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PMC-Sierra

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For the former computer game manufacturer see Sierra Entertainment. For the wireless equipment maker see Sierra Wireless.
PMC-Sierra
Company typePublic
Nasdaq: PMCS
Industryfabless semiconductor company
Founded1984
Headquarters
Sunnyvale, California
Key people
CEO, and President: Greg Lang
Chairman: Jonathan J. Judge
Number of employees
1,100 employees: design, technical, marketing and sales teams throughout North America, Europe, Israel and Asia[2] PMC-Sierra

PMC-Sierra is a fabless semiconductor company which develops and sells devices into the communications, storage, printing, and embedded computing marketplaces.

Corporate history

Sierra Semiconductor was originally founded in 1984 in San Jose, California, and went public in 1991. It received funding on 1/11/1984 from Sequoia Capital.

Pacific Microelectronics Centre (Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada) was spun off from Microtel Pacific Research (the research arm of BC TEL at the time) to develop ATM and later SONET chips. With investment from Sierra Semiconductor, PMC was established in 1992 as a private company focused on providing networking semiconductors, and became a wholly owned, independently operated subsidiary of Sierra Semiconductor in 1994. Microtel is currently a part of Verizon.

In August 1996, Sierra Semiconductor announced its decision to exit the personal computer modem chipset business, to restructure its other non-networking products and focus on its networking products. In 1997, the Company changed its name to PMC-Sierra to reflect the corporate focus on internetworking semiconductor solutions.

In May 2006, PMC-Sierra acquired Passave, Inc., a developer of system-on-chip semiconductor solutions for the Fiber to the home (FTTH) access market in a stock-for-stock transaction valued at approximately $300 million. Passave was headquartered in Boston, MA and had a development center in Tel Aviv, Israel.[3]

On October 22, 2010 PMC-Sierra acquired Wintegra Inc. for $240m. Wintegra had 165 employees with the majority of its R&D development team located in Raanana, Israel, and Austin, Texas.[4]

Technology & Products

PMC-Sierra provides broadband communications and storage semiconductors for metro, access, fiber to the home, wireless infrastructure, enterprise and channel storage, laser printers and customer premises equipment. PMC has more than 250 different semiconductor devices[5] that are sold to equipment manufacturers, who in turn supply their equipment to communications network service providers and enterprises. PMC-Sierra is a “fabless” semiconductor company. The company designs and tests products, but outsources wafer fabrication and assembly functions to third party suppliers.

PMC-Sierra's customers include: HP, EMC, Huawei, Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, ZTE and Juniper.

The company competes against established semiconductor companies that focus on the communications and storage semiconductor business. These companies include Agere Systems, Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, Broadcom, Exar Corporation, Conexant Systems, LSI Corporation, Marvell Technology Group, Mindspeed, Transwitch and Vitesse Semiconductor. Other competitors include major domestic and international semiconductor companies, such as Agilent, Freescale, Intel, IBM, Infineon, Motorola, NEC, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.

Enterprise Storage

For storage networks and systems, PMC-Sierra offers solutions featuring signal integrity, flexibility and diagnostics for increased system performance and management.[6] The company provides an interconnect and controller product family for both 3G, 6G and 12G SAS/SATA storage systems and Server RAID. PMC-Sierra also provides 4G and 8G Fibre Channel controller and system interconnect products for SAN/NAS storage and switch fabric applications.

Channel Storage

PMC-Sierra has acquired the channel storage business from Adaptec. This business has been named "Adaptec by PMC" and makes SAS/SATA RAID Adapters.

Wireline Infrastructure

PMC-Sierra offers a broad range of interoperable communication ICs scaling from DS-0 to OC-192 for metro access, metro transport, FTTH/PON, Ethernet over SONET/SDH, Optical Transport Network (OTN) and wireless base transceiver stations (BTS).[7] PMC is also enabling the OTN transport market with its HyPHY and META devices at 10G and 20G. PMC has more than 150 devices that help OEMs provide carrier-class solutions.[clarification needed]

Wireless Infrastructure

PMC-Sierra semiconductor devices allow wireless service providers to deploy 2G, 2.5G and 3G wireless equipment.[8] This includes RFICs for wideband radio modules operating in the 400 MHz to 4 GHz frequency range used by MC-GSM, cdma2000®, WCDMA, and LTE; and MIPS based network processors. PMC-Sierra's wireless solutions are designed to comply with current and emerging LTE, CDMA, WCDMA industry specifications.

Fiber-to-the-Home (PON)

PMC-Sierra is the leader[citation needed] in gigabit EPON solutions for Fiber to the Home broadband access network equipment. PMC-Sierra is the only supplier to support EPON (IEEE 802.3ah Ethernet in the First Mile), 10G EPON (IEEE 802.3av) and GPON (ITU-T G.984) standards.[citation needed] PMC-Sierra system-on-chip solutions provide end-to-end gigabit per second bandwidth solutions linking central office equipment and customer premise equipment. OLT (optical line terminal) devices connect the central office to the PON network and ONU or ONT devices connect customer premises to the PON network.

