Today’s interview features Jim Finnegan, Senior VP of Silicon Engineering at Netronome Systems, a company specializing in network flow processors. These types of processors are commonly used to front-end data center and web server traffic in real-time, managing encryption, security, and other types of flow analysis. The devices can process more than 10 Gbps, and are able to execute deep packet inspection, deciphering extra information from the packets which allow for more intelligent processing.

Jim discusses the details of the company’s processor design, which includes 1.4GHz processors, each with up to 40 cores, each with 8 threads, which can process data in parallel. Jim also talks about an assortment of other interesting topics, including the limiting factor tradeoffs between processor capability and memory access rates, his unique role as VP of Silicon Engineering, and the challenges of negotiating licensing agreements with Intel’s lawyers. To learn more, check out the posts on LinuxDevices.com and InternetNews.

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This week’s video features my first cleantech company on TalkTech. Currently 52% of CO2 emissions worldwide are a result of the “built environment”: the process of producing building materials such as drywall (which results in 20 billion pounds of CO2 per year), and the consumption of energy required to operate buildings, mostly due to heating and air conditioning. This is tremendous, considering that only 9% of CO2 emissions come from vehicles.

Serious Materials addresses the need for reduced energy consumption in the built environment with two key products: their EcoRock drywall technology, which is functionally equivalent to gypsum drywall, but requires far less energy to manufacture; and their window technology, which provides significantly more insulation than the best dual-pane windows currently on the market, resulting in substantial savings in utility costs. Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materials, discusses the technology in detail, and also provides an excellent analysis on the global state of energy, sharing projections of the world’s energy situation in 30 years, and exactly how reducing the impact of the built environment could contribute more significantly to energy savings than nuclear, solar, and ethanol/biofuel combined.

In addition, Kevin shares advice on VC relationships, conveying the importance of patience and the realistic timeframe required to successfully take a company public. He wraps up by giving his thoughts on what it really takes to be a successful entrepreneur, speaking from his own extensive experience in the startup world. Throughout the video, footage of Serious Materials’ drywall and window manufacturing is included, so you won’t want to miss this!

To learn more, check out TreeHugger’s recent interview with Kevin, and VentureBeat’s post on Serious Materials’ recent acquistion of Alpen Windows, a leader in high-performance, energy-efficient windows.

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Funambol has developed open source mobile messaging software that provides any type of mobile phone with email, calendar, and contact management functionality, similar to the BlackBerry interface, but completely free. I had the opportunity to speak with Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of Funambol and a native of Italy. He speaks about the tremendous demand for free email on mobile devices, the effectiveness of the company’s worldwide community of developers in building portability of the open source application across 1.5 billion phones, and his experience as a web entrepreneur in Italy in the early 90’s. He also includes a complete demo of the Funambol application on the RAZR and the iPhone, so you can get a firsthand glimpse of the software.

Also check out these other great posts on Funambol:
Mashable - Kristen Nicole shares the news of Funambol’s recent $12.5M round of funding - congrats Fabrizio!
TechCrunch - Erick Schonfeld discusses Funambol’s free mobile syncing software for the iPhone.

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