frank.
while we're bringing up photonic 'breakthroughs,' below is an R&D effort by a far-out start-up dubbed Nanovation.
i dig some cursory digging and found a blurb from a MoneyCentral piece too (posted first).
-chris.
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Got a nanosecond?
9/15/99
moneycentral.msn.com
Just about everyone knows by now that bandwidth is the bottleneck of the networking revolution. Fiber-optic cables being installed by cable and telecom companies today nicely broaden the "pipe" carrying bits of data from Bigfat Co.'s Web server to the PC on your desk. Yet the cables' capabilities are limited by the speed of the chips and switches that sort and propel the bits along the way.
Enter now a private company called Nanovation Technologies that proposes to eliminate digital gridlock by introducing new networking semiconductors and switches powered by speedy pulses of light rather than pokey old electrons. A reader named McNally, writing from British Columbia, suggested this one, noting that the firm is "not listed, but on the bottom rung of the electronic to photonic computer transformation. Important patents in place."
Some sleuthing at the Miami-based company's Web site revealed that a solid management team is taking shape: Top executives, many hired in the past year, hail from high-level jobs at Lucent Technologies (LU), IBM (IBM) and Tellabs (TLAB). The firm owns patents on key fiber-optic switching and laser technology created by professors at Northwestern University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As early as next year, its intellectual property will be turned into photonic chips and switches that are intended to replace electronic chips and switches in telecom equipment built by companies such as Ciena (CIEN) and Tellabs. These devices ultimately should be 100 times smaller and 1,000 times faster than the current state of the art.
In an interview Tuesday, marketing chief Michael Hassebrock said he left his job as director of product planning at Lucent in July because the market for photonic equipment "is just emerging just like the transistor was in the '40s and '50s." He asserted that much of the "dark", or unlit, fiber laid today in cities by companies such as Metromedia Fiber Network (MFNX) and Level 3 Communications (LVLT) will become economically viable only when photonic switches are installed. Nanovation plans to offer stock to the public by June 2000, in a deal underwritten by Salomon Smith Barney. If the patents hold out, the products work and the marketing is good -- three giant "ifs" -- I'll reserve a 16th spot on my decade-portfolio list for the company. Says McNally: "If photonic technology is sound, Intel is history, or will purchase the patents."
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Start-Up Claims Optical Net Breakthrough
By Joe McGarvey, Inter@ctive Week
October 25, 1999 8:58 AM ET
www4.zdnet.com
Scientists and prestigious research facilities have been on a decades-long quest to harness the power of the photon, the molecule-sized particles that make up light. Late last week, a Miami-based start-up demonstrated optical technology that it claims will revolutionize the manner in which information is transmitted and lays the foundation for the construction of an all-optical network.
Nanovation Technologies, in conjunction with researchers at Northwestern University, took the wraps off a working model of an integrated optical circuit, a device that essentially would enable network equipment makers and any other manufacturers of electronic gear to replace electronic circuitry with components powered by photons.
"It's a way to move energy at faster and faster rates," said G. Robert Tatum, president and chief executive of Nanovation.
Although a description of the differences in the molecular makeup of electrons and photons could fill several text books, the essential difference between the two particles most applicable to the role of light-based transport in the construction of next-generation networks is speed. Photons move at rates anywhere from 100 to 1,000 times faster than electrons, depending on which scientist you ask.
In addition to perhaps providing a solution to recently reported predictions that semiconductor technology will soon reach a speed bump, Tatum said the integrated optical circuit will enable network equipment makers to greatly reduce the complexity of optical network equipment by consolidating several discreet components into a single chip. In addition to reducing the cost of constructing fiber-optic based networks, the new technology also will improve transmission efficiency by enabling data traveling on a fiber-optic medium to remain in an optical format.
The major expense associated with constructing and operating a high-speed network is the need to convert data traveling in light paths into an electronic format at each junction in the network. This conversion is necessary, said Roydn Jones, vice president of engineering at Nanovation, because optical technology is not sophisticated enough to switch or manipulate data in photonic form and must rely on electronic gear to serve as the traffic-control mechanism at all network intersections.
By keeping the data in its optical format, a situation that Nanovation's technology would make possible, according to Jones, the optical-to-electrical conversion would only need to be performed at the end points of the network. It is the constant conversion of data from optical to electronic formats that is responsible for both bandwidth bottlenecks and the bulk of the cost of optical transmission, as expensive optical receiving and transmission equipment must be installed at every junction of the network, Jones said.
"Every time you go from optical to electrical you have a receiver, you have a laser," Jones said. "Every time you do this, the overhead associated with the conversion is tremendous."
Despite the fact that fiber-optic technology has been used as a long-distance transmission technology for several years, optical technology is in a primitive state relative to advances in electronics. Several research scientists have described the sophistication of optical technology as being at the same level as electronics in the 1950s, prior to the invention of the integrated circuit. It was the integration of multiple transistors into a single component, or chip, that ushered in advances in computer technology. By integrating first a few, and eventually millions, of devices into a single piece of silicon, semiconductor makers have been able to integrate computing power that once required equipment consuming several rooms into a single microprocessor.
Nanovation officials said their technology represents the first steps in a similar process of miniaturization and integration that will harness the power of the photon in a single chip. "A year from now we will be putting hundreds and then thousands [of circuits] on a single device," Jones said.
While industry experts recognize the importance of such a breakthrough in optical technology, they also expressed healthy skepticism in Nanovation's ability to make the transition from lab experiment to commercial products.
"They have the basic steps down, but there's a mountain of technology-related problems between where they are now and where they want to go," said Eric Swanson, co-founder and chief scientist at Sycamore Networks, a start-up maker of optical networking gear.
"If their claims are true, it's a significant breakthrough," said Jay Liebowitz, an analyst at the Ryan Hankin Kent research firm. "The question is whether they have done a heroes experiment or will they actually deliver products."
Tatum said Nanovation will deliver the building blocks for specialized equipment based on its technology in early 2000. He expects that Nanovation's targeted customers, network equipment makers such as Cisco Systems and Sycamore, will deliver commercial gear before the end of next year.
Nanovation will put together its products at a Northwestern laboratory the company funded in exchange for the intellectual property rights to the integrated optical-circuit technology developed by university researchers.
The company, which recently raised $16.5 million through private investors, plans to issue an initial public offering next year. |
