[INQ. NO. 1406E10] The following vivid story of Company 100, Inc. shows us very well how it was able to upgrade the awareness of its brand as a specialist developer of parallel web browsers in the global market by proactively developing the specific advanced technologies. It succeeded in applying and commercializing these technologies to global market-leading IT products
through a government-led global joint R&D program based on the rich experience of development and commercialization of web browsers it accumulated since its establishment.
In addition, the case of Company 100 regarding participation in many highly useful global joint R&D programs provides us with valuable insights. And the remarkable growth in practical sales volume it recently recorded in absolutely the shortest business period compared with normal standards truly presents a considerable persuasive power in participation in many globally competitive joint R&D programs.
▲ President Jin-Cheon Kim
Extraordinarily talented people
After being established in 2008, Company 100 has only focused on computer technologies to be able to set up 100 different businesses with 100 different computing innovations. Just by focusing on embedded systems alone, Company 100 was able to achieve world-class level, with its web browser technology, and it is now one of the few companies working on browser technology within South Korea on world-class level.
Working on embedded systems with experienced members
An embedded system environment is often unstable and harder to implement than other solutions. Company 100’s team has extensive experience with embedded systems as its solutions have been commercially implemented and deployed in most of the major embedded system markets several times, which includes smart TVs, satellite navigations, car infotainment systems and many more. Company 100’s developers have also contributed to the webkit community by upstreaming and maintaining part of its core technology. From day one, Company 100’s chief executive officer Jin-Cheon Kim had the idea of creating a parallel web browser, so Company 100 was able to create CanvasGL, but however this was only a small part of his plan. Company 100 did not have foundation technology such as a parallel compiler, which consequently caused delays in its development of PRS (Parallel Rendering Suite).
New opportunities through the global joint R&D program
While developing a mobile parallel browser for multi-core smartphones, Company 100 has realized that if it could acquire more knowledge about parallel compiler technology, its entire research and development would be a lot easier and more effective. While its primary researcher Jin-Cheon Kim was studying at MIT, he was able to establish a personal relationship with Dr. David. I. August, an expert in parallel compilers. So, to get help from Dr. August’s professional team, Jin-Cheon Kim did not hesitate to contact him again and fortunately he could set-up a research project with Parakinetics in a timely manner. The global joint R&D program even provided financial support for the program. For a start-up company like Company 100, the kind of financial support was critical to complete the global R&D program it jointly successfully carried out.
The government-led global joint R&D program helped the company to get funds in a timely manner when urgenty needed, and so it could complete its research without further trouble. By successfully carrying out its joint R&D program, Company 100 and Partner Company Parakinetics jointly achieved great results, which included five patents along with eight paper publications.
PRS (Parallel Rendering Suite)
Company 100’s PRS is an advanced webkitrendering engine solution that delivers superior performance on mainstream platforms such as smart TVs, STBs, smartphones and a lot more. PRS utilizes multi-core CPU and GPUs to allow more complex and richer web-based contents. It consists of three key technologies (Parallel CanvasGL, Threaded Compositor, and GPU Process) and can be implemented flexibly based on a customer’s specific requirements. PRS fully supports open standards such as HTML5 and CSS3.
– Parallel CanvasGL: Parallel CanvasGL uses multicore CPU along with GPU, HTML5 canvas implementation integrated into webkits to create smoother HTML5 canvas animation. It directly uses OpenGL ES 2.0 API to render canvas animation, minimizes draw calls, by gathering as many drawing calls as it can and batches all the drawing calls when webkit finally need to display the page.
– Threaded Compositor: It uses dedicated thread for compositing and animating jobs to improve overall performance of rich HTML5 application. It also sets the UI process free from GPU operation, so even if any GPU related problem occurs, it strictly does not affect the UI process, so through this any client application’s stability will be guaranteed.
– GPU Process: It creates a dedicated process for GPU commands and is designed to have the following benefits: security, robustness, uniformity and parallelism.
Commercialization to samsung smart TVs & significant growth in sales volume
In the initial stages, Company 100 sought ways to develop a web browser for multi-core smartphones, but technology growth speed was faster than it realized previously. So, Company 100 had to seek another target to commercialize. By the 3rd year of the joint R&D program in 2013, Company 100 could fortunately apply and commercialize a technology of PRS to the year version of Samsung Smart TVs. But, actually, in the year, Company 100 only has provided one key technology to Samsung.
And finally this year Company 100 is able to fully commercialize all three key technologies of PRS to Samsung’s smart TVs contributing to the considerably increased web browser performance of Samsung smart TVs. And also Company 100 could have released NDA in cooperation with some global advanced partners including ImgTec, Espial, etc.
PRS has also been shown to the public at a number of international exhibitions such as CES, MWC and ETC. By succeeding in commercializing the three key technologies of PRS, Company 100 has made a profit of KRW 2 billion so far, and as a result of this, it was able to employ 11 more talented developers.
Global ambitions
We are happy with what we have achieved so far, but we know that we can do better by extending this technology still further. In the future we are hoping to expand this solution to RDK, Tizen and Smart Car market also, expecting to make KRW 5 billion in 2014 and KRW 8 billion in 2015, said Jin-Cheon Kim, President of Company 100, in a confident tone.
Within the computing innovation world, there are many industry giants who are leading the innovation and most other companies are way too busy to catch up with what those giants are doing and willing to do in the future. However, we believe this kind of action may only make us a runner-up in the end, definitely not the winner of this complicated world. We call ourselves innovators and pioneers who are willing to stand in front of this world and find out what could be the most innovative way of doing same tasks. The result may be the same but we value how we get to the result.
Sometimes it could be tougher than what it actually looks, but by taking this tougher path, we believe that we can find the way to make things better. It may only be a small step that we are taking now but, who knows what it could be in the end.
This kind of global joint R&D program is such a great opportunity for start-up companies and we feel grateful to the Korean government supporting us doing it, but to be able to develop technologies armed with competitiveness, we hope the government will support projects which are bigger than this one we have been supporting. Running a larger project will definitely bring more competitiveness to Korea and help its technologies expand, he concluded, as a developmental proposal.
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