The founder of VM Labs, Richard Miller, was a former vice president of
Atari Corporation, and several prominent VM Labs employees (including
Jeff Minter and
John Mathieson) were also associated with Atari Corporation. VM Labs was headquartered in
Los Altos, California. After critical funding collapsed shortly after September 11, 2001, VM Labs was sold to
Genesis Microchip after a brief period in
Chapter 11. Genesis Microchip planned to integrate the Nuon and
Faroudja technologies for the DVD market, and ultimately used the NUON technology in
HDTV chipsets. As an expanded DVD format and video game platform, as of November 2004, there were no Nuon-enabled DVD players shipping and no new Nuon software titles.
Timeline 1995 – Company founded in Los Altos, CA. Seed financing and non-exclusive license agreement with Motorola for media processor design. 1996 – First Nuon Media Processor design delivered to
Motorola for layout 1997 – Prototype silicon received. Second silicon (Quad-core "Oz") delivered to customers. 1999 – Production shipments of quad-core "Aries-1" silicon, operating system and firmware to
Motorola,
Samsung,
RCA and others. 2000 – "Aries-2" begins production 2001 – "Aries-3" silicon (first fully designed at VM Labs) begins production. This design was faster, lower cost, lower power and more highly integrated than the Motorola versions, and fabricated at TSMC. Feb 2002 –
Genesis Microchip acquires VM Lab's assets and hires 50 remaining employees ==References==