Laser and Multi-Function Printers

PMC-Sierra has discrete and system-on-chip solutions for both laser and multi-function printers. Performance scalable microprocessors from 250 MHz to 1 GHz, solutions are used by manufacturers of laser printers and multi-function printers.

Corporate Structure

Burnaby, Canada PMC-Sierra Building

PMC-Sierra's workforce has grown over the last five years to 1,100 employees through active hiring, recruitment and acquisitions.[9] PMC-Sierra lists open positions on their website.[10]

As of 2009, PMC-Sierra Global presence includes:

USA Corporate Head Office in Sunnyvale, CA

Canada Operations Head Office in Burnaby, B.C.

ASIA International Head Office in Penang, Malaysia

Design Centres

Sales Centre

Design and Sales centres

The company, like several tech companies, has experienced restructurings to meet the current demands on the market.

Date Number of Employees Affected
August 1996 150 people [11]
June 1997 PMC Sierra overtook its parent, Sierra Semiconductor [12]
2001 350 people or 24% of total workforce.[13][14]
January 2003 176 people [15]
June 2005 89 people [16]
January 2006 30 people
August 2006 30 to 40 people [17]
March 2007 175 people [18]
December 2007 18 people [19]
March 2010 9 people

References

  1. ^ SEC filing - http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=74533&p=IROL-secToc&TOC=aHR0cDovL2lyLmludC53ZXN0bGF3YnVzaW5lc3MuY29tL2RvY3VtZW50L3YxLzAwMDExOTMxMjUtMTAtMTc5MzAzL3RvYy9wYWdl&ListAll=1&sXBRL=1
  2. ^ 10-K SEC filing http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=74533&p=irol-SECText&TEXT=aHR0cDovL2lyLmludC53ZXN0bGF3YnVzaW5lc3MuY29tL2RvY3VtZW50L3YxLzAwMDExOTMxMjUtMTAtMDM5MDk2L3htbC9zdWJkb2N1bWVudC8xL3BhZ2UvMTE%3d
  3. ^ "PMC-Sierra to buy Passave for $300M". MarketWatch. April 4, 2006.
  4. ^ "PMC-Sierra buys Wintegra: The acquisition of Wintegra expands PMC-Sierra's presence in Israel, where its FTTH business is based". Globes. 24 October 10. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  5. ^ http://www.pmc-sierra.com/products/directory.html
  6. ^ http://www.pmc-sierra.com/sas-expanders-loopswitch-chips/
  7. ^ http://www.pmc-sierra.com/ethernet-sonet-sdh-mac-framer-controller-chips/
  8. ^ http://www.pmc-sierra.com/wireless/
  9. ^ 10-K SEC filing http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=74533&p=irol-SECText&TEXT=aHR0cDovL2lyLmludC53ZXN0bGF3YnVzaW5lc3MuY29tL2RvY3VtZW50L3YxLzAwMDExOTMxMjUtMTAtM
    DM5MDk2L3htbC9zdWJkb2N1bWVudC8xL3BhZ2UvMTE%3d
  10. ^ http://www.pmc-sierra.com/careers/
  11. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/31/business/sierra-semiconductor-expects-to-cut-150-employees.html SIERRA SEMICONDUCTOR EXPECTS TO CUT 150 EMPLOYEES. Retrieved on 2009-03-29
  12. ^ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_n2172_v43/ai_19530977/ Former Sierra Semi completes restructuring. Retrieved on 2009-03-29
  13. ^ http://www.edn.com/article/CA184683.html PMC Maximizes Acquisitions: Brownridge details restructuring. Retrieved on 2009-03-29
  14. ^ http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/pmc-sierra-lay-off-350/story.aspx?guid=%7B38F50E04-D5BF-4019-B3E9-5C533945C62D%7D PMC-Sierra to lay off 350. Retrieved on 2009-03-29
  15. ^ http://www.edn.com/article/CA271159.html PMC-Sierra Lays Off 176. Retrieved on 2009-03-29
  16. ^ http://www.allbusiness.com/company-activities-management/financial-performance/6244647-1.html PMC-Sierra Cuts 89 Jobs. Electronic News. July 4, 2005. Retrieved on 2009-03-29
  17. ^ http://www.edn.com/article/CA6367465.html More Layoffs at PMC-Sierra. Electronic News, 8/31/2006. Retrieved on 2009-03-29
  18. ^ http://www.edn.com/article/CA271159.html PMC-Sierra closes R&D centers, cuts 175 jobs. Electronic News 3/30/2007. Retrieved on 2009-03-29
  19. ^ 10-K SEC Filing by PMC Sierra on 02/26/09. Retrieved on 2009-03-29
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