVs, set-top boxes and graphics cards—processors that help video and other graphics download faster.
Customers include PC maker Acer Inc., which owns Irvine’s Gateway Inc., Fountain Valley’s D-Link Systems Inc., NEC Corp., InFocus Corp. and ViewSonic Corp., which is just over the county line in Walnut.
Initial investor and cofounder Safi Qureshey stepped aside as Quartics chief executive in 2008 and now is chairman.
He’s best known as the founder of computer maker AST Research Inc., the defunct Irvine company that once ranked among the top computer makers before crashing in the mid-1990s. Samsung Electronics Co. bought AST in 1997 and later dissolved the business.
