Jean-Louis Malinge - EEWeb

INTERVIEW
So this is an area where we are
generating intellectual property and
discussing with interested parties
about licensing some of the things
we have done. We are at a turning
point in this entire photonics industry
that I will try to describe. All the way
back to the 90s and early 2000s, after
the collapse of the Internet bubble,
optical fiber communication was
mostly limited to the long distance
transport of information. When you
want to transport data from LA to
NY or LA to Paris, that transmission
is completely through optical fiber.
The metro area around major cities
is also based upon fiber optics. But,
up until a few years ago, for shorter
distances when you were going
a little further down in the layer of
the network, everything was mostly
copper with very limited optics.
The industry had not yet reached
the need of optics at that level
because the Internet was a smaller
place, speeds were slower and
power consumption was not a big
issue. Today, the Internet is huge
and growing fast. We are currently
at a period of time in which we
are accumulating and storing an
unbelievable amount of data. There
are numbers showing that every year
we are accumulating and storing as
much information as we did for the
entire history known to mankind on
this world. This is creating a huge
stress in all those data centers and
all the different boxes inside the
data center that we are using to
create and store the data. Social
networking sites like YouTube and
Facebook are all adding more
video, images and data to be stored
and transmitted. This is creating a
huge bandwidth demand; not just
on the long distance networks, but
also inside
Our company actually
looks like the Los
Angeles area. We have
a world class team
and an extremely
diverse set of people...
this diversity is, I
think, very important
in creating the kind
of technology we
are developing...
data centers. This demand has to
be resolved by a new technology
platform like silicon photonics, and
we believe this will happen in the
few years to come.
Any particular area or
application you plan to target
first?
What we are working very actively
on right now are solutions for data
centers, supercomputers and then
eventually consumer electronics.
We are focusing a lot of our design
and development power on what we
call a 100G optical engine in silicon,
where essentially from this very
tiny chip we can push through the
fiber 100G of information. Side by
side, if we multiplied that by a large
number of fibers, you can reach
very quickly a large bandwidth of
information transmittance. What we
are developing today is mostly going
into telecommunication networks,
data centers and supercomputers.
How many people work for
Kotura?
We currently have 60 to 65 highly
technical employees based in
Monterey Park, California, just
outside of Los Angeles. Those
people are mostly engineers and
PhDs. In fact, we have 22 PhDs.
Designing and fabricating optical
chips in silicon is a big task with
a huge impact for our customers.
Our packaging is done at a contract
manufacturer in Asia. Last year,
we opened an office in Shenzhen,
China.
How would you describe
the work culture in your
company?
Our company actually looks like
the Los Angeles area. We have a
world class team and an extremely
diverse set of people. The number
of languages spoken here is
amazing. This diversity is, I think,
very important in creating the kind
of technology we are developing as
we are looking at doing things very
differently, and we need to bring a lot
of innovation and a lot of new ideas
to this world. I speak of diversity
of origin, but obviously we have
diversity of skills and backgrounds
too—those with IC backgrounds,
process engineering backgrounds,
optical design backgrounds. All
those people are living in a close
environment with each other, which
is a good way to create innovation
by mixing different skills and
expertise close together to try to
facilitate communication between
those different groups of people.■
EEWeb | Electrical Engineering Community Visit www.eeweb.com 6
FEATURED INTERVIEW