CALIENT announces 'CALIENT Inside' strategy for its 3D MEMS technology

SANTA BARBARA, USA: CALIENT Technologies Inc., a leader in photonic switching, announced its new 'CALIENT 3D MEMS Inside' company strategy.

The new strategy positions CALIENT to expand the market for its photonic switching technology and to develop global partnerships with router, packet switching, optical transport and server vendors.

CALIENT’s 3D microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology uses silicon micro mirrors to switch incoming fiber-optic signals from port to port. The company’s flagship FiberConnect 320X platform offers the industry’s highest density photonic switch with 640 fiber terminations or 320 ports (transmit and receive). The product has an installed base of 70,000 fiber terminations, is Telcordia proven and has been shipping to Tier 1 service providers and equipment vendors for eight years.

The explosion of video and other Internet data is driving the growth of flexible, high-bandwidth networks. Photonic switching is a reliable and cost-effective solution for these networks because it is transparent to data speed and is protocol agnostic, thus it offers very high bandwidth and configuration flexibility.

A key emerging application is colorless, directionless and contentionless (CDC) fiber-optic service provider networks where a photonic switch is combined with tunable lasers to create a very high port-count ROADM.

The CALIENT 3D MEMS Inside initiative will develop a next-generation switch module in a dramatically smaller form factor. While 3D MEMS is already the lowest power consuming switching technology on the market, the company will further reduce the power consumption to about 10 percent of the power of today’s systems.

The resulting new products will target data center, cloud computing and content provider applications, in addition to service provider point-of-presence, fiber-to-the-home and central office networks.

“There are many market trends ranging from the exploding demand for bandwidth for video to the advent of CDC networks, that bode very well for CALIENT. We’re making these changes to capitalize on these trends and be in a position to really grow this business,” said Arjun Gupta, CALIENT chairman. “CALIENT’s new modular adaptive photonic switches will be able to cost-effectively meet the booming bandwidth requirements without a dramatic increase in power consumption.”

CALIENT’s technology is based on its patented deep-silicon plasma etch process technology that is used to make 3D MEMS mirrors. With this process, the company is able to develop products that lead the industry in performance and manufacturing cost. The company designs and fabricates its systems using the state of the art MEMS equipment in its fabrication facility located at its corporate headquarters in Santa Barbara, CA.