Sometimes it's difficult for the average person to understand what, exactly, it is that hi-tech firms like Bethlehem-based CICLON Semiconductor Device Corporation produce. So here's a scenario to bring it all home: if CICLON's unique semiconductor technology were adopted in computer systems worldwide, it would increase efficiency by more than 8,000 Megawatts of power use annually, making 12 or 13 coal-fired power plants obsolete.

In other words, the products developed by CICLON dramatically increase efficiency in high-power computing and server systems. In tech-speak, that means CICLON's state-of-the-art power management technology can double a system's operating frequency and achieve more than 90-percent power efficiency in a footprint up to 20-percent smaller than today's power supply.

The technology is groundbreaking, and it caught the eye of Texas Instruments Incorporated, which last month acquired CICLON--a huge success for the Bethlehem startup.

Founded in 2004 at the Ben Franklin Business Incubator at Lehigh University on a $150,000 investment, two years later CICLON moved across the street to occupy the entire post-incubator space at Ben Franklin's new TechVentures incubator/post-incubator facility. The company grew from three employees in 2004 to more than 50, and has raised $24 million in venture capital funding.

Following the sale to Texas Instruments, Gov. Ed Rendell said in a February press release that CICLON's workforce and operations would remain in Bethlehem, where the venture started.