techweb.com
On the fast-growing ATM front, PMC-Sierra Inc., Vancouver, British Columbia,
continues to dominate the market for physical-layer devices. The company sought
to cement that position in May, with its $55 million purchase of Integrated
Telecom Technology Inc., a Gaithersburg, Md.-based fabless maker of
ATM-switching chipsets.
The deal brought PMC a complementary product line, said Steve Perna, PMC's
vice president of marketing and business development. "They had excellent
traffic-management and switching technology, which complements our layer 1
and layer 2 technologies."
ATM is gaining rapid acceptance in network backbones, edge switches, and
particularly in WAN Internet data switching. Dataquest predicts the dedicated
ATM-IC market will grow from $387 million in 1997 to $960 million by 2001.
Despite that potential, PMC is actively broadening its offerings to other areas such
as frame-relay and Gigabit Ethernet devices. "ATM is still our largest business, but
we're seeing tremendous growth in frame relay and in our LAN Ethernet and
packet-switching businesses," Perna said. |
