This is a fabulous article from the Nanovation thread (thank you Perry Ganz). I know this has been hashed over before but could someone refresh me about the JDSU/LU connection in optical switches?
Light sends streams of data in new technology
By John Dorschner
Knight Ridder Newspapers
If "The Graduate" film were being re-made today, the sage businessman would not be telling the Dustin Hoffman character that the secret of future success is tied to plastics. He'd be recommending . . . photonics.
Say what?
For those of you who haven't yet jumped on this economic juggernaut, perhaps a definition is in order: Photonics means the use of photons or light signals to transmit and manipulate information.
Think fiber-optic cable. Think broadband Internet access. Think of blue-chip companies like Corning, whose stock has almost tripled in value in the past year. Think of unheralded technology firms like JDS Uniphase, whose stock increased tenfold in 1999.
Think of Nanovation, a small Miami start-up that has received $56 million in venture capital in the past year. Nanovation is at the core of the photonic surge because it claims to have developed a tiny piece of equipment that is being called "the Holy Grail of technology," "as important as the transistor," or "the nirvana of most photonic engineers."
A spokeswoman, trying to simplify a very complicated concept, says, "Essentially Nanovation has learned how to bend light."
Its device is an optic switch that manipulates and directs information without converting it into electricity. If it works, it will dramatically quicken the flow of data and make high-speed Internet access cheaper.
"The whole reason for our company," says Nanovation Chief Executive G. Robert Tatum, "is the insatiable demand for bandwidth. . . . This is a very hot space -- and we're anchoring it down from Bandwidth Bay," as he likes to dub Miami.
All the major photonic players in America, including Lucent's Bell Laboratories and Corning, are rushing to develop similar switches. All say they will be manufacturing them sometime next year.
"This is a huge, big deal," says David Bishop, head of Bell Labs' effort. "The company that can be first with a practical and efficient optic switch can change the landscape. ... Basically, these devices are likely to be as revolutionary as transistors. ...
"I've been told there's a half-billion dollars in venture capital to support technologies of small companies trying to solve this problem. And I'd guess the big companies in the industry, like ourselves and our competitors, are spending another half-billion."
For good reason. "There's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for this," says Bishop, "and everybody is going after it."
Consider Qtera, a 15-month-old Boca Raton, Fla., company with a technology that concentrates on a slightly different photonics problem: how to allow light signals to travel farther without being amplified. On Dec. 15, Nortel Networks announced it was buying Qtera for up to $3.25 billion.
"They don't even have a product yet," says Paul Polishuk, head of IGI Group, which analyzes the telecom industry. "Nortel is spending $3 billion just for a concept."
Photons, which are particles of light, can carry far more information over fiber-optic cable than electrons can over copper wire. Light also moves several hundred times faster than electricity.
"In the ideal world," said Lawrence Gasman, president of Communications Industry Researchers, "everything would be built out of light. That's where everybody thinks we're headed."
Until several years ago, fiber-optic cable basically carried a stream of white light long distances. Then came the explosion of Internet and data transmission between computers. Suddenly, there was an intense demand for the cable to carry more information.
Engineers came up with dense-wave multiplexing. This allowed white light to be split into many wavelengths, or colors, with each color representing a separate stream of information. Instead of one wave channel, cables suddenly could carry four. Then eight. Now they're up to 40. By next year, they may be up to 160 wave channels.
The more complex the signal, the more it has to be manipulated. A lavender band, for example, might need to be sent to Denver while the rest of the channels go on to San Francisco.
At present, just about anytime information-carrying wavelengths need to be handled - change directions, be sorted into groups - all the channels must be shifted from optic to electrical. The manipulation is dealt with electrically, and then the signal is shifted back to optic.
It would be as if a car traveling 75 mph on the interstate had to go to an off-ramp, bounce around on a dirt road for a bit and then shift back to the freeway.
These cable shifts not only slow the signal, but they make the system much more expensive by adding additional processes. Hence the quest for the "all-optical network."
Simple manipulation of light has never been a huge problem. Scientists for centuries have known that prisms can send light off in different directions and separate colors. But what was needed for fiber-optic cable was light manipulation at microscopic sizes.
"That's why you have this race to get the Holy Grail," Gasman said.
Nanovation's roots go back to 1996, when a group of knowledgeable Canadian investors heard about an interesting scientific paper about micro-circuit technology written by Seng-Tiong Ho, a professor at Northwestern University.
