VANCOUVER, Wash. -- A Vancouver company has found a niche market by focusing not on computer chips but on the spaces in between them.

Three years after its founding, Efficere Technologies has grown from an idea about data signals to a firm that aspires to tens of millions of dollars in sales in multiple markets by 2011.

The idea behind the company is to keep signals strong and fast as they travel from chip to chip, computer to computer, TV set to TiVo, and more.

Will Miller, Efficere's chief technology officer, foresaw the problem in the late 1990s.

Intel Corp., AMD and others kept producing faster chips, but the circuits that connected chips did not kept pace.

Circuit board design was still working in two dimensions while most industrial design had adopted advanced three-dimensional models, said Jim Russell, vice president of operations.

So Miller developed a patented system that looks at all the dimensions of circuit board design, in order to build better circuits. Then he realized that the same idea could be applied to any industry that transmits electronic signals. Cables used by high-definition TVs would transmit better signals, power companies would lose less electricity, testing and measurement companies would get more precise data if they applied his ideas to their technology.

In 2004, Miller and others with experience in the Northwest's high-tech business joined forces to found Efficere and start raising money. To date, the company has raised $2.4 million, mostly from small investors.

Efficere decided to build its name and establish itself with relatively inexpensive testing products, before branching out into other product areas, said Mike Gerard, chief executive officer. Efficere circuit boards are now part of the complex world of behind-the-scenes testing that makes sure high-definition multimedia interface cables are as efficient as they can be. These cables connect HD-TVs to cable boxes, DVD players, game systems and other devices.

Efficere's products are designed in Vancouver, with manufacturing outsourced to U.S. firms -- several of them in the Northwest.

Efficere has no competitors and maintains solid relationships with global firms, including Tektronix Inc. and Agilent Technologies Inc., Gerard said.

With a good reputation and two nominations in two years for the Oregon Entrepreneurs Forum Award, Efficere is now making its next market move. In addition to testing cables, it plans to make them.

The firm projects that its share of the cable and interconnect market could grow to as much as $46 million by 2011.

Efficere is also preparing to enter the memory market, where projected revenues could grow to more than $300 million by 2011.

Those are big projections, but Gerard said he's confident that Efficere has that potential.

It's just the beginning for Efficere, Gerard said. A company market plan shows the firm introducing chip packaging and power industry products in 2008, with eventual revenue potential in those areas topping $200 million.

Company sales now fund roughly 70 percent of operations, said Dean Suhr, executive director of operations and marketing, and projections show a positive cash flow by mid-2008.

The company could have become profitable this year, but opted instead to grow fast in order to maintain its competitive edge Suhr said.

"We're not there yet," Suhr said. "We still have a lot of work to do."

Long-term, Gerard expects that Efficere will either become a major corporation or will become part of another large firm.

"Our first and primary goal is to become an operating company with significant profits for our investors," he said. "If we do that, there will be opportunities for us to partner with other companies, possibly through an acquisition, or we may consider going public."

It's a dream, built on rapid growth in revenues: Efficere brought in $25,000 in 2005, $500,000 in 2006 and projects $2.5 million this year. Next year's revenues could be five times higher, Gerard said. "Faster is where we play," said Suhr. "And we are already running."