Cisco buys optical company for $271 million

Cisco this week said it intends to acquire privately held Lightwire, a developer of optical interconnect innovation for high-speed networking applications, for $271 million.

Lightwire brings CMOS photonics silicon expertise to Cisco. The company specializes in integrating multiple high-speed active and passive optical functions onto a silicon chip. The smaller-size, lower-power consumption and scalability of Lightwire's CMOS-based innovation enables switches, routers and optical transport systems to have higher-density optical connectivity at a lower cost, Cisco says.

Cisco says Lightwire complements its 2010 acquisition of CoreOptics, a designer of coherent digital signal-processors and application-specific integrated circuits for optical networking. Lightwire is focused on the transition from 40G to 100G, during CoreOptics innovation is intended for advanced modulation formats to enable efficient transmission of large amounts of data at 100Gbps over existing fiber optics.