Luxtera

Luxtera Inc.
Company typeSubsidiary of Cisco Systems
IndustrySemiconductors
Founded2001; 24 years ago (2001)
FounderAxel Scherer
Michael Hochberg
Tom Baehr-Jones
Eli Yablonovitch
HeadquartersCarlsbad, California
ProductsBlazar
ParentCisco Systems
Websitewww.luxtera.com

Luxtera Inc., a subsidiary of Cisco Systems, is a semiconductor company that uses silicon photonics technology to build complex electro-optical systems in a production silicon CMOS process.[1]

The company uses fabless manufacturing; it uses semiconductor fabrication plants of Freescale Semiconductor.

The company received $130 million in funding and was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2019 for $660 million.[2]

History

The company was founded in 2001 by a group of professors and students at California Institute of Technology including Axel Scherer, Michael Hochberg, Tom Baehr-Jones, Eli Yablonovitch, Alex Dickinson and Lawrence C Gunn.[3]

In 2006, the company received a $5 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.[4]

In August 2007, the company introduced Blazar, a 40GB optical active cable for interconnect within high performance computer clusters using single-mode optical fiber.[5]

In 2010, Luxtera was selected as one of MIT Technology Review's 50 Most Innovative Companies.[6]

In February 2019, Cisco Systems acquired the company.[7]

Products

Luxtera sold embedded optical transceiver that were aimed at use in data centers, within telecom networks or companies, with the last transceiver using the QSFP 100G PSM4 specification.[8][9] The company's cables used silicon photonics technology to send photonic data from their cables directly to semiconductors without first converting the data into electrical signals.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b Cooney, Michael (December 18, 2018). "Cisco bets $660M on silicon-photonics firm Luxtera". International Data Group.
  2. ^ Miller, Ron (December 18, 2018). "cisco-to-acquire-silicon-photonics-chip-maker-luxtera-for-660-million". TechCrunch.
  3. ^ Bigelow, Bruce V. (March 1, 2012). "With $21.7M in New Funding, Luxtera Signs Deal to Make Optical Chip". Xconomy.
  4. ^ "Darpa renews Luxtera's transceiver contract". EE Times. November 8, 2006.
  5. ^ Scouras, Ismini (November 12, 2007). "Active cables extend reach 3X". EE Times.
  6. ^ "MIT's Technology Review Unveils 2010 TR50 List of the World's Most Innovative Companies" (Press release). Business Wire. February 23, 2010.
  7. ^ "Cisco Completes Acquisition of Luxtera" (Press release). Cisco Systems. February 7, 2019.
  8. ^ "Luxtera ships 2x100-Gbps PSM4 silicon photonics embedded optical transceiver". lightwaveonline.com. 2017-03-23. Retrieved 2024-06-12.
  9. ^ "100G-PSM4 Product Family". luxtera.com. Archived from the original on 2019-09-05. Retrieved 2024-06-12.