Acquisitions among the semiconductor players have provided a nice boost of 100Gbit/s product news:

Altera Corp. (Nasdaq: ALTR) acquired Avalon Microelectronics this week for a sum too small to trigger disclosure rules. Avalon was an intellectual property vendor, selling chip designs particularly in high-end areas. The design group Altera highlighted in its release was 100Gbit/s Optical Transport Network (OTN) interfaces, although Avalon has also made a big deal of its 40Gbit/s work. (See Altera Acquires Avalon Microelectronics and Supercomm: Chips Look Toward 40/100-Gig.

The 100Gbit/s generation is going to be an interesting Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) battleground as both Altera and Xilinx Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX) are pushing chips to 28Gbit/s transceiver speeds (and, coincidentally, 28nm manufacturing processes). (See Xilinx Preps for 400G, Supercomm: Chips Look Toward 40/100-Gig, The 400-Gig Vision.)

And, to that end, Altera took away one of Xilinx's teammates, as Xilinx was using Avalon's cores.

Altera had seen a partner of its own get snapped up, albeit not by a direct rival, when Tpack got acquired by Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (Nasdaq: AMCC) during the summer. (See AppliedMicro Pushes Toward the Edge.)

That might lead you to wonder who else is left in this intellectual property space. Two companies still independent are Sarance Technologies Inc. and Xelic Inc. , both Xilinx partners.

There's also Sembarc Ltd. , a small Irish startup born from the ashes of Flex (Nasdaq: FLEX)'s old design services efforts.

Referring back to the AppliedMicro/Tpack deal, AppliedMicro has introduced what it says is the first muxponder for the OTU4 standard for 100Gbit/s OTN, developed in conjunction with Tpack. This comes on the heels of the 100Gbit/s OTN transponder chips the company announced last month. (See AMCC Intros 100G Muxponder and AppliedMicro Intros 100G OTN.)

Deployment of 100Gbit/s optical gear might rev up more strongly in 2011 than expected. That's the guess from Ciena Corp. (NYSE: CIEN) CEO Gary Smith, speaking during the company's Dec. 9 earnings call.

"I understand folks saying 2012 will be widespread deployment of 100G. I actually think we'll see more than we think in 2011," Smith said. (Transcript courtesy of Seeking Alpha.)

Other 100Gbit/s happenings of late:

• Ericsson Puts Its Own Spin on 100G
• Allied Fiber Finds More Financing
• Juniper Updates Core Routers
• True Deploys AlcaLu 100G
• IBM, Semtech Work on ADCs/DSPs
• China Telecom Completes 100G Test
• Brocade Scores With CERN
• Avago Demos 28G Serdes
• Reflex Shows OTU4 CFP

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading