PMC-Sierra
Encyclopedia
PMC-Sierra is a fabless semiconductor company
which develops and sells devices into the communications, storage, printing, and embedded computing marketplaces.
, and went public in 1991. It received funding on 1/11/1984 from Sequoia Capital
.
Pacific Microelectronics Centre (Burnaby, British Columbia
, Canada
) was spun off from Microtel Pacific Research (the research arm of BC TEL at the time) to develop ATM
and later SONET
chips. With investment from Sierra Semiconductor, PMC was established in 1992 as a private company focused on providing networking semiconductors, and became a wholly owned, independently operated subsidiary of Sierra Semiconductor in 1994. Microtel is currently a part of Verizon
.
In August 1996, Sierra Semiconductor announced its decision to exit the personal computer modem chipset business, to restructure its other non-networking products and focus on its networking products. In 1997, the Company changed its name to PMC-Sierra to reflect the corporate focus on internetworking semiconductor solutions.
In May 2006, PMC-Sierra acquired Passave, Inc., a developer of system-on-chip semiconductor solutions for the Fiber to the home (FTTH) access market in a stock-for-stock transaction valued at approximately $300 million. Passave was headquartered in Boston, MA and had a development center in Tel Aviv
, Israel.
On October 22, 2010 PMC-Sierra acquired Wintegra Inc. for $240m. Wintegra had 165 employees with the majority of its R&D development team located in Raanana, Israel, and Austin, Texas
.
PMC-Sierra's customers include: HP, EMC
, Huawei
, Cisco
, Alcatel-Lucent
, Fujitsu
, Hitachi
, Mitsubishi
, ZTE
and Juniper
.
The company competes against established semiconductor companies that focus on the communications and storage semiconductor business. These companies include Agere Systems
, Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, Broadcom
, Exar Corporation, Conexant Systems, LSI
, Marvell Technology Group, Mindspeed, Transwitch and Vitesse Semiconductor. Other competitors include major domestic and international semiconductor companies, such as Agilent, Freescale, Intel, IBM
, Infineon, Motorola
, NEC, Texas Instruments
, and Toshiba
.
s featuring signal integrity, flexibility and diagnostics for increased system performance and management. The company provides an interconnect and controller product family for both 3G and 6G SAS/SATA storage systems and Server RAID. PMC-Sierra also provides 4G and 8G Fibre Channel controller and system interconnect products for SAN/NAS storage and switch fabric applications.
Fiber-to-the-Home (PON
PMC-Sierra is the leader in gigabit EPON solutions for Fiber to the Home broadband access network equipment. PMC-Sierra is the only supplier to support EPON (IEEE 802.3ah Ethernet in the First Mile), 10G EPON (IEEE 802.3av) and GPON (ITU-T G.984) standards. PMC-Sierra system-on-chip solutions provide end-to-end gigabit per second bandwidth solutions linking central office equipment and customer premise equipment. OLT (optical line terminal) devices connect the central office to the PON network and ONU or ONT devices connect customer premises to the PON network.
As of 2009, PMC-Sierra Global presence includes:
USA
Corporate Head Office in Sunnyvale
, CA
Canada
Operations Head Office in Burnaby, B.C.
ASIA
International Head Office in Penang, Malaysia
Design Centres
Sales Centre
Design and Sales centres
The company, like several tech companies, has experienced restructuring
s to meet the current demands on the market.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Date
! Number of Employees Affected
|-
| August 1996
| 150 people
|-
| June 1997
| PMC Sierra overtook its parent, Sierra Semiconductor
|-
| 2001
| 350 people or 24% of total workforce.
|-
| January 2003
| 176 people
|-
| June 2005
| 89 people
|-
| January 2006
| 30 people
|-
| August 2006
| 30 to 40 people
|-
| March 2007
| 175 people
|-
| December 2007
| 18 people
|-
| March 2010
| 9 people
|}
Fabless semiconductor company
A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing the fabrication or "fab" of the devices to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry...
which develops and sells devices into the communications, storage, printing, and embedded computing marketplaces.
Corporate history
Sierra Semiconductor was originally founded in 1984 in San Jose, CaliforniaSan Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
, and went public in 1991. It received funding on 1/11/1984 from Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is a Californian venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. The Wall Street Journal has called Sequoia Capital "one of the highest-caliber venture firms", and noted that it is "one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture-capital firms"...
.
