Hitachi acquires Spanish Photonics company
Acquisition ofuniversity spin-off VLC Photonics adds photonic integration engineering, design and test to its portfolio
Hitachi High-Tech has bought VLC Photonics, a photonic design house based in Valencia, Spain.
VLC is a spin-off from the Universitat Politècnica de València. It has a wide experience with various material platforms (silicon photonics, InP, silicon nitride, PLC, polymer) and offers fabless development services for photonic integrated circuits (PICs) in telecom/datacom, microwave photonics, quantum optics, lidar, bio-photonics and optical sensing markets.
VLC will become a subsidiary company of Hitachi and will continue to provide PIC engineering services as part of the company’s broader offering.
Recently internet traffic has been continuing to increase significantly due to the data arising from social media, video streaming services, working from home, IoT and the overall digitization of our economy and environment.
In the optical communications market, higher speeds and increased bandwidth are required to satisfy this growing demand. Meanwhile as demand gets stronger, the market has also had to manage issues of power consumption, size and cost reduction, and manufacturing scalability. Photonic integration provides the means to address all these requirements in a more holistic way than the traditional approach of assembling optical systems from discrete parts.
A long-term provider of components and services to the optical communications industry, Hitachi High-Tech is aware of the increasing need of customers for greater integration and innovation. As the foremost independent provider of PIC design, test and engineering services, VLC is in an excellent position to help Hitachi High-Tech serve the new requirements of its existing customers as well as providing a base for the development of new service provisions.
