Mintera Adds Cash, Partner

Fresh off a new round of funding, Mintera Corp. is teaming up with JDSU (Nasdaq: JDSU; Toronto: JDU) to develop 40-Gbit/s optical modules.

Mintera announced yesterday that it's raised $19 million in a funding round led by Polaris Venture Partners and RRE Ventures . Prior investors Court Square Ventures LLC , Star Ventures , and Portview Communications Partners LP also contributed to the round -- as did JDSU itself. (See Mintera Secures $19M.)

Altogether, Mintera has raised more than $73 million three rounds.

On the technology front, meanwhile, JDSU and Mintera will work on developing a 300-pin transponder based on Mintera's adaptive differential phase-shift keying (ADPSK) modulation technology. (See JDSU, Mintera Team Up.)

"We're just extracting that technology and putting it in the 300-pin module," says Niall Robinson, Mintera's vice president of product marketing. ADPSK is already being used in the company's MI 40000XS 40-Gbit/s transport subsystem.

ADPSK has practical appeal, in terms of squashing down the componentry (SDTC) going into these modules, says Chris Coldren, JDSU senior manager of optical transmission modules.

"You save on size and cost, and it is absolutely crucial for 40 Gbit/s to hit a cost- and size-reduction road map, so it can be the transmission bit rate in the future," Coldren says.

The partnership offers some validation to Mintera, which has spent years waiting for a 40-Gbit/s market to emerge. Heavy Reading analyst Sterling Perrin considers it a good fit.

"Components companies stopped investing in new innovation for these technologies. But now that the markets are actually here, there are not a lot of companies that can do it," Perrin says.

The partnership is focusing on 40-Gbit/s technologies, but the companies left room open for looking into 100 Gbit/s, since Mintera thinks its 40-Gbit/s technology can be adapted for 100-Gbit/s cases. "We're certainly aligning road maps on 100 Gbit/s," Robinson says.

— Ryan Lawler, Reporter, Light Reading