Vitesse Semiconductor was a

fabless Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

American

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

company based in

Camarillo, California Camarillo ( ) is a city in Ventura County, California, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 70,741, an increase of 5,540 from the 65,201 counted in the 2010 Census. Camarillo is named for brothers Juan and ...

, which developed high-performance

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

s solutions for Carrier, Enterprise networks. On March 18, 2015, Microsemi Corporation and Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation jointly announced that Microsemi would acquire Vitesse. The acquisition closed on April 28, 2015.

Corporate history

Vitesse was founded by Alfred S. Joseph PhD in 1984 as Vitesse Electronics Corporation. Its founders came out of

Rockwell International Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate (company), conglomerate. It was involved in aircraft, the space industry, defense and commercial electronics, components in the automotive industry, printing presses, avioni ...

and were funded with $30 Million from the Norton corporation. It later raised

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

from

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

and

New Enterprise Associates New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With over $25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of t ...

. It changed its name to Vitesse Semiconductor in 1987. It became a public company in 1991. In 1999, it acquired XaQti and in 2000, acquired Sitera and Orologic.

Products

Lancom GS-1108 - Vitesse VSC7420XJQ-01-4059

Vitesse was one of the early developers of

gallium arsenide Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a III-V direct band gap semiconductor with a Zincblende (crystal structure), zinc blende crystal structure. Gallium arsenide is used in the manufacture of devices such as microwave frequency integrated circuits, monoli ...

(GaAs) based integrated circuits. It now offers a line of Ethernet switching products consisting of Carrier Ethernet switch engines for customer-premises equipment, access network equipment, wireless base stations, mobile access equipment, fiber and

microwave Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths shorter than other radio waves but longer than infrared waves. Its wavelength ranges from about one meter to one millimeter, corresponding to frequency, frequencies between 300&n ...

wireless backhaul equipment, and metro networking equipment; and Ethernet switches that enable desktop, workgroup, and

LAN Lan or LAN may refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in space * ...

infrastructure. The company also provides Ethernet media access controllers that offer addressing and channel control mechanisms and are used in enterprise class modular Ethernet switch platforms, as well as in Ethernet-over-

SONET/SDH Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) are standardized protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams synchronously over optical fiber using lasers or highly coherent light from light-emitting diod ...

and Ethernet-over- OTN systems used in access, metro, and long-haul carrier networking systems; Ethernet transceivers, including single, quad, and octal devices that allow the transmission of 10/

100 100 or one hundred (Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101. In mathematics 100 is the square of 10 (in scientific notation it is written as 102). The standard SI prefix for a hundred is " hecto-". 100 is the b ...

/ 1000 BASE-T data over category 5 copper cable and

fiber optic An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

cabling for use in personal computers, home electronics, and LAN applications; and Ethernet transceivers with packet timing and synchronization capabilities. In addition, it provides a line of connectivity products, which comprise

mixed-signal A mixed-signal integrated circuit is any integrated circuit that has both analog circuits and digital circuits on a single semiconductor die.crosspoint switches, and

signal integrity Signal integrity or SI is a set of measures of the quality of an electrical signal. In digital electronics, a stream of binary values is represented by a voltage (or current) waveform. However, digital signals are fundamentally analog signal, anal ...

devices that are used for the connection of systems via

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

copper cable Copper has been used in electrical wiring since the invention of the electromagnet and the telegraph in the 1820s. The invention of the telephone in 1876 created further demand for copper wire as an electrical conductor. Copper is the electri ...

, or backplanes. Further, Vitesse offers a range of transport processing products, such as framers, mappers, and switches, which support data rates up to 10

Gbit/s In telecommunications, data transfer rate is the average number of bits ( bitrate), characters or symbols ( baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are mu ...

for SONET/SDH, EoS, and OTN applications. It markets and sells its products directly to OEMs and original design manufacturers, as well as through third-party electronic component distributors and manufacturing service providers.

Minisupercomputer

Vitesse developed a

minisupercomputer Minisupercomputers constituted a short-lived class of computers that emerged in the mid-1980s, characterized by the combination of vector processing and small-scale multiprocessing. As scientific computing using vector processors became more popul ...

intended for the scientific market and employing the company's GaAs chips. The company closed that division in 1987 with the first model as demonstration version. Reportedly management was unable to raise sufficient funds and thought bringing the product to market would take too long.

Securities fraud

In 2007 the company paid US$10.2 million to settle a

class action A class action is a form of lawsuit. Class Action may also refer to: * ''Class Action'' (film), 1991, starring Gene Hackman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio * Class Action (band), a garage house band * "Class Action" (''Teenage Robot''), a 2002 e ...

lawsuit alleging

securities fraud Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a deceptive practice in the stock or commodities markets that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information.options backdating In finance, options backdating is the practice of altering the date a stock option was granted, to a usually earlier (but sometimes later) date at which the underlying stock price was lower. This is a way of repricing options to make them more v ...

, saying that the company failed to disclose and misrepresented some adverse facts. Subsequently, in 2010, two of its former executives, Lou Tomasetta and the former executive vice president Eugene Hovanec were charged with securities fraud related to the backdating. In December 2010, Vitesse finalized a settlement with the

United States Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its ...

(SEC), over the SEC's investigations into the firm's historical

stock options In finance, an option is a contract which conveys to its owner, the ''holder'', the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a specific quantity of an underlying asset or instrument at a specified strike price on or before a specified dat ...

practices and accounting. Vitesse agreed to pay $3.0M to the SEC, which concluded the SEC's investigation of Vitesse.

Turnaround

In June 2014, the Camarillo-based chip company announced a $23.2M

stock offering A public offering is the offering of securities of a company or a similar corporation to the public. Generally, the securities are to be publicly listed. In most jurisdictions, a public offering requires the issuing company to publish a prospectu ...

, a planned sale of 7.5 million shares at $3.35 each, to be used for

working capital Working capital (WC) is a financial metric which represents operating liquidity available to a business, organisation, or other entity, including governmental entities. Along with fixed assets such as plant and equipment, working capital is consi ...

and general corporate purposes. In June 2013, Vitesse closed a $18.7M offering at a price of $2.15 and gross proceeds of $40.2M. The company previously netted $17.1M from an offering in December 2012. In the June 2014 offering, Vitesse's largest

shareholder A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of corporate stock refers to an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the ...

, Raging Capital Management LLC, purchased an additional 1.6 million shares. This raised Raging Capital's total position to 14.3 million shares, or approximately 25% of Vitesse's outstanding shares.

References

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External links

Vitesse Semiconductor
- Archive of website on March 15, 2015 Networking companies of the United States Networking hardware companies Telecommunications equipment vendors Technology companies based in Greater Los Angeles Manufacturing companies based in Greater Los Angeles Companies based in Ventura County, California Camarillo, California Computer companies established in 1984 Technology companies disestablished in 2015 1984 establishments in California 2015 disestablishments in California Defunct companies based in Greater Los Angeles Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Defunct networking companies Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct computer hardware companies