Cisco Announces Intent To Buy Acacia Communications

Posted by Cisco

Over time, the networking industry has benefited from continuous innovation in how products, including routers, switches and optical systems, are interconnected. As advances in silicon continue to drive performance and capacity gains in routers and switches, it becomes imperative that optics keep pace.

Today, we are pleased to announce our intent to buy Acacia Communications, an existing Cisco supplier and a public fabless semiconductor company based in Maynard, Ma. Acacia develops, manufactures and sells high-speed coherent optical interconnect products that are designed to transform communications networks through improvements in performance, capacity and cost. Cisco is building an industry-leading portfolio of optical, silicon, and software technologies to advance our intent-based networking, and Acacia’s coherent optics technology will build on the strength of that portfolio.

The primary challenges for cloud and service providers in Data Center Interconnect (DCI), Metro and Long Haul networks are to:

• Increase the capacity on the “existing” fiber infrastructure
• Drive down the cost/bit
• Automate to lower opex and eliminate human error

Solutions to these challenges will drive significant architectural shifts for service providers. A key trend in this segment is the migration from chassis-based solutions to pluggable optics. Functions that were traditionally delivered in separate chassis-based solutions in a separate optical layer will be available in a pluggable form factor as part of the IP layer – offering significant benefits for network operators in terms of operational simplicity and lower cost.

Acacia’s coherent optics technology empowers webscale companies, service providers and data center operators to meet the fast-growing consumer demands for data. Acacia brings industry-leading expertise and innovation in all the key technology areas for coherent optics applications – algorithm development, ASIC design and verification for the Digital Signal Processing (DSP), RF design and module packaging/ integration.

In addition, Acacia uses silicon photonics as the platform for integration of multiple photonic functions for coherent optics. The greater levels of integration increase the density and reduce the cost of the coherent optics. Leveraging the advances in silicon photonics, each new generation of coherent optics products has enabled higher data transmission rates, lower power and higher performance than the one before.

Cisco considers silicon, optics and software foundational technologies for continuing to deliver industry-leading innovations in routing and switching, and we see the emergence of pluggables serving the DCI, Metro and Long Haul segments as an important transition for customers.

In my next blog, I’ll take a deeper dive into industry trends and technologies and how our solutions, including the Acacia portfolio, can help customers manage those transitions.―CT Bureau