Researchers in Spain and Canada have demonstrated large-aperture light emitters directly implemented onto a photonic integrated chip.
The research, which is targets optical links for satellites, is a collaboration between the University of Málaga in Spain and Carleton University in Ottawa, and supported by the National Research Council of Canada.
Xanadu, a start-up based in Toronto, announced US$100 million in Series C financing to advance its photonic quantum computing.
Founded in 2016, Xanadu's photonic approach to building quantum computers leverages of modern chip manufacturing facilities, the application of optical components developed by the pre-existing telecommunications industry and the use of fibre optics to network photonic chips together. The copmany also leads the development of PennyLane, an open-source software library for quantum computing and application development.
Canada's largest growth equity firm, Georgian, led the round with participation from Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Forward Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, along with previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Capricorn, BDC Capital, and Tim Draper. To date, Xanadu has raised $250M USD, bringing the company valuation to $1B USD.
"The continued support from top-tier investors in this uncertain economic climate is a testament to the belief in our exceptional team, our photonic technology, and our ability to execute," said Xanadu founder and Chief Executive Officer, Christian Weedbrook.
"These achievements have fostered the growth of the quantum community and enabled researchers and developers globally to access the most cutting-edge computational tools to create new algorithms that will eventually solve real-world problems, such as next generation battery development, a highly strategic area for Volkswagen Group's NEW AUTO strategy," said Dr. Arne-Christian Voigt, Future Research Volkswagen AG.
Auvik, a start-up offering cloud-based network management software, has appointed Douglas Murray as Chief Executive Officer. Murray succeeds Marc Morin, who founded Auvik alongside Alex Hoff and David Yach in 2011 and has served as the company’s CEO since inception. Morin will continue to be an active member of Auvik’s Board of Directors.
Murray most recently served as CEO of Valtix, a leading platform for multi-cloud network security. Murray also brings experience from his seven years as CEO of SDN pioneer Big Switch Networks, which was acquired by Arista Networks in 2020. Additionally, as senior vice president and general manager at Juniper Networks, Murray led its USD $1 billion business across the APJC region — driving customer engagement, sales development, strategic planning and revenue growth.
“I am thrilled to join Auvik during a time with so much opportunity. It is clear that the team is aligned with its 3,500 customers to provide unrivaled, easy to use solutions,” said Murray. “The company has already seen success following its growth investment from Great Hill Partners and, with its most recent acquisitions, Auvik is poised to take the company to the next level. My thanks to Marc for leading Auvik from incubation to scale over the last decade.”
“As a co-founder, I will always be Auvik’s biggest champion and I could not think of a better person than Doug to lead the company through its next phase of explosive growth,” said Morin. “His extensive industry experience, specifically in the multi-cloud Software Defined Networking and network observability space, is exactly what Auvik needs to push forward into its next chapter and become the ultimate network management platform. I have no doubt that Auvik will experience tremendous growth and accelerated innovation with Doug at the helm.”
Quebecor, Rogers Communications, and Shaw Communications issued the following statement late last week after a mediation session as part of Canada's Competition Tribunal process failed to reach an agreement that would allow the Rogers + Shaw merger to proceed:
We remain committed to completing this pro-competitive series of transactions and are confident in the strength and merits of our case in front of the Competition Tribunal, including the many benefits of these transactions to Canadians.
Once completed, our proposed series of transactions will positively transform the Canadian telecommunications industry in both the wireline and wireless segments. The combined Videotron-Freedom business will have everything it needs to compete as a stronger fourth carrier for the long term, including critical 5G spectrum. Quebecor’s commitment to lower wireless prices for Canadians across the country is one of the many benefits that the proposed transactions will create.
At the same time, the combined Shaw-Rogers wireline business will have a national network positioned to compete against the telcos for the long-term."
Rogers Communications agreed to acquire Shaw Communications in a $26 billion deal that could reshape the Canadian communications market. Under the transaction, Rogers will acquire all of Shaw’s Class A and Class B shares for $40.50 per share, reflecting a ~70% premium to Shaw’s Class B share price.