Pacific Microelectronics Centre (Burnaby, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
) was spun off from Microtel Pacific Research (the research arm of BC TEL at the time) to develop ATM
Asynchronous Transfer Mode
Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a standard switching technique designed to unify telecommunication and computer networks. It uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing, and it encodes data into small, fixed-sized cells. This differs from approaches such as the Internet Protocol or Ethernet that...
and later SONET
Sonet
Sonet may refer to:* Sonet Records, European record label* Synchronous optical networking * Saab Sonett...
chips. With investment from Sierra Semiconductor, PMC was established in 1992 as a private company focused on providing networking semiconductors, and became a wholly owned, independently operated subsidiary of Sierra Semiconductor in 1994. Microtel is currently a part of Verizon
Verizon Communications
Verizon Communications Inc. is a global broadband and telecommunications company and a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average...
.
In August 1996, Sierra Semiconductor announced its decision to exit the personal computer modem chipset business, to restructure its other non-networking products and focus on its networking products. In 1997, the Company changed its name to PMC-Sierra to reflect the corporate focus on internetworking semiconductor solutions.
In May 2006, PMC-Sierra acquired Passave, Inc., a developer of system-on-chip semiconductor solutions for the Fiber to the home (FTTH) access market in a stock-for-stock transaction valued at approximately $300 million. Passave was headquartered in Boston, MA and had a development center in Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
, Israel.
On October 22, 2010 PMC-Sierra acquired Wintegra Inc. for $240m. Wintegra had 165 employees with the majority of its R&D development team located in Raanana, Israel, and Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
.
Technology & Products
PMC-Sierra provides broadband communications and storage semiconductors for metro, access, fiber to the home, wireless infrastructure, enterprise and channel storage, laser printers and customer premises equipment. PMC has more than 250 different semiconductor devices that are sold to equipment manufacturers, who in turn supply their equipment to communications network service providers and enterprises. PMC-Sierra is a “fabless” semiconductor company. The company designs and tests products, but outsources wafer fabrication and assembly functions to third party suppliers.PMC-Sierra's customers include: HP, EMC
EMC
EMC may refer to:In organizations:* EMC Corporation, an information management company* IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society, a worldwide professional engineering society* Eastern Media Centre, a television channel in the UK...
, Huawei
Huawei
Huawei is a Chinese multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China...
, Cisco
Cisco
Cisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore...
, Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent is a global telecommunications corporation, headquartered in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France. It provides telecommunications solutions to service providers, enterprises, and governments around the world, enabling these customers to deliver voice, data, and video services...
, Fujitsu
Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is the world's third-largest IT services provider measured by revenues....
, Hitachi
Hitachi
Hitachi is a multinational corporation specializing in high-technology.Hitachi may also refer to:*Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan*Hitachi province, former province of Japan*Prince Hitachi and Princess Hitachi, members of the Japanese imperial family...
, Mitsubishi
Mitsubishi
The Mitsubishi Group , Mitsubishi Group of Companies, or Mitsubishi Companies is a Japanese multinational conglomerate company that consists of a range of autonomous businesses which share the Mitsubishi brand, trademark and legacy...
, ZTE
ZTE
ZTE Corporation formerly Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Corporation is a Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and systems company headquartered in Shenzhen, China...
and Juniper
Juniper
Junipers are coniferous plants in the genus Juniperus of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on taxonomic viewpoint, there are between 50-67 species of juniper, widely distributed throughout the northern hemisphere, from the Arctic, south to tropical Africa in the Old World, and to the...
.
The company competes against established semiconductor companies that focus on the communications and storage semiconductor business. These companies include Agere Systems
Agere Systems
Agere Systems Inc. was an integrated circuit components company based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Spun out of Lucent Technologies in 2002, Agere was merged into LSI Corporation in 2007....
, Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, Broadcom
Broadcom
Broadcom Corporation is a fabless semiconductor company in the wireless and broadband communication business. The company is headquartered in Irvine, California, USA. Broadcom was founded by a professor-student pair Henry Samueli and Henry T. Nicholas III from the University of California, Los...
, Exar Corporation, Conexant Systems, LSI
LSI
LSI may mean* Lord Steel Industry, a manufacturer of stainless steel tubing and piping* Labour and Socialist International, a former socialist international* Lake Superior and Ishpeming Railroad, a railroad service in Michigan, U.S....
, Marvell Technology Group, Mindspeed, Transwitch and Vitesse Semiconductor. Other competitors include major domestic and international semiconductor companies, such as Agilent, Freescale, Intel, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, Infineon, Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
, NEC, Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
, and Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
.
Enterprise Storage
For storage networks and systems, PMC-Sierra offers solutionSolution
In chemistry, a solution is a homogeneous mixture composed of only one phase. In such a mixture, a solute is dissolved in another substance, known as a solvent. The solvent does the dissolving.- Types of solutions :...
s featuring signal integrity, flexibility and diagnostics for increased system performance and management. The company provides an interconnect and controller product family for both 3G and 6G SAS/SATA storage systems and Server RAID. PMC-Sierra also provides 4G and 8G Fibre Channel controller and system interconnect products for SAN/NAS storage and switch fabric applications.
