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Canadian chip designer planning to double capacity from Stortford base

Written by Lautaro Vargas

Wednesday, 16 April 2008

Gennum's HQ in Canada A Canadian designer of chips for the data communications and broadcast industries is planning major expansion at its Bishop’s Stortford design centre following a refocus of the firm’s corporate strategy. Gennum Corporation intends to double office space at the existing site by the end of the year so it can accommodate an expanded team of design engineers focused on the development of optical module components. In its 2007 annual report, Gennum recognised Europe’s growing and pivotal role in high-speed data transfer applications, a market it said is rapidly maturing to the levels of North America and Asia. The “optimisation” of its UK presence follows two key global distribution deals and is part of a wider push into key worldwide areas, though it did involve closure of a small Surrey sales office whose functions have been transferred to Munich, Germany. The company also divested four non-core operations in 2007 such as hearing aids and bluetooth headset providers and made one acquisition, the total result of which was to increase revenue growth of its continuing operations to C$110m (£55m), a figure it expects to increase by a double digit percentage this year. “The company has changed significantly since 12 months ago,” said director of Corporate Communications, Robin Vaitoni who was speaking from digital media showcase, the 2008 NAB Show in Las Vegas. “We are now focused on core products and optical is strong part of that, which is why Bishop’s Stortford is so important. “There are 15 design engineers on optical at Bishop’s Stortford. It has a great design culture and we are planning to add engineers over the next 12 to 24 months there. “This engineering talent is required for optical design and Bishop’s Stortford has the right mix of talent and a good labour pool. It is also close access to universities that provide excellent programmes and education for high speed analogue and optical design.” Worldwide Gennum employs 390 people and designs semiconductor solutions and IP cores for advanced consumer connectivity, enterprise, video broadcast and data communications products. Leveraging its optical, analogue and mixed-signal products and IP, Gennum enables multimedia and data communications products to send and receive information without compromising the signal integrity. According to Gennum, a November 2007 report published by Electronic Trends Publications says semiconductor revenue from advanced, high-speed interconnects was $5.5bn in 2006 and is forecast to grow to $7.2bn in 2008. “The datacomms industry is growing phenomenally and optical communications is one of the fastest growing ways of transmitting large amounts of data,” said Vaitoni. Set as favorite Bookmark Email This Hits: 464 Trackback(0) TrackBack URI for this entry Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Write comment This content has been locked. You can no longer post any comment.

 

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