MACOM acquires Mindspeed to boost 100 Gig offerings

MACOM has acquired Mindspeed Technologies for $272 million, gaining two of the company's three divisions: high-performance analogue and communications processors. Intel has gained the third wireless infrastructure division of Mindspeed that includes 3G/ LTE infrastructure ICs and small-cell technology that Mindpseed gained with the acquisition of UK firm, Picochip, in 2012. 

Ray MoroneyThe Mindspeed acquisition increases the serviceable addressible market for MACOM, both geographical - the company will strengthen its presence in Asia Pacific - and by gaining new equipment vendor accounts. It also broadens MACOM's 100 Gigabit physical device portfolio.

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Books in 2013 - Part 2

Alcatel-Lucent's President of Bell Labs and CTO, Marcus Weldon, on the history and future of Bell Labs, and titles for Christmas; Steve Alexander, CTO of Ciena, on underdogs, connectedness, and deep-sea diving; and Dave Welch, President of Infinera on how people think, and an extraordinary WWII tale: the second part of Books 2013.  

Steve Alexander, CTO of Ciena

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell. 

I’ve enjoyed some of Gladwell’s earlier works such as The Tipping Point and Outliers: The Story of Success. You often have to read his material with a bit of a skeptic's eye since he usually deals with people and events that are at least a standard deviation or two away from whatever is usually termed “normal.”

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First silicon photonics devices from STMicro in 2014

STMicroelectronics expects to have first silicon photonics products by mid-2014. The chip company announced the licensing of silicon photonics technology from Luxtera in March 2012. Since then STMicro has been developing its 300mm (12-inch) CMOS wafer manufacturing line for silicon photonics at its fab at Crolles, France.

Flavio Benetti, STMicroelectronics

"We think we are the only ones doing the processing in a 12-inch line," says Flavio Benetti, general manager of  mixed processes division at STMicroelectronics.

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Compass-EOS raises $42M

Compass-EOS has raised $42 million in investment. The Israeli start-up launched its r10004 IP core router in March and has so far announced two customers: NTT Communications and the China Education and Research Network, CERNET. The company says it has a second tier-one operator yet to be announced.

Asaf Somekh with the icPhotonics chip

"Both global operators have purchased routers on several occasions for several types of deployments," says Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing at Compass-EOS. “There are also a couple more smaller operators that we cannot disclose at this stage." The company is  involved in several trials in the US, Japan and EMEA.

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Verizon on 100G+ optical transmission developments

Source: Gazettabyte

Feature: 100 Gig and Beyond. Part 1:

Verizon's Glenn Wellbrock discusses 100 Gig deployments and higher speed optical channel developments for long haul and metro. 

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Books in 2013 - Part 1

Gazettabyte is asking various industry figures to highlight books they have read this year and recommend, both work-related and more general titles.

Part 1:

Tiejun J. Xia (TJ), Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Verizon

The work-related title is Optical Fiber Telecommunications, Sixth Edition, by Ivan Kaminow, Tingye Li and Alan E. Willner. This edition, published in 2013, includes almost all the latest development results of optical fibre communications.

My non-work-related book is Fortune: Secrets of Greatness by the editors of Fortune Magazine. While published in 2006, the book still sheds light on the 'secrets' of people with significant accomplishments.

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Reporting the optical component & module industry

LightCounting recently published its six-monthly optical market research covering telecom and datacom. Gazettabyte interviewed Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of LightCounting, about the findings.

When people forecast they always make a mistake on the timeline because they overestimate the impact of new technology in the short term and underestimate in the long term.

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