Lynguent Provides Engineers Tools To Do Their High-tech Jobs Better
Dramatically improved productivity is a concept that works for any business. For engineers in the semiconductor and electronic-systems business, that's especially true. And precisely what Lynguent provides.
Lynguent supplies electronic-design productivity tools to companies in the global semiconductor and electronics industries. Lynguent's tools are used to create, maintain, debug and validate analog and mixed-signal (AMS) models, which dramatically improve engineering productivity.
Markets and applications boasting Lynguent's tools include communications such as smart phones and portable media players, transportation, military and aerospace, agricultural, navigation systems, and health care such as biological monitoring systems and bio-medical devices.
Lynguent was founded in 2001 by Alan Mantooth and Martin Vlach but was conceived in Mantooth's laboratory at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Mantooth supplied the research, and longtime friend Vlach provided the financial backing and technical expertise in commercializing the application. And a sort of Reese's peanut butter-chocolate inspiration for the engineering world was born.
The company is headquartered at Vlach's home base of Portland, Ore. Mantooth, a professor of electrical engineering at the UA, heads a research and development office in Fayetteville. In addition, Lynguent operates a facility in Prague, Czech Republic.
Lynguent's first product is ModLyng, a tool for creating models needed for computer simulation of designs.
"Our tools enable customers to analyze their hardware designs, no matter how complex, accurately and efficiently, before they commit to the expense of manufacturing," Mantooth said. "It's the most capable and versatile modeling environment ever created." Why so?
"Because it supports so many different simulators and so many modeling methods," he said. "As a result, even if ModLyng doesn't currently support your favorite simulator, it can be tailored to do so in a matter of a few months because of its open software architectural design."
In a nutshell, ModLyng enables engineers to create, maintain, debug and translate their existing AMS models faster than ever before, and then reuse the models in other designs. Pretty handy.
While Mantooth and his colleagues continue to market ModLyng, product No. 2 is on the Lynguent drawing board.
"It will improve design collaboration between organizations that use different design tools," Mantooth said. "No such nexus exists."
Lynguent is in Fayetteville's Arkansas Research & Technology Park and maintains an active relationship with the UA. The intellectual property generated from Mantooth's lab belongs to the university. Lynguent became involved with Innovate Arkansas through connections at the research park and the university.
A collaboration between the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and Winrock International, Innovate Arkansas works with new technology-based entrepreneurs to turn inventions and concepts into viable businesses that will create high-paying jobs in Arkansas.
Lynguent, a play on "linguistics" in reference to computer languages and "fluent," was a perfect fit.
"We're very supportive of Innovate Arkansas' ongoing efforts to bolster Lynguent's growth," said Jeff Amerine of the UA Technology Licensing Office. "We actively work with and support more than 50 licensees of University of Arkansas technology, many of which are early stage companies like Lynguent."
(For more information on Lynguent, visit lynguent.com. To learn more about Innovate Arkansas, visit innovation.arkansasbusiness.com.)
(To see a list of notable Arkansas patents applied for in February, click here.)
