Charlie Wuischpard is CEO of Ayer Labs
Ayar Labs is leveraging its recent Series A funding to bring optical interconnect silicon to the Cloud, HPC, and Telecommunication markets.
We’re seeing significant industry interest in optical chip-to-chip connectivity– based on our assessments, the Total Addressable Market for inter-chip optical interconnect is 4x the optical transceiver market,” said Charlie Wuischpard, CEO of Ayar Labs. “As a result, we are accelerating our commercial product plans, establishing a Santa Clara development center, and adding two seasoned industry executives: Hugo Saleh, formerly with Intel, as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, and Lisa Cummins, formerly with Penguin Computing, as Chief Financial and Operating Officer.”
Ayar Labs has targeted the AL10 design–its 10th generation electrical to optical I/O “chiplet,” which is due to tape-out end of Q1 2019–as the company’s first broadly available commercial product named TeraPHYTM. TeraPHY will be integrated with other silicon technology partners’ designs into multi-chip module computing products available in 2020, enabling optical I/O bandwidth capability in excess of a Terabit/sec at 10X lower power than today’s Gigabit/sec I/O solutions.
Founded in 2015, Ayar Labs is disrupting the traditional performance, cost, and efficiency curves of the semiconductor and computing industries by driving a 100x improvement in interconnect bandwidth density at 10x lower power. Ayar Labs uses industry standard cost-effective silicon processing techniques to develop high speed, high density, low power optical based interconnect “chiplets” and lasers to replace traditional electrical based IO.
As the company ramps up, Ayar Labs is also opening a Santa Clara Development Center (ALDC) to support product engineering, packaging, and testing. The office will also support closer technical and business collaboration with key technology partners who have a major presence in the area.
Staffing up for success
Hugo Saleh, formerly of Intel, is joining Ayar Labs as the Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. Hugo comes to Ayar Labs after 19 years at Intel where he most recently led the acquisition of and design win activities with key global accounts for Intel’s Rack Scale Design. Prior to that, Hugo led Intel’s worldwide marketing for its High Performance Computing (HPC) and Workstation businesses.
The bandwidth and latency constraints of traditional electrical chip interfaces have been key bottlenecks to scaling performance and improving efficiency of semiconductors used in the datacenter,” said Hugo Saleh. “The products that Ayar Labs will introduce to market this year will set the semiconductor industry on a new price-performance trajectory and hold the promise to transform the cloud, HPC, and telecommunications markets. I’m excited to join this exceptional team at the dawning of a new era and look forward to helping productize our technology.” Hugo holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida.
Lisa Cummins, former Chief Financial Officer of Penguin Computing, is joining Ayar Labs as Chief Financial and Operating Officer. Lisa brings over 25 years of experience as a growth oriented financial executive in global high-tech organizations in private equity owned and NASDAQ publicly traded companies. During her 6 years at Penguin she oversaw a 35% CAGR and secured multiple bank and equity financing which led to a successful sale to Smart Global Holdings in June 2018. Prior to that, Lisa was Chief Financial Officer at Adept Technology, a NASDAQ publicly traded global robotics company, where she oversaw investor relations, led SOX compliance, completed multiple acquisitions, and secured bank and equity financing including a secondary public offering.
Ayar Labs has developed a disruptive base of technology that can transform the High Performance Computing market. I am thrilled to be joining such an innovative company and I am looking forward to using my organizational and financial experience to help the company achieve its next level of growth.” Lisa holds a Business Economics degree from UCSB and an MBA from St. Mary’s College.
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