GigOptix receives $4.5mn federal funding for polymer based integrated photonic transceiver

BOTHELL, USA: GigOptix Inc. announced that, as part of the Fiscal Year 2010 Department of Defense Appropriations bill which was passed by the House of Representatives on December 15th and approved by the Senate on December 19th, the company was approved to receive $4.5 million in funding towards the development of an Integrated Photonic Transceiver, to be kicked off in the first quarter of 2010, and fully deployed through 2010.

The funding was obtained in support of the Integrated Photonic Transceiver development project proposed by GigOptix and aimed towards meeting the communications needs of government agencies and customers.

This new product development will allow the company to extend its novel electro-optic polymer technology to support integration with electronic circuits for ultra high speed communications, and augment the cross synergy of the various technologies that GigOptix commands as result of the acquisition of iTerra (July 2007), Helix (January 2008), Lumera (December 2008), and ChipX (November 2009).

GigOptix will start to commercialize this new family of products, made available through this development project, as early as the 4th quarter of 2010.

Dr. Raluca Dinu, Vice President and General Manger of GigOptix Bothell said: “We have been looking forward to this news and working with the AFRL program managers to ensure we meet the government’s technical needs with this program. We are already working with commercial companies to integrate our polymer onto CMOS integrated circuits for intra-chip optical interconnects but this program will be focused on integrating a photonic system with our own electronics and polymer technology being combined. The US Troops need the best technologies to maintain their security objectives, and we are honored to be chosen to support them.”

“The support of this project reflects the hard work and perseverance of Senator Murray,” stated Dr. Avi Katz, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of GigOptix.

“I would like to thank her for her continuous support of Washington State companies and for her loyal and continuous commitment to GigOptix’ technology vision and mission. The continuous development of strategic integration technologies is the key to the enduring success of the U.S. and members of Congress, such as Senator Murray, are the ones who truly make the impossible, possible by providing the financial means that are required to execute those complicated engineering projects.”