The group arranged for a trial at a Cornell University lab. When the results looked promising, the investors worked out a licensing arrangement with Northwestern, which owned the discoveries of all its professors. In exchange for building a micro-photonic lab at Northwestern and paying royalties, the group received worldwide production rights to Ho's design.
Tatum was brought in originally as a consultant. A one-time vice president of technology with a General Electric division, he has experience running tech companies with medical orientations, such as CardioDynamics International and Vitarel Microelectronics Inc., based in San Diego.
When it came time to develop Ho's ideas into products, Tatum was elevated to chief executive.
Tatum has been busy assembling a crew of telecom pros, such as marketing vice president Michael Hassebrock, who has worked at Lucent and AT&T.
Altogether, he has built a staff of 40 in Miami, with 35 scientists and others scattered elsewhere, including the Northwestern lab, Scotland, Toronto, Singapore and China.
Money keeps pouring in. The latest investment round of $30 million, announced in December, was raised from a dozen institutional investors in an effort orchestrated by J.P. Morgan.
"Nanovation is a leader in pioneering and driving this industry," said Bill Rabin, a senior analyst with J.P. Morgan, when the funding was announced.
Earlier this year, Northwestern received patents on Ho's innovations and Nanovation has 18 related patents of its own.
Ho's technology is being used to build a variety of devices, all of them focused on manipulating light by optical means. The underlying concept involves microscopic "wave guides," built with a planar technology, in which the light is reduced to two dimensions on ultra-thin integrated circuit boards. "A planar structure is measured in billionths of a meter," said Tatum. "Ten of these photonic switches side by side are not as thick as a human hair."
Tatum says that the Northwestern lab has already built thousands of test devices and that he expects to name Nanovation's first major customer in the weeks ahead. "It is huge," he said.
Tatum expects to start manufacturing and shipping products next year. He says Nanovation plans to go public sometime next year, but the company's Toronto investors' portion is already available in a publicly traded fund there, Stamford International. Because of the buzz on Nanovation, Tatum says, the fund's shares have zoomed in the past year from 6 cents to $11.40.
"We honestly don't know of anyone who's directly a competitor of ours," said Tatum. "We're working with a very basic enabling technology."
He believes many other photonic companies - including Qtera, Lucent, Nortel and JDS Uniphase - will buy components from Nanovation.
However, many others are racing to get similar products to market.
Scientists at Lucent's Bell Labs have developed an optical switch using micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Light is moved by a microscopic pivoting bar that adjusts a gold-plated mirror so small that 256 of them will fit on a chip the size of a postage stamp.
Bishop, head of the MEMS project, believes the technology of ultra-small motors will be "revolutionary. It's what you call a disruptive technology. In every technology area that I know about, MEMS is a disruptive technology that will change the paradigm."
The technology could result in tiny machines that could be embedded in an ear to provide artificial hearing.
"It could go into your bloodstream and fix things, like 'Fantastic Voyage'," Bishop said. "Or not fix things. Like someone could make a targeted virus that could crawl up your leg and go through your ear and hurt you. People will be able to make MEMS machines do just about anything."
Bishop says Lucent is the team to beat. "If somebody else thinks that they can do it by next summer, bring them on! That's when we're going to start shipping."
He adds that he's suspicious of Nanovation's technology. "I've read the claims," he says, but has yet to see any technical data to back it up.
Kevin Slocum of Soundview Technology, a consulting group helping Nanovation, shrugs off Bell Lab's suspicions. "The race is on. And the folks at Nanovation are talking about doing things which make them unique from what the MEMS folks are doing. . . . Their technology looks pretty damn promising. They're at the stage of developing prototype products. Customers will be evaluating and if that process goes well, this company will have a phenomenal evaluation."
Meanwhile, Corning, the world's leader in the manufacture of fiber-optic network materials, has announced two optical switches. One uses liquid crystal to manipulate the light waves. Corning said it will have samples ready to be examined in the first half of next year and a "pilot manufacturing line" working in the second half of this year.
Merrill Lynch reports that JDS Uniphase has recently purchased a wave-guide switching technology that could be similar to Nanovation's, and Alcatel, the French telecom giant, is promising optical switching devices by the end of next year.
Gasman, the telecom expert, says it's crucial that these companies not be late. "Ultimately, the capital is going to dry up." Investors aren't going to keep funding devices that are a year late in reaching the market.
Gasman won't try to predict the winner: "We're in the early stages with all these devices." |
