- Abrizio
Abrizio was a
fabless semiconductor company which made switching fabric chip sets. Their chip set, the TT1, was used by several large system development companies as the core switch fabric in their high value communication systems.Founding
It was founded in 1997 by Dr.
Nick McKeown as a spinout of the Tiny-tera project atStanford University and receivedUSD 6M of funding from Benchmark Capital andSequoia Capital [ [http://www.sequoiacap.com/company/abrizio/ Sequoia Capital small article] ] . In 1998 Anders Swahn, who had been executive vice president of sales and marketing at Allied-Telesyn Inc., joined Abrizio as chief executive. [EE Times [http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG19990825S0006 PMC-Sierra offers $400M for packet-switching startup] ]Product and technology
The product name TT1 referred to "Tiny Tera" meaning a small, highly integrated semiconductor implementation of a terabit/s capacity switching fabric. Abrizio's corporate colors were purple and yellow.
Abrizio's key technology was a sophisticated implementation of a
Wavefront arbiter which allowed the switch to make complex arbitration decisions very quickly.enior leadership
The CEO of Abrizio was Anders Swahn. The CTO was Dr. Nick McKeown who was taking a leave from his professorship at
Stanford University . Zubair Hussein was the V.P. of Engineering.Acquisition
Abrizio was acquired on August 24, 1999 by
PMC-Sierra for 4,352,000 shares ofPMC-Sierra stock, worth at that timeUSD 400M [Electronic Times Aug 30, 1999 [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_35_45/ai_55915081 PMC-Sierra to Buy Abrizio - Company Business and Marketing - Brief Article] ] . After the acquisition, the former Abrizio development team completed the TTx switch chip set. In the wake of the bursting of the telecom bubble, PMC-Sierra laid off most of the former Abrizio team in 2001 [Light Reading Jan 17, 2003 [http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=27032 More Cuts at PMC-Sierra] ] .Notes & references
External links
* [http://www.sequoiacap.com Sequoia Capital]
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