Irish semiconductor start-up RedMere Technology has secured additional funding of $5 million (€3.7 million), which brings the amount it has raised in the past seven months to $13.5 million.

The top-up funding was led by Canadian private equity firm Edgestone Capital Partners. Existing investors, including Toronto-based Celtic House Venture Partners, also contributed.

RedMere chief executive Peter Smyth said the new funding would enable it to be "more aggressive in certain Asian markets", following a positive reaction to products it introduced to electronics manufacturers at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last January.

RedMere's patented chipsets enable high-definition video signals to be sent between devices such as games consoles, DVD players, flat-screen televisions and surround-sound systems using much cheaper cabling than is currently possible.

Mr Smyth said RedMere's new office in Taiwan would now target customers in Japan and Korea, and not just Taiwan and China as originally intended.

"What we predicted 12 months ago about what would happen when devices started outputting the highest definition video has come true," said Mr Smyth. "We have the right product at the right time."

The new investors valued RedMere more highly than when it last took on funding in October 2006 but Mr Smyth declined to say what the company was worth.

"As long as the company continues to meet expectation, the value increases and that is absolutely the case," said Mr Smyth.

As a result of the new funding, Derek Smyth, a partner in Edgestone, will join the RedMere board.

RedMere was founded in 2004 by Peter Smyth and other former executives of chip-design company Ceva.