Kaiam Corporation was an American manufacturer of optronics equipment for computer networking. Founded in 2009, it was headquartered in Newark, California, and until December 2018 had a manufacturing facility in Silicon Glen in Scotland. After cash-flow problems and a patent infringement lawsuit, the company collapsed in early 2019. The founder and CEO was Bardia Pezeshki.
Kaiam manufactured 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s optical transceivers that used MEMS alignment to link servers. [1] Its key technological innovation was to use silicon micromachining technology to perform the high-precision alignment necessary for single-mode fiber optics, rather than manual or robotic processes. [2] In March 2016 it demonstrated the CWDM4, a 100 Gigabit-per-second coarse wavelength-division multiplexing (CWDM) silicon photonics transceiver using silicon modules and receivers. [3] It was also one of the first companies to push for a copackaged approach of optical modules combined with electronics to bring high bandwidth links directly to ICs. A demonstration with Corning at the Optical Fiber Conference showed a 1.6 Tb/s engine was possible. [4]
The company was founded in 2009 [5] by Pezeshki, an Iranian native [1] with a PhD from Stanford University who had previously founded Santur Corporation. [6] It initially produced TOSA/ROSAs (transmitter optical subassemblies and receiver optical subassemblies). [7]
From 2011, Kaiam manufactured optoelectronic modules in Shenzhen, China, using Sanmina as a contract manufacturer, [8] In April 2013 it acquired Gemfire Corp., [9] and in 2014, with a grant from Scottish Enterprise, it moved production from China to Gemfire's wafer fabrication plant in Livingston, West Lothian, [10] [11] [12] which had been built in the late 1990s by Kymata, a company spun off from research at Glasgow University and Southampton University, to produce photonic integrated circuits. [1] Pezeshki relocated to Edinburgh in 2015 to explore moving the company's research and development program to Scotland. [1] At the plant Kaiam produced integrated optical components on a 200mm-diameter wafer silica-on-silicon line, and also 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s optical packaging products. [13] The workforce at the Scottish plant expanded from approximately 65 to more than 350 by the end of 2015. [1] [10]
In April 2017, Kaiam bought a wafer fabrication facility in Newton Aycliffe in England from Compound Photonics Group; [13] it resold the plant to II-VI Inc. in August that year. [14] [15] and re-invested in the Livingston facility. In May 2018, the company signed a memorandum of understanding with Broadex Technologies Co. for co-manufacturing of transceivers based on its LightScale2 platform for the Chinese market. [16]
The company was unable to secure enough orders to sustain full production at its facility in Scotland, and in December 2018 was seeking a financial partner. [17] Shortly before Christmas, 310 workers at the plant were laid off with no notice and before receiving their end of year pay. [12] [18] Companies House had issued a striking-off order on November 27. [19] [20] Pezeshki visited the plant immediately before workers were informed that the factory would be closed until January 3; [11] [15] [19] the company's subsidiaries Kaiam Europe Limited and Kaiam UK Limited were placed in administration. [15] [21] The redundancies were then made permanent on Christmas Eve; 28 employees were retained to assist with selling the plant. [22] [23] Crowdfunding and in-kind donations were organized to assist those laid off. [15] [19] [20] [24] [25] In March 2019, the plant was sold to Broadex. [26]
Kaiam was sued for patent infringement by Finisar, following which the company collapsed in early 2019. [27] In January, Kaiam made a general assignment for the benefit of its creditors; in May, an agreement was reached under which Finisar accepted an unsecured claim on Kaiam's estate as satisfaction of a $10 million judgment. [28]
An integrated circuit, also known as a microchip, chip or IC, is a small electronic device made up of multiple interconnected electronic components such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors. These components are etched onto a small piece of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Integrated circuits are used in a wide range of electronic devices, including computers, smartphones, and televisions, to perform various functions such as processing and storing information. They have greatly impacted the field of electronics by enabling device miniaturization and enhanced functionality.
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuits (ICs) such as computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips that are present in everyday electronic devices. It is a multiple-step photolithographic and physio-chemical process during which electronic circuits are gradually created on a wafer, typically made of pure single-crystal semiconducting material. Silicon is almost always used, but various compound semiconductors are used for specialized applications.
STMicroelectronics N.V. is a multinational corporation and technology company of French-Italian origin. It is headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland and listed on the New York Stock Exchange, on the Euronext Paris in Paris and on the Borsa Italiana in Milan. ST is the largest European semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. The company resulted from the merger of two government-owned semiconductor companies in 1987: Thomson Semiconducteurs of France and SGS Microelettronica of Italy.
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Silicon Glen is the nickname given to the high tech sector of Scotland, the name inspired by Silicon Valley in California. It is applied to the Central Belt triangle between Dundee, Inverclyde and Edinburgh, which includes Fife, Glasgow and Stirling; although electronics facilities outside this area may also be included in the term. The term has been in use since the 1980s. It does not technically represent a glen as it covers a much wider area than just one valley.
A photonic integrated circuit (PIC) or integrated optical circuit is a microchip containing two or more photonic components that form a functioning circuit. This technology detects, generates, transports, and processes light. Photonic integrated circuits utilize photons as opposed to electrons that are utilized by electronic integrated circuits. The major difference between the two is that a photonic integrated circuit provides functions for information signals imposed on optical wavelengths typically in the visible spectrum or near infrared (850–1650 nm).
A hybrid silicon laser is a semiconductor laser fabricated from both silicon and group III-V semiconductor materials. The hybrid silicon laser was developed to address the lack of a silicon laser to enable fabrication of low-cost, mass-producible silicon optical devices. The hybrid approach takes advantage of the light-emitting properties of III-V semiconductor materials combined with the process maturity of silicon to fabricate electrically driven lasers on a silicon wafer that can be integrated with other silicon photonic devices.
Silicon photonics is the study and application of photonic systems which use silicon as an optical medium. The silicon is usually patterned with sub-micrometre precision, into microphotonic components. These operate in the infrared, most commonly at the 1.55 micrometre wavelength used by most fiber optic telecommunication systems. The silicon typically lies on top of a layer of silica in what is known as silicon on insulator (SOI).
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