Wireline Infrastructure
PMC-Sierra offers a broad range of interoperable communication ICs scaling from DS-0 to OC-192 for metro access, metro transport, FTTH/PON, Ethernet over SONET/SDH, Optical Transport Network (OTN) and wireless base transceiver stations (BTS). PMC is also enabling the OTN transport market with its HyPHY and META devices at 10G and 20G. PMC has more than 150 devices that help OEMs provide carrier-class solutions.Wireless Infrastructure
PMC-Sierra semiconductor devices allow wireless service providers to deploy 2G, 2.5G and 3G wireless equipment. PMC-Sierra's wireless solutions are designed to comply with current and emerging CDMA and WCDMA industry specifications.Fiber-to-the-Home (PONPassive optical networkA passive optical network is a point-to-multipoint, fiber to the premises network architecture in which unpowered optical splitters are used to enable a single optical fiber to serve multiple premises, typically 16-128. A PON consists of an optical line terminal at the service provider's central...
)
PMC-Sierra is the leader in gigabit EPON solutions for Fiber to the Home broadband access network equipment. PMC-Sierra is the only supplier to support EPON (IEEE 802.3ah Ethernet in the First Mile), 10G EPON (IEEE 802.3av) and GPON (ITU-T G.984) standards. PMC-Sierra system-on-chip solutions provide end-to-end gigabit per second bandwidth solutions linking central office equipment and customer premise equipment. OLT (optical line terminal) devices connect the central office to the PON network and ONU or ONT devices connect customer premises to the PON network.Laser and Multi-Function Printers
PMC-Sierra has discrete and system-on-chip solutions for both laser and multi-function printers. Performance scalable microprocessors from 250 MHz to 1 GHz, solutions are used by manufacturers of laser printers and multi-function printers.Corporate Structure
PMC-Sierra's workforce has grown over the last five years to 1,100 employees through active hiring, recruitment and acquisitions. PMC-Sierra lists open positions on their website.As of 2009, PMC-Sierra Global presence includes:
USA
Corporate Head Office in Sunnyvale
Sunnyvale, California
Sunnyvale is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley located in the San Francisco Bay Area...
, CA
Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
Operations Head Office in Burnaby, B.C.
ASIA
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
International Head Office in Penang, Malaysia
Design Centres
- RochesterRochester, MinnesotaRochester is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is the county seat of Olmsted County. Located on both banks of the Zumbro River, The city has a population of 106,769 according to the 2010 United States Census, making it Minnesota's third-largest city and the largest outside of the...
- Roseville, CaliforniaRoseville, California-2010:The 2010 United States Census reported that Roseville had a population of 118,788. The population density was 3,279.4 people per square mile...
Sales Centre
- GermanyGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
- SeoulSeoulSeoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...
- TaipeiTaipeiTaipei City is the capital of the Republic of China and the central city of the largest metropolitan area of Taiwan. Situated at the northern tip of the island, Taipei is located on the Tamsui River, and is about 25 km southwest of Keelung, its port on the Pacific Ocean...
- YokohamaYokohamais the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...
Design and Sales centres
- Allentown, PennsylvaniaAllentown, PennsylvaniaAllentown is a city located in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is Pennsylvania's third most populous city, after Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the 215th largest city in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 118,032 and is currently...
- Bangalore, India
- Burnaby, British ColumbiaBurnaby, British ColumbiaBurnaby is a city in British Columbia, Canada, located immediately to the east of Vancouver. It is the third-largest city in British Columbia by population, surpassed only by nearby Surrey and Vancouver....
- Herzliya, Israel
- Montreal, Quebec
- Penang, Malaysia
- Sunnyvale, CaliforniaSunnyvale, CaliforniaSunnyvale is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley located in the San Francisco Bay Area...
- Shanghai, China
- ShenzhenShenzhenShenzhen is a major city in the south of Southern China's Guangdong Province, situated immediately north of Hong Kong. The area became China's first—and one of the most successful—Special Economic Zones...
The company, like several tech companies, has experienced restructuring
Restructuring
Restructuring is the corporate management term for the act of reorganizing the legal, ownership, operational, or other structures of a company for the purpose of making it more profitable, or better organized for its present needs...
s to meet the current demands on the market.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Date
! Number of Employees Affected
|-
| August 1996
| 150 people
|-
| June 1997
| PMC Sierra overtook its parent, Sierra Semiconductor
|-
| 2001
| 350 people or 24% of total workforce.
|-
| January 2003
| 176 people
|-
| June 2005
| 89 people
|-
| January 2006
| 30 people
|-
| August 2006
| 30 to 40 people
|-
| March 2007
| 175 people
|-
| December 2007
| 18 people
|-
| March 2010
| 9 people
|}