East Fishkill, New York–Nov. 7, 2000–IBM Microelectronics and Scotland-based Kymata Ltd. have teamed up in a multi-year agreement to produce next-generation optical networking chips for high-speed e-business applications. As part of this agreement, IBM has acquired a minority equity stake in Kymata.

“Our customers are racing to develop the switch and router systems to support an all optical network, and they’re demanding a new generation of specialized, high-performance solutions to do it,” says Christine King, vice president of semiconductor manufacturing for IBM. “Through this collaboration with Kymata, we intend to create an unprecedented suite of versatile, high-bandwidth optical communications chips that will dramatically speed our customers’ time-to-market and speed up existing networks.

Under the agreement, IBM is licensing its pump laser and silicon oxynitride (SiON) process technologies to Kymata. The companies plan to jointly develop innovative optical chips used to help networking gear drive data and information at higher speeds across optical networks. Products will be designed around IBM’s SiON process technology to allow network signals to work with optical signals rather than electric signals.

Sample products are expected to be available in early 2001.