The merger will create Canada’s most robust wholly-owned national network and accelerate the deployment of 5G. Once the transaction is complete, the companies plan to invest $2.5 billion in 5G networks across Western Canada, which is expected to create up to 3,000 net new jobs. The deal brings together Shaw’s fibre-to-home, WiFi and wireless networks with Roger's national wireless network and 5G capabilities.
Both Rogers and Shaw began as family operated businesses.
Rogers will also commit to establishing a new $1 billion Rogers Rural and Indigenous Connectivity Fund to connect rural, remote and Indigenous communities across Western Canada to high-speed Internet and closing critical connectivity gaps faster for underserved areas.
Nokia selected Ottawa, Ontario, for a new sustainable research and development (R&D) hub focused on information and communications technology (ICT) and cyber security innovation.
Nokia Canada plans to begin site construction in 2023 and expects to open the new facility in 2026. This project will transform Nokia Canada’s 26-acre campus at the Kanata North Business Park into a sustainable, accessible mixed-use corporate, residential and commercial hub where nearly 2,160 local employees, Ottawa residents and businesses, and Canada’s entire tech ecosystem can collaborate, innovate and drive Canadian and global wellbeing and prosperity. The facility is expected to create more than 340 new, high-value jobs.
Pekka Lundmark, President and CEO of Nokia, said: “Nokia is helping to drive Canada’s tech leadership. This world-class, sustainable R&D hub will be one of Nokia’s most dynamic developments – and I’m proud that it will benefit the people of Ottawa also. This is an exciting day. I want to express my appreciation to the local, provincial and national governments for working with us on this project.”
EXFO has acquired EHVA, an innovative Photonics Integrated Circuits (PICs) and system automation company based in Quebec City, Canada. Financial terms were not disclosed.
EHVA, which is a spin-off from the Center for Optics, Photonics, and Lasers (COPL) at Université Laval in Quebec, combines manufacturing intelligence with wafer-to-single device capabilities to deliver scalable solutions for PIC testing and manufacturing.
EXFO said the acquisition will accelerate its advanced capabilities in PIC testing, enabling delivery of automated, turnkey end-to-end testing of optical components from lab applications to high-volume and high-speed manufacturing.
EHVA’s process software suite integrates EXFO’s advanced swept continuous laser scanning technology into customer manufacturing settings for exceptional testing reliability and efficiency, delivering a fully-automated solution that helps avoid production bottlenecks. This seamless integration is critical, given the diversity in PIC designs used for varied applications and the lack of standards for PIC technology which poses added challenges for automated testing.
Octasic unveiled its new corporate branding that better reflects the company’s 24-years of industry expertise and its vision to become a leader in the creation of the most advanced custom wireless solutions across the commercial, government, and defence markets.
Octasic, which is based in Montreal, offers develops programmable silicon for mission-critical custom wireless applications. Octasic enables both enterprise and government clients to go beyond commercial applications and build a myriad of customized base station, user-equipment (UE), and software-defined radio (SDR)-based systems deployed for numerous private network environments, including Industrial IoT, Non-Terrestrial Networks, tactical, automated warehouses, and autonomous mobile robots.
Octasic said it is proud to work with global technology innovators such as Capgemini and Radisys. Cambridge Consultants, part of Capgemini Group, has developed custom full-scale systems delivering breakthrough performance, tailored for specific mission critical communication and IIOT (Industrial Internet of Things) applications. Engineering teams at Capgemini have created an engineering center of excellence designing, integrating, and optimizing L1/L2/L3 for 5G RAN systems for Aerospace, Defense and Industrial customers. Radisys is an industry pioneer in delivering complex and high-performance subsystems RAN software across 3G/4G/5G to Defense and Public Safety customers, amongst others.
“We want to shape the future of customized wireless solutions for a connected and more secure world,” said Sébastien Leblanc, CEO of Octasic. “The time is right for a more cohesive and inspiring brand story that unites all our clients, partners and the incredible people at Octasic who build and support our highly advanced hardware and software products from our multiple sites, worldwide.”
