Infinera Corporation is a

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popu ...

-based

vertically integrated In microeconomics, management and international political economy, vertical integration is a term that describes the arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is integrated and owned by that company. Usually each member of the supply ...

manufacturer of

Wavelength division multiplexing In fiber-optic communications, wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) is a technology which multiplexes a number of optical carrier signals onto a single optical fiber by using different wavelengths (i.e., colors) of laser light. This techniqu ...

(WDM)-based packet optical transmission equipment and IP transport technologies for the

telecommunications service provider Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that f ...

market. It is a pioneer in designing and manufacturing of large-scale

photonic integrated circuits A photonic integrated circuit (PIC) or integrated optical circuit is a microchip containing two or more photonic components which form a functioning circuit. This technology detects, generates, transports, and processes light. Photonic integrated c ...

(PICs). The company sells hardware and software networking options for Tier 1 carrier, Internet content provider, cable operator, government, and enterprise networks.

History

Infinera was founded in 2000 as Zepton Networks by Drew Perkins, Jagdeep Singh and David Welch. It raised its first round of funding in April 2001. The startup remained in stealth mode until its first products were launched in 2004, although a few early media articles did describe the company's component technology - a photonic integrated circuit in

indium phosphide Indium phosphide (InP) is a binary semiconductor composed of indium and phosphorus. It has a face-centered cubic (" zincblende") crystal structure, identical to that of GaAs and most of the III-V semiconductors. Manufacturing Indium phosphide ...

. Underwritten by

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, Infinera went public on

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

in 2007, raising $182 million. David Welch was recognized in 2013 with the JJ Thomson Medal for Electronics, an award from the

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for his role as a pioneer in the field of optical devices, including PICs, and optical networks. On August 14, 2013, DANTE (Delivery of Advanced Networks to Europe, a research and education network) and Infinera announced that they had set a Guinness World Record by provisioning 8 terabits per second (Tb/s) of long-haul capacity on the GÉANT network from Vancis in Amsterdam, Netherlands to GlobalConnect in Hamburg, Germany in 19 minutes and 1 second using Infinera's DTN-X packet optical transport platform. In August 2015, Infinera acquired Transmode, a supplier of metro packet-optical networking systems based in Stockholm, Sweden, following an offer made in April 2015. Transmode shareholders received a mix of cash and Infinera shares, giving a total equity value for Transmode of about $350 million. On July 23, 2018

Coriant Coriant was incorporated as an independent company in 2013 as a spin-out from Siemens Optical Networks (NSN ON). The launch of the company was announced for the OFC/NFOEC in March 2013 and on May 6, 2013 Coriant became independent from Nokia ...

entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Infinera. This acquisition was closed on October 1, 2018, positioning Infinera as one of the largest vertically integrated optical network equipment providers in the world.

Technology

Infinera pioneered the design and manufacturing of large-scale photonic integrated circuits. Over 2000 patents have been filed by Infinera in fields including optical transport and the virtualization of optical bandwidth. The production efficiency of using monolithic integration with PIC has permitted Infinera to incorporate hundreds of advanced optical components into a small package to deliver capacity up to 800 gigabits per second (Gb/s) per wavelength. This large throughput may be in excess of actual carrier requirements. Infinera has changed its business model to permit purchase of a 500

Gbit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented ...

/s. line card by a carrier, but only switch on capacity in 100 Gb/second units of capacity. The company refers to this pricing model as "Cashflow-Efficient Instant Bandwidth" and has trademarked the term. The company's technology road map projects linecards' throughput to scale to 4

terabit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented ...

and beyond.

Business strategy

The company's business strategy has been based upon introducing of leading edge speeds, initially with 10 Gb/second, and as of 2013, 100 Gb/second and 500 Gb/second based upon Superchannels (or combining channels). These higher speed offerings are referred to as coherent super-channels. These higher level speeds are enabled by the use of photonic integrated circuits (PIC) which combine digital circuitry and photonic circuitry in a hybrid multi-layer (3-D) component. Real time virtualization of bandwidth represents a relatively new capability in optical transport networks. Previously, engineers would have to physically reconfigure equipment to provide for reallocation of bandwidth to different customers channels or services. Provisioning is exceptionally fast with PIC and virtualization.

Operations

As of July 2018, the company has its own fab in Sunnyvale, with component packaging occurring in

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, plus the former Transmode facility in Stockholm. For many of its products, Infinera designs and manufactures in-house the photonic integrated circuits (PICs), the

ASIC An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficie ...

chips, and the hardware and software systems, including operating and management systems and software-defined network (SDN) software to extend network

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

into the optical layer. The company refers to its combined component development, product development and system manufacturing as vertically integrated. The company announced in 2019, that it is moving its headquarters from Sunnyvale to San Jose. However, it plans to continue operating its fab from the Sunnyvale facility.Big move: Tech company Infinera plans to shift HQ to San Jose from Sunnyvale
(The Mercury News), 9 Dec 2019

Customers

Customers include Tier 1 domestic carriers, Tier 1 international carriers, MSO/cable operators, Internet content providers, incumbent carriers, research/education/government, and wholesale bandwidth providers.

References