Acacia bets on silicon as coherent enters its next phase

Gazettabyte interviewed Acacia Communications’ president and CEO, Murugesan ‘Raj’ Shanmugaraj, as the coherent technology company celebrates its 10th anniversary.

Acacia Communications has come a long way since Raj Shanmugaraj (pictured) first joined the company as CEO in early 2010. “It was just a few conference rooms and we didn't have enough chairs,” he says.

The company has since become a major optical coherent player with revenues of $340 million in 2018; revenues that would have been higher but for the four-month trade ban imposed by the US on Chinese equipment maker ZTE, an Acacia customer.

And as the market for coherent technology continues to grow, Acacia and other players are preparing for new opportunities. 

“We are still in the early stages of the disruption," says Shanmugaraj. “You will see higher performance [coherent systems] in some parts of the network but there is going to be growth as coherent moves closer to the network edge.” 

Click to read more ...

Creating a long-term view for the semiconductor industry

The semiconductor industry is set for considerable change over the next 15 years.

“We are at an inflection point in the history of the [chip] industry,” says Thomas Conte, an IEEE Fellow. “It will be very different and very diverse; there won’t be one semiconductor industry.” 

Conte (pictured) is co-chair of the IEEE Rebooting Computing initiative that is sponsoring the International Roadmap of Devices and Systems (IRDS) programme. The IRDS is defining technology roadmaps over a 15-year horizon and in November will publish its first that spans nine focus areas. (See The emergence of the IRDS, below).

Click to read more ...