“The roll-out of the new Octasic brand identity was an essential part to the company’s growth plan and to clearly communicate who we are today,” said James Awad, Vice President, Marketing and Programs, at Octasic. “This exciting new phase is about the depth of our expertise in signal processing and wireless development to rapidly expand into new wireless markets.”
https://www.octasic.com
Alphawave IP is opening a new office in Ottawa, Ontario - expanding its North American presence in the country's key technology hub.
The new office, which is located in the Kanata North technology park, is expected to hold over 100 employees across all departments and roles by the end of the year, more than double the existing 50+ employees in the Ottawa area.
"With our expansion into Ottawa, a major technology capital, Alphawave is well-positioned to accelerate growth and hiring in the North America region," said Tony Pialis, CEO, president, and co-founder of Alphawave. "The new site in Ottawa is a major addition to our company that will allow our engineering teams to better test, analyze, and create the next generation of connectivity technologies."
Alphawave currently has over 250 employees worldwide with aggressive plans to grow its global team significantly. By the end of the year, the company aims to have over 250 employees in Canada alone, with the planned acquisition of OpenFive set to further expand its workforce and propel Alphawave's connectivity leadership, product offerings, and customer base. The company plans to open an additional office in Milpitas pending the OpenFive acquisition, bringing the global office count to nine.
Rogers experienced a widespread network outage beginning on Friday morning and impacting Quebec and Ontario primarily, as well as other linked services nationwide. The Rogers outage led to cascading effects at banks, credit card processing, and online businesses.
On Saturday, Rogers reported service restoration to the majority of its users.
Tony Staffieri, the president and CEO of Rogers, stated "We now believe we’ve narrowed the cause to a network system failure following a maintenance update in our core network, which caused some of our routers to malfunction early Friday morning. We disconnected the specific equipment and redirected traffic, which allowed our network and services to come back online over time as we managed traffic volumes returning to normal levels. We know how much our customers rely on our networks and I sincerely apologize. We’re particularly troubled that some customers could not reach emergency services and we are addressing the issue as an urgent priority. We will proactively credit all customers automatically for yesterday’s outage. This credit will be automatically applied to your account and no action is required from you."
Citing security concerns, the Government of Canada banned Huawei and ZTE from participating in the nation's 5G rollout. Specifically:
Google unveiled plans for Topaz, the first-ever fiber cable to connect Canada and Asia.
Notably, the eastern-end of Topaz will use the original cable landing station in Vancouver employed by the 1960s era Commonwealth Pacific Cable System (COMPAC), a copper undersea cable linking Vancouver with Honolulu (United States), Sydney (Australia), and Auckland (New Zealand).
In a blog post, Bikash Koley,VP and Head of Google Global Networking and Head of Technology and Strategy, also notes that the Google consulted and partnered with First Nations communities in Canada on the project.
https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/topaz-subsea-cable-connects-canada-and-asia
Rogers Communications a has launched the first commercial 5G standalone (SA) network in Canada, turning on the next-generation service after completing the rollout of Canada’s first national standalone 5G core and the country’s first 5G standalone device certification.
Rogers said its 5G SA Core network has been built from the ground up based on the latest cloud native technologies, enabling more advanced wireless capabilities like ultra-low latency, network slicing and mobile edge computing and expanding Rogers 5G footprint.
“We are thrilled to be the first in Canada to launch a commercial 5G standalone service,” said Jorge Fernandes, Chief Technology Officer at Rogers Communications. “This milestone underscores our ongoing leadership in 5G and will bring immediate benefits to customers by increasing coverage, scalability and availability, and improving network response times, enabling a world of new use cases and applications.”
“Today’s launch delivers exciting new opportunities and capabilities to industries, businesses and consumers across Canada,” said Yasir Hussain, Chief Technology Officer, Ericsson Canada. “Ericsson is collaborating with our partners at Rogers to deliver 5G advanced services and innovative network solutions to meet the growing demand from Canadian companies and consumers.”
The decision follows an order from the Canadian federal government to CMLink, China Mobile's local subsidiary, to cease operations due to national security concerns. The order reportedly was issued in August.
