Independent foundry TowerJazz (Nasdaq: TSEM; TASE: TSEM) said that Canadian semiconductor designer Gennum Corporation (TSX: GND), has selected TowerJazz’s 0.18-micron SiGe BiCMOS (SBC18) process to manufacture the world’s largest and most feature-rich video crosspoint switch.
Market sources say that the deal will generate $3-5 million revenue per year for TowerJazz, beginning in 2011.
> This is the industry’s first family of crosspoint switches to combine video-specific features to more effectively handle next-generation video formats and the increasing data rate requirements in the studio.
Gennum recently introduced new 3Gbps crosspoint products for broadcast equipment semiconductor solutions. As the broadcast industry continues its infrastructure upgrade to support next-generation video formats such as 3Gbps, 3D and UltraHD, the need to support multiple data rates and video formats will dramatically increase the size and complexity of next-generation video broadcast systems.
With the increase in video content being created, studios are required to store, access and package tens of millions of video frames per hour, driving the need for ever larger routers and crosspoint switches, which help manage the data flow both in and out of broadcast equipment. As the volume of inputs and outputs grows, the size and complexity of the crosspoint switch must also increase, acting as a traffic signal. Gennum’s crosspoint switches manage the largest volume of independent signals, up to 290 inputs by 290 outputs, which deliver one trillion bits of data throughput per secondalso known as 1 terabit per second (Tb/s).
Gennum is headquartered in Burlington, Canada, and has global design, research and development and sales offices in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Germany, the US, India and the UK.
Tower does business as TowerJazz since acquiring Jazz in 2008.
Tower shares closed at $1.44 yesterday, giving a market cap of $332.3 million.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 21, 2010
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