SAN FRANCISCO, March 31 (Reuters) - Chip startup Retym

has raised $75 million this year as part of $180 million in

total funding the company is using to pursue networking chips

for artificial intelligence computing in data centers, the

company said on Monday.

Retym makes chips that perform digital signal processing

(DSP) that helps move information speedily between large data

centers, a capability that has become increasingly important

with the surge of interest in AI.

Creating the underlying AI models that power the likes of

ChatGPT requires thousands of chips to be strung together with

networking equipment.

At the moment the market for the DSP chips Retym is working

on is dominated by Marvell Technology ( MRVL ).

The chip Retym - pronounced re-time - is working on will

help solve a bottleneck that has developed in data centers,

chief executive Sachin Gandhi said. Because large numbers of

chips must work together on AI computing tasks the connectivity

between them is increasingly important.

"We are focusing on building coherent DSP chips for the next

generation deployment of AI infrastructure and cloud," Gandhi

said.

Retym's first chip will be designed to move data around from

a range of 10 kilometers and 120 kilometers, but will be

optimized for 30 kilometers to 40 kilometers. The DSP chip Retym

is building uses a modulation technique to ensure data

transported is not corrupted.

"They took the approach of solving the harder problem with

longer distances," said Navin Chaddha, managing partner at

Mayfield, a venture fund that has invested in Retym.

Retym is using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s ( TSM )

five nanometer manufacturing process for the first

chip, which its engineers are currently testing and validating

samples.

The Series D funding round was led by Spark Capital. Retym

launched four years ago and plans to bring its first product to

market this year.

(Max A. Cherney in San Francisco. Editing by Gerry Doyle)