Zayo announced plans to build more than 140 kilometers of new fiber routes in the Greater Toronto Area by the end of 2022. Additional network expansion projects are expected in Toronto in the coming years.
Zayo’s dense fiber footprint in the Toronto area currently connects more than 100 data centers and 1,400 buildings. With over 14,000 Toronto buildings near its network, Zayo expects to connect many more buildings in the coming quarters.
Zayo is also now rolling out a new product offer to new and existing customers in the Toronto region. The offer, called Shielded Internet Access, includes Dedicated Internet Access, DDoS Protection and CloudLink, all within a single offer that will be competitively positioned against current market benchmarks.
“Toronto continues to lead and support key business sectors both nationally and globally, accelerating the need for reliable connectivity solutions,” said Roger Brulotte, Principal, Senior Sales Manager at Zayo Group. “Zayo is committed to supporting the fast-paced growth of Toronto’s diverse industries and the connectivity essential to our clients’ growth and success.”
“Zayo is helping usher in a new era for Canada’s fastest growing business and technology community,” said Toronto Mayor, John Tory. “The Toronto Region relies on accessible, high-quality connectivity infrastructure to support our key sector needs. We appreciate our partnership with Zayo and look forward to the opportunities that these network expansion projects will bring to the Greater Toronto Area.”
Bell Canada has tested Nokia's 25G PON fiber broadband technology at Bell’s Advanced Technical Lab in Montréal, Québec. The trial validated that current GPON and XGS-PON broadband technology and future 25G PON can work seamlessly together on the same fiber hardware, which is being deployed.
Stephen Howe, EVP & Chief Technology Officer, Bell, said: “As part of Bell’s purpose to advance how Canadians connect with each other and the world, we embrace next-generation technologies such as 25G PON to ensure we remain at the forefront of broadband innovation. Our successful work with Nokia to deliver the first 25G PON trial in North America will help ensure we maximize the Bell fiber advantage for our customers in the years to come.”
https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2021/11/16/nokia-and-bell-canada-test-25g-pon-fiber-broadband-technology/
Xanadu, a start-up based in Toronto, announced a partnership with imec to develop photonic qubits based on ultra-low loss silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides.
imec is a leading research and innovation center in nanoelectronics and digital technologies based in Belgium.
Xanadu is developing a unique type of quantum computer powered by photonic qubits based on squeezed states - a special type of light generated by chip-integrated silicon photonic devices. Such an approach uses particles of light to carry information through photonic chips, rather than electrons or ions used by other approaches.
Xanadu said its photonic approach offers the benefits of scalability to one million qubits via optical networking, room temperature computation, and the natural ability to leverage fabrication R&D centers such as imec. Xanadu is using silicon nitride to enable the generation of squeezed states, which replace single photons as the basic resource for synthesizing qubits. Squeezed states are deterministically generated, and can be used to distill error-resistant qubits called 'GKP states'. When multiplexed and implemented in Xanadu's architecture, these offer a more promising path to fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Amin Abbasi, business development manager at imec: "We are pleased to see that imec's wafer-scale low loss SiN photonics platform, initially developed for communication, is finding its way towards other advanced applications, like quantum computing. We look forward to working with Xanadu to drive further development of this platform for their particular needs."
"We are pleased to partner with Xanadu, one of the most exciting companies working in the quantum computing space." said Philippe Helin, specialty components program manager at imec. "Xanadu's mission to build photonic quantum computers matches perfectly with imec's track record of and commitment to pushing the leading edge of integrated technologies," adds Haris Osman, VP R&D and head of department.
"One of the most critical challenges in building a photonic quantum computer is finding the right fabrication partner that can simultaneously deliver cutting-edge process development and volume production of high performing photonic chips," said Zachary Vernon, who heads up Xanadu's Hardware team. "Imec is one of the few semiconductor R&D centers that does advanced technology R&D on advanced 200mm and 300mm lines, as well as volume manufacturing on their 200mm line, capable of delivering up to a thousand wafers per year per customer on a few platforms including ultralow-loss photonic platforms. The seamless transfer offered by imec of new processes to production is especially critical for rapid scaling of our technology."
