the latest on AMCC. hey, let's hope their next product is dubbed "the cuyahoga."
you know, the ohio river that caught on fire ...
and for you REM fans:
"let's put our heads together, start a new country up,
underneath the river bed we burned the river down.
this is where they walked, swam, hunted, danced and sang,
take a picture here, take a souvenir
cuyahoga
cuyahoga, gone"
(c'mon, cut me some slack -- no posts in over a week. sheesh.)
-----
Electronic Buyers' News
May 17, 1999, Issue: 1160
Section: Communications
AMCC releases OC-48 mapper/framer chip -- Network-chip maker testing new waters in wake of Cimaron buy
Mark LaPedus
Silicon Valley -- Bearing the first fruit of its recent acquisition of Cimaron Communications Corp., LAN/WAN-chip specialist Applied Micro Circuits Corp. has introduced a multiprotocol chip for use in 2.5-Gbit/s (OC-48) applications.
The new Amazon chip-which performs mapping and framing functions in both ATM and packet-over-SONET networks-was developed by Cimaron, a fabless IC design house in Andover, Mass., acquired by AMCC last March for $117 million in stock.
The acquisition was a significant move for San Diego-based AMCC. The company gained rapid entry into the digital mapper and framer segments of the WAN-chip business, putting it into direct competition with Lucent Microelectronics, PMC-Sierra, and others, analysts said.
The deal also enabled AMCC to expand beyond its core mixed-signal physical-layer (PHY) IC business. Built with high-speed bipolar and CMOS process technologies, AMCC's PHY chips are designed for Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, SONET/SDH, and related markets.
In those markets, AMCC's primary competition comes from Vitesse Semiconductor, which also is making acquisitions to bolster its non-PHY chip business, analysts said.
AMCC has high hopes for its new subsidiary. Cimaron's first mapper/framer chip, the Congo, was designed for 622-Mbit/s (OC-12) applications.
The Amazon chip is an OC-48 version of the Congo. "Both OC-3 [155 Mbits/s] and OC-12 networks are established in the market, but a large portion of the network traffic is now moving over OC-48 backbones," said John Langevin, product marketing manager for AMCC.
"Amazon also supports multiprotocol environments," he said. "Some [carriers and OEMs] prefer packet-over-SONET, while others like ATM. It doesn't matter to us, but the fact is that we have the first chip on the market that can map and frame cell-based data or packet-data in an OC-48 network."
The Amazon also performs functions such as clock recovery and serial/parallel conversion in switches, routers, and other LAN/WAN equipment. The chip is available now for $325 in 1,000s. |
