Sentient was incorporated in Oct. '97 to develop modem line interface products. The key employees came from Rockwell, Cirrus, SGS Thompson, and TI. Douglas Bartek, president and CEO of Microtune, a start-up in Plano, Texas, is a board member. Bartek was previously president of the Visual and Systems Interface Company within Cirrus and was president and CEO of Acumos, which was acquired by Cirrus.

The company has raised $1.5M through private "angels." Approx. $4 - $5 million in additional capital will be raised by July '98. The firm has 8 full-time and 4 part-time employees and expects to hire about 10 more people in the next 12 months, primarily DSP engineers and software engineers.

Although specific product plans remain undisclosed, Sentient has said that is developing modem line interface products for POTS and xDSL. The only POTS modem line interface product that we know of is a DAA. Humm . . . The Company will market a combination of hardware and DSP software to interface to the line. One side of its product connects to an RJ11 jack, while the other side connects to the modem codec. It has been developing the technology for 3 years and anticipates shipping product before year-end.

The target customers are PC modem manufacturers. Competitive advantages include low cost, high bandwidth and a roadmap to xDSL. The company has several undisclosed key strategic alliances. Sentient will establish a direct sales channel.

James Fontaine, chairman, president, CEO & co-founder (formerly VP/GM of Cirrus's PC Graphics and Video Division and VP of marketing of The Graphics Company at Cirrus. He previously founded Visual Information Technologies and Pixel Semi., which merged with Cirrus in '94.)

Uzo Anozie, co-founder and CTO (Anozie has a broad technical foundation in wireline datacom. His areas of expertise include POTS, ISDN, T1, and XDSL modem and line interface technologies. He's been involved in modem design since the early '80s and has worked at Scientific Systems, Rockwell, Silicon Systems and Coastcom. In '92 Anozie formed an engineering consulting practice. In '94 Anozie conceived the idea for a "SoftDAA" and spent the following 3 years developing the algorithms and software integral to the operation of the SoftDAA.)

Darin Kincaid, VP of applications and systems (formerly an applications manager at SGS Thompson)

William "Eddie" Basso, VP manuf. (formerly a senior engineering manager at ST)

Everett "Buddy" Rogers, VP finance and admin. (formerly dir. of finance for Cypress' Austin Texas foundry)