Full (Mind)speed ahead

Mindspeed has acquired Picochip the Bath based company who produce SoC designs for 3G femtocells and LTE cells using software defined radios.

The deal is worth up to $76.8m ($27.8m in cash now with another $25m is the company meets various milestones by 2013). This valuation may seem low as the company has been the leader in 3G femtocell reference designs, but they are coming under heavy competition from big players such as Broadcom and Qualcomm.

All 150 employees should survive the transition to the new owners.