The government of Canada raised a record C$8.9 billion (US$7.2 billion) through the auction of 1,504 licenses of 3500 MHz spectrum. The following provisional results were announced.
Untether AI, a start-up based in Toronto, announced an oversubscribed $125 million funding round for its at-memory computation and AI inference acceleration silicon.
The latest funding was led by an affiliate of Tracker Capital Management and by Intel Capital, with participation from new investor Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (“CPP Investments”) and existing investor Radical Ventures.
As part of the funding round, Tracker Capital Senior Advisor Dr. Shaygan Kheradpir will join Untether AI’s Board of Directors. Previously, Dr. Kheradpir served as Verizon’s Group CIO, Barclays Bank Group COO, and CEO of Coriant and Juniper Networks.
“I am pleased to add Tracker Capital to our prestigious group of investors and welcome Shaygan to our Board,” said Arun Iyengar, CEO, Untether AI. “Tracker Capital’s unmatched experience and relationships across sectors will help speed our engagements in multiple high-value markets, including telecom, technology, financial services, retail, and defense. I am also thrilled to welcome CPP Investments to the Untether AI family. With the new funding round and partnerships, we will be able to expand our current product reach and accelerate the development of our next generation products."
Saf Yeboah-Amankwah, Intel Chief Strategy Officer added: “We have been an investor in Untether AI since the seed round. During that time Untether AI has assembled a world-class management team, developed and launched an exceptional product, and is now poised for growth in the burgeoning AI inference acceleration space.”
The dramatic increase in the usage of AI, along with its heavy computational requirements, is overwhelming traditional compute architectures, and drastically increasing power consumption in datacenters.
Untether AI said its at-memory compute architecture and tsunAImi accelerator cards can achieve record-breaking energy efficiency and compute density for inference acceleration.
www.untether.ai
Xanadu, a start-up based in Toronto, announced US$100 million in Series B venture funding for its photonic quantum computing.
Xanadu was founded in 2016 to use particles of light for quantum computing to perform extremely fast and previously impossible computations at room temperature. The company says this round of funding positions it to achieve its next major milestone: the building of a fault-tolerant quantum computing module.
"The strong interest from VC firms to fund this Series B financing demonstrates significant market confidence in Xanadu's photonic approach and our world-class team," said Christian Weedbrook, founder and CEO. "We believe this confidence is grounded in the significant advantages offered by photonics: The ability to leverage preexisting foundries and off-the-shelf optical components, and the capability to naturally network photonic chips together to form a larger quantum computer with one million qubits".
"This fault-tolerant module is the size of a few conventional server racks and will be the key building block to reaching one millions qubits and to solving meaningful problems, leading to the opening up of a new global market," said Weedbrook. "Photonics has the advantage that networking these modules together is achieved using light, which is already the medium of choice for our quantum computer".
Bessemer Venture Partners led the round with participation from Capricorn, Tiger Global, BDC Capital, In-Q-Tel, along with returning investors Georgian, OMERS, and Tim Draper. The round brings Xanadu's total investment to date to US$145 million.
Zayo announced a significant expansion to its infrastructure in Vancouver, British Columbia with two key projects: a network upgrade to 100G and an increase in the fiber capacity to its existing terrestrial route between Vancouver and Seattle, scheduled for completion by mid-year of 2022.
The upgraded network in the Vancouver area will enable Zayo to support 100G services, including IP Transit and Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) services.
The increased fiber capacity Vancouver - Seattle route will better support the region’s growing commercial marketplace, meeting demands for higher speed and increasing volume.
“Our delivery of 100G enabled service capabilities to the Vancouver market and increased capacity for the Vancouver-Seattle technology corridor reflects Zayo’s commitment to building our network based on customer needs,” stated Dennis Kyle, SVP of Zayo Networks, Mountain Region. “We look forward to collaborating with innovative businesses and organizations in the region, helping them drive transformative changes that disrupt the way we live and work.”
