PMC-Sierra

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For the former computer game manufacturer see Sierra Entertainment. For the wireless equipment maker see Sierra Wireless.
Type
Founded 1984
Headquarters Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
Key people CEO, and President: Greg Lang
Chairman: Robert L. "Bob" Bailey
Industry fabless semiconductor company
Website *PMC-Sierra Corporate Website

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

Contents

[edit] 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 2001, PMC-Sierra was named "Semiconductor Supplier of the Year" by Cisco Systems and has received numerous other similar awards. PMC's CEO is Robert L. "Bob" Bailey.

As of 2007, the company employs over 1000 people and sells telecommunication, PON, storage and embedded microprocessor silicon solutions. It has design centers in 2 cities in Canada, 3 cities in the U.S., Israel, India, and China. It also has sales offices throughout the world and is a member of the Russell 2000 index.

[edit] PMC-Sierra products

PMC-Sierra has a large product line of devices for Storage Area Networking including:

PMC-Sierra is the volume leader in EPON controllers with an extensive product line of 802.3ah devices including

  • EPON OLT Controller
  • EPON OLT Burst receiver
  • EPON ONT SOC
  • GPON OLT Controller
  • GPON OLT Burst receiver
  • GPON ONT SOC

For SoHo and home gateway segments PMC-Sierra offers four MSP (Multi Service Processor) System-on-a-chip devices as well as DSL analog front end devices.

[edit] Recent products

[edit] PMC-Sierra technology history

During the Sierra Semiconductor period in the 1980's and early 1990's, Sierra was the leading maker of Switched-capacitor filter based modems and also developed ASICs which combined processors and EEPROM. Sierra was the world leader in the 2400 and 4800 bit/s modem generations.

Pacific Microelectronics Centre (PMC) was a co-founder of the SATURN Development Group in 1992. PMC and PMC-Sierra produced a product line of communications devices in the "S/UNI" family to SATURN's PL-2, PL-3, and PL-4 specifications.

PMC-Sierra's other notable communications products include the TEMUX PDH multiplexer, the CHESS series SONET/SDH switches, and the AAL1gator Circuit Emulation Service device. They had the most complete product line of wireline communications ASSPs in the late 1990's and early 2000's.

PMC-Sierra, through its QED acquisition was a leader in MIPS microprocessors in the early 2000's. Its product line ranged from the RM5000 and RM7000 family of stand-alone microprocessors to the RM9000GL and RM9150 integrated System-On-a-Chip processors.

[edit] Acquisitions

Over the years, Sierra/PMC-Sierra has acquired several smaller companies to enter new market segments.

Acquired Company Date Acquisition Price Market Segment
Pacific Microelectronics Centre 1994 (in two steps) communications ICs
Bipolar Integrated Technology 1996 $8M in stock ethernet
Hypercore April 1998 hypercube-based interconnects
IgT May 1998 $55M ATM based product line
Abrizio September 1999 $400M switch fabrics for core networks
Toucan January 2000 $26M in stock DSP for DSL
Extreme Packet Devices March 2000 $415M traffic managers
AANetcom March 2000 $964M Serdes
Datum June 2000 $125M DSP for cell basestations
Malleable June 2000 $299M VOIP
Quantum Effect Devices August 2000 $2300M in stock microprocessors
SwitchOn September 2000 $450M packet classifiers
Octera December 2000 $16M design verification
assets of Brecis November 2004 $3.7M VOIP product line
Storage division of Avago Technologies January 2006 $425M in cash Storage Semiconductors
Passave May 2006 $300M in stock fiber optics to the home

During its acquisition binge of 2000, the company increased its headcount from 650 to a peak of 1750 within one year.

[edit] Corporate Restructurings

The company has experienced multiple restructurings, particularly in the wake of the 2000 bursting of telecom bubble.

Date Sites Affected Groups Affected Number of Employees Terminated
August 1996 San Jose, CA Sierra PC Modem team 150 people
~1997 San Jose, CA Sierra operations team
March 2001 Burnaby, British Columbia; Santa Clara, CA; Kanata, Ontario Internet Routing Division shutdown - the Abrizio, Extreme, Malleable and SwitchOn teams 350 people in 2 rounds of layoffs
January 2003 Gaithersburg, Maryland; Dublin and Galway, Ireland; Pune, India; San Diego, CA - all shut down majority of IgT; Toucan and Octera groups 175 people
June 2005 Santa Clara, CA full-custom design team of Microprocessor Products Division - the QED team 89 people
January 2006 Santa Clara, CA; Portland OR ASIC design teams of Microprocessor Products Division, remaining IgT team 30 people
August 2006 Ottawa, Ontario - shut down various including a mixed signal team 45 people
March 2007 Winnipeg, Manitoba; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - both shut down; Bangalore, India Hypercore team, Winnipeg validation team, Montreal digital design team, Banglore SSG group 175 people
December 2007 Burnaby, others CPE team, Burnaby operations, others 44 people

[edit] External links