[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

Cisco is all set to acquire privately held Lightwire. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $271 million in cash and retention-based incentives in exchange for all shares of Lightwire. Upon the close of the acquisition, Lightwire employees will be integrated into Cisco’s Transceiver Modules Group Business Unit and Supply Chain Operations Group.  The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to be complete in the third quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2012.

Surya Panditi (Senior vice president, Cisco Service Provider Networking Group): With the combined know-how from Cisco in silicon design and Lightwire in CMOS photonics, we will transform Cisco’s optical connectivity business to an integrated technology platform that supports our customers’ burgeoning need for cost-effective high-speed networks.

The Lightwire acquisition builds on Cisco’s existing optical networking expertise and complements Cisco’s 2010 acquisition of CoreOptics, a designer of coherent digital signal-processing solutions and application-specific integrated circuits for high-speed optical networking applications.

Headquartered in Allentown, Penn., with offices in Santa Clara, Calif., Lightwire develops advanced optical interconnect technology for high-speed networking applications.

Silicon (CMOS) photonics technology is expected to play a significant role in the enablement of high-speed networks. With expertise in CMOS photonics and packaging design, Lightwire can integrate multiple high speed active and passive optical functions onto a small silicon chip. The smaller size, lower power consumption and scalability of Lightwire’s CMOS-based technology enable switches, routers and optical transport systems to have higher-density optical connectivity at a lower cost, allowing carriers to further reduce their operational and capital costs and offer new revenue-generating services, according to Cisco.