Solarflare Communications, a start-up based in Irvine, California, raised $48 million in its latest funding round for its development of high-performance semiconductor products for physical-layer connectivity. Solarflare is one of many companies who are collaborating on final 10GBASE-T technology specifications, including chipmakers Broadcom Corp., Marvell and Intel; equipment manufacturers Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems; and cabling companies Belden CDT and CommScope. The technology would deliver 10 Gbps Ethernet over standard twisted-pair copper cabling rather than fiber.
Solarflare has already demonstrated a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) device capable of sustaining full duplex, 10 Gbps operation over long distances using the preferred, easiest-to-use twisted-pair copper cable types including Category 5e, 6, 6e, and 7. The company plans to offer a fully standards-compliant transceiver later this year.
Oak Investment Partners joined with previous investors Foundation Capital, Anthem Venture Partners, Intel Capital and Miramar Ventures to complete the new financing. Solarflare has now raised $78 million in funding to date.
http://www.solarflare.com
- Solarflare was founded by Dr. George Zimmerman, its CTO. He was formerly VP of Strategic Planning & Chief Scientist at PairGain Technologies. Before PairGain, he was with Caltech and NASA/JPL where he was responsible for signal processing R&D in the Deep Space Network. He was a defining force in the development of HDSL2 and g.lite DSL technologies.
