Cypress Semiconductor Acquires Arcus Technology

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (San Jose, CA), in a continuing effort to enter datacom and telecom markets, has acquired Arcus Technology (Fremont, CA; and Bangalore, India) in a cash and stock transaction worth $20 million.

Arcus provides ASIC solutions for WDM, Internet protocol over SONET, framers, mappers, PDH multiplexers, and switching technology. It also produces intellectual property, product designs, and packaged devices for datacom and telecom markets.

Arcus will expand Cypress' product line with high-growth, high-margin T1/T3 access protocols, SONET, and Dense Wave Division Mutliplexing (DWDM). Their clients include Northern Telecom, Lucent, and Tellabs.

"Arcus's intellectual property positions Cypress to take advantage of the rapid growth in WAN and WAN-access bandwidth," said T. J. Rodgers, Cypress president and CEO.

According to Dan McCranie, executive vice president of sales and marketing, the acquisition will help Cypress' future product offerings, including "the development of a process technology geared toward even higher-speed communications that the current 150-400Mbps enabled by the High-speed Optical Transceiver Link (HOTLink) chipset."

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. is an international supplier of high-performance circuits. It provides a broad range of products for leading computer, networking, and telecommunications companies worldwide. The company's product line includes static RAMs, high-speed PROMs, and specialty memories; programmable logic devices (PLDs); data communications products; and timing devices and USB microcontrollers.