News

7 April 2010

 

Inphi opens UK Design Center to accelerate R&D on 100Gbps analog interface ICs

Inphi Corp, which develops high-speed analog communications ICs (using indium phosphide, gallium arsenide, silicon-germanium or bipolar silicon as well as CMOS), has opened the Inphi UK Design Center at Preston Deanery, Northamptonshire to accelerate its R&D on interface devices targeted at 100Gbps networks, as well as to synchronize its technology initiatives with strategic partners and customers worldwide. The new office is Inphi’s first design center outside the USA, where it has two sites at Westlake Village (outside Los Angeles) and Sunnyvale, CA.

With Mike Harwood as director of the new Inphi UK, Inphi has assembled a UK team that will leverage its core competencies in advanced analog circuit design, signal integrity, power management, packaging and process technologies to create a new class of high-speed interface devices.

Inphi provides interface components that operate at critical interfaces within cloud computing environments, addressing the bandwidth, capacity and power issues faced by data centers and 40Gbps/100Gbps networks. “Establishing our UK center allows us to capitalize on the area’s enormous cache of talent and knowledge,” says the firm’s president & CEO Young Sohn. Northamptonshire was chosen as the site of the design center because if the areas for legacy of mixed-signal design talent from Plessey Caswell, Texas Instruments and Phoenix. “This move will form the next step in our worldwide growth and augments our leadership in innovative designs, dedication to excellence in product development, and commitment to advancing industry standards,” Sohn adds.

After graduating in Physics from Trinity College, Oxford University, Harwood has accumulated 20 years of experience in microelectronics design. He was the architect of several generations of Texas Instruments’ physical layer devices and SerDes IP (the last development being a 12.5Gbps long-reach SerDes on a 65nm process), and was elected a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at TI in 2001. He subsequently co-founded HSZ Consulting (specializing in microelectronics for high-speed data communications), which has worked for Inphi on the feasibility of concepts, developing techniques to solve design problems, and process evaluation. “His experience will no doubt help us scale our operations,” comments Sohn.

“They’ve had a positive track record, strong [double-digit] growth for the last five years, and offer a best-in-class portfolio of products,” says Harwood of Inphi. “The opening of Inphi UK demonstrates the company’s commitment to becoming a global technology leader, investing in key talent and customers worldwide.”

Inphi has a diverse portfolio of more than 150 products for the server and storage, networking and communications infrastructure, as well as test & measurement markets. Commercial firsts include: the first DDR3-1600 memory interface buffer, the first load-reduced DIMM isolation memory buffer, the first 25GHz IC in plastic, the first 43Gbps differential Mach–Zehnder driver, the first 50Gbps multiplexer, and the first 43Gbps transimpedance amplifier. Customers include more than 200 global memory module suppliers, transponder manufacturers, and telecom and test & measurement original equipment manufacturers.

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