Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (NASDAQ: AMCC) is a fabless semiconductor company designing network and embedded Power Architecture (including a Power Architecture license), optical transport and storage solutions. They bought assets, IP and engineers concerning the PowerPC 400 microprocessors from IBM in 2004 for $227 million and they now market the processors under their own name. The deal also included access to IBM's SoC design methodology and advanced CMOS process technology.
AMCC has a sponsor level membership of Power.org and is one of the original members. AMCC is also executive member (Chairman position) of the Ethernet Alliance.
Business Units
Process
The Process Business Unit within AMCC is a combination of MMC Networks (acquired October 2000) and PowerPC 400 series from IBM (acquired April 2004). This business unit designs, manufactures and markets embedded, packet and storage processors. Since The IBM PowerPC 400 family (declined under 405 , 440 and recently 460 series) AMCC invested into the development of its Own multicore PowerPC (MultiGHz, announced early on 2007). Their WEBSITE URL : www.amcc.com/embedded gives an extensive overview of their product line. Recently January 2008, the AMCC PowerPC 405EX has been awarded PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 2007, by Electronic Product Magazine. In January 2008, AMCC also announced an extension of its relationship with IBM Semiconductor; IBM will incorporate the entire AMCC PowerPC 4xx embedded processor product portfolio into its Semiconductor Solutions offering, effective immediately. Under this expanded relationship, AMCC and IBM’s Semiconductor Solutions worldwide sales forces will both market AMCC’s PowerPC 4xx products into key embedded processor markets, such as datacom/telecom networking, wireless infrastructure, printing/imaging and storage. AMCC added Customers like Accusys, Qlogic in its large customer list for its PowerPC product line.
Transport
The Transport Business Unit with AMCC designs, manufacturers and markets physical layer devices, framers/mappers and switch fabric devices. AMCC has also a strong 10Gbit/s Physical layer devices portfolio and currently lead 10GBPS PHY market. Recently AMCC announced (01/29/2008) PEMAQUID / S19258, a XAUI-to-XFI 10G LAN/WAN/OTN Framer/Mapper/PHY device for 10GbE, 10G Fibre Channel, WIS (OC-192/STM-64) and OTU2 network applications. The PEMAQUID (S19258) represents AMCC’s first device in its MEtrON (Metro Ethernet Optical Networks) product family that is designed for Metro Ethernet and Carrier Grade Ethernet solutions systems. PEMAQUID enables cost-effective Carrier Ethernet solutions for the Metro WDM Transport Network.
Storage
The Storage Business Unit within AMCC (sometimes referred to as "AMCC Storage") is the former Silicon Valley startup company 3ware, acquired by AMCC in April 2004. 3ware is a manufacturer of RAID controllers, originally founded in 1997.
3ware's differentiation from competitive offerings is its own proprietary I/O processor, trademarked as StorSwitch, and uses network packet switching techniques to increase performance.
Prior to the acquisition by AMCC, 3ware marketed its products under the brand name "Escalade." Now, AMCC uses the brand "3ware" for is 7006, 7506, 8006, 9500S, 9550SX(U), 9590SE, 9650SE and 9690SA families of Parallel ATA, Serial ATA and Serial Attached SCSI RAID controllers.
