Austin, Texas is well known for live music, the always busy 6th street, the SxSW music festival, and most recently a slew of web startups. While often referred to as silicon-hills, Austin has recently produced relatively few semiconductor startups. All the established players are still there with AMD, Freescale, IBM and Intel all having major campuses in the city. Additionally TI, ARM, nVidia, Qualcomm and a few others can also be found scattered around the city. But looking for job opportunities with semiconductor startups is a little more challenging, unless you are leaning towards green technology. So it is good to see that the guys at AustinStartup.com have taken it upon themselves in creating a nice little list of Austin's top 100 emerging startups that they intend on updating on a regular basis. An undertaking like this one also tells you a little bit about the positive energy and genuine interest in Austin regarding startups, which bodes well for the city.

The criteria for the list are relatively simple: Companies have to be headquartered in Austin, must be growing, hiring, attracting capital, and ought to be relatively young. Obviously, companies that have been acquired or are publically traded are not eligible for inclusion in this list. Not surprising, the list is dominated by software, bio-engineering, and green technology startups, however it is good to see that several semiconductor startups also made list:

• Alereon - a startup providing Ultrawideband (UWB) wireless chipsets
• Black Sand Technologies - a startup focused on analog and digital circuits for the wireless industry which we profiled in this post
• Coldwatt - a startup specializing in ultra efficient power supplies
• D2Audio  - a startup designing intelligent digital amplifiers for audio components 
• Intrinsity - a little surprising that Intrinsity made the list since they have been around for while now. In any case, the company provides tools, technologies, and IP for digital logic design. It is best known for their proprietary Fast14 technology and their FastCores IP.
• IntegralWave Technologies - a startup developing power conversion ICs
• Luminary Micro - a startup specializing in 32-bit ARM microcontrollers
• Nascentric - a startup focused on delivering fast and accurate SPICE simulation software for the semiconductor industry
• Nuventix - a startup working on package cooling solutions using SynJet technology
• Pulsewave RF - a startup developing Class M power digital RF amplifiers
• Zilker Labs - a startup specializing in digital power ICs
  

There might be a few more semiconductor startups on the list that I missed, so I highly encourage you to take a look at the list yourself. In addition to more detailed descriptions than the ones above, the list also contains links to the companies’ news sections and jobs listings. One thing that would be useful would be that ability for users to sort the list by industry type, but nevertheless it is a nice first start and a useful resource.