PMC-Sierra
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- For the former computer game manufacturer see Sierra Entertainment
PMC-Sierra NASDAQ: PMCS is a fabless semiconductor company which develops and sells devices into the communications, storage, printing, and embedding computing marketplaces. PMC is included in the S&P 500 index.
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[edit] Corporate History
Sierra Semiconductor was originally founded in 1984 as Sierra Semiconductor (San Jose, California, USA) and went public in 1991.
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.
[edit] Products
During the Sierra Semiconductor period, Sierra was the leading maker of switched-capacitor-filter based modems and also developed ASICs which combined processors and EEPROM.
PMC was a co-founder of the SATURN Development Group in 1992 and produced a product line of communications devices in the "S/UNI" family to SATURN's PL-2, PL-3, and PL-4 specifications. Other notable communications products include the TEMUX PDH multiplexer, the CHESS series SONET/SDH switches, and the AAL1gator Circuit Emulation Service device.
PMC-Sierra also has product line of MIPS microprocessors ranging from the RM5000 and RM7000 family of stand-alone microprocessors to the RM9000GL and RM9150 integrated System-On-a-Chip devices. For SoHo segment PMC-Sierra offers a MSP (Multi Service Processor) SoC (acquired from Brecis Communications).
Additionally, PMC-Sierra has a product line of devices for Storage Area Networking including Cut-Thru-Switches and storage enclosure processors.
[edit] Acquisitions
Over the years, PMC-Sierra has acquired several smaller companies to enter new market segments. These acquisitions include BIT (ethernet switches), IgT (broad ATM based product line), Hypercore (hypercube switches), Abrizio (core switches), Toucan (DSP for DSL), AANetcom (Serdes technology), Extreme Packet Devices (traffic management devices), Malleable Technologies (VOIP devices and software), Datum (DSP for wireless base-stations), QED (MIPS-based microprocessors), SwitchOn (packet classification engines), assets from Brecis Communications Corp. (Voice over IP devices and software), the storage semiconductor business of Agilent (storage adapter devices and software), and Passave (Fiber-optics to the Home).
[edit] Present
As of 2005, the company sells telecommunication, storage and embedded microprocessor silicon solutions. It has design centers in 5 cities in Canada and 3 cities in the U.S. and has sales offices throughout the world.
