Cisco agreed to acquire privately-held Luxtera, a developer of silicon photonic technologies, for $660 million in cash and assumed equity awards.
Luxtera, which is based in Carlsbad, California, focuses on silicon photonics process and packaging technologies for building integrated optics capabilities for webscale and enterprise data centers, service provider market segments, and other customers.
Luxtera leverages a hybrid integration approach wherein the photonics die forms the base of the transceiver chipset, while the light source and electronics die are attached on top. The company says its ability to integrate all optical components into a single silicon chip enables it to manufacture at wafer scale.
Cisco said the integration of Luxtera will broaden its portfolio of 100GbE and 400GbE optics. Cisco plans to incorporate Luxtera's technology across its intent-based networking portfolio, spanning enterprise, data center and service provider markets.
"With Cisco's 2018 Visual Networking Index projecting that global Internet traffic will increase threefold over the next five years, our customers are facing an exponential demand for Internet bandwidth," said David Goeckeler, executive vice president and general manager, Networking and Security Business at Cisco. "Optics is a fundamental technology to enable this future. Coupled with our silicon and optics innovation, Luxtera will allow our customers to build the biggest, fastest and most efficient networks in the world."
https://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1959037
AT OFC 2018, Luxterra showcased its latest advances in 100G/λ technology, PAM4 signaling, extended reach, increased operating temperature range, liquid immersion cooling, increased density and photonic integration. Product demonstrations included: IEEE802.3bs compliant 400G-DR4 technology platform demonstrating increased throughput and performance in Luxtera’s next-generation products 30km, 50G-PAM4 single-lambda QSFP link demonstrating Luxtera’s extended reach capabilities with PAM4 signaling over duplex fiber 4x25G-LR QSFP28 modules...
