June 26, 2006 San Jose, CA -- Scintera, Inc., a developer of electronic dispersion compensation (EDC) technology, positioned itself for the upcoming ratification of the 10GBase-LRM standard by closing its Series C financing and appointing two new executives. The new hires include Scott Gibson as chief financial officer and former Broadcom CEO Alan E. "Lanny" Ross as a member of its board of directors.
The Series C funding netted $12 million. New investor Ridgewood Capital led the round, which included all of Scintera's current investors: August Capital, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, and Sevin Rosen Funds. Elton B. Sherwin, senior managing director of Ridgewood Capital, will join Scintera's board of directors.
The company will use its new resources to ramp production its EDC chips ahead of the ratification of the LRM specifications, which is expected in the latter stages of this year. The new 10-Gigabit Ethernet PMD is designed to enable the development of serial transceivers that will support 10-Gbit/sec transmission over 220 m of legacy multimode fiber. Most transceiver and chip vendors, including Scintera, suggest that their performance will exceed the specification.
According to company Vice President of Marketing John Monson, Scintera also will use the money to investigate expansion into other markets. Monson describes the company's EDC technology as media agnostic, so the company will look at its application to copper infrastructure in the enterprise and storage environments as well as wireless. Scintera also will look beyond Ethernet to potential Fibre Channel applications, he added. Monsoon suggested that the company would have announcements along these lines either late this year or early in 2007.
However, the LRM market remains on the front burner for now. Monson says that transceiver vendors have moved beyond kicking the tires of EDC devices from Scintera and its competitors, which include Phyworks, Vitesse, Aeluros, and Clariphy Communications, as well as the internal developments of transceiver vendors such as Intel. He says the challenge for companies such as Scintera is proving that they can produce reliable devices in the quantities transceiver vendors will require. Monson says the company has several design wins, but declined to mention names.
Monson says that there is a big push among transceiver vendors to develop X2 and XFP versions of LRM devices, as well as XENPAK. Discussions about SFP+ modules also are ongoing, he reports. Monson expects transceiver announcements to appear in the second half of this year.
-- S. Hardy