Omiino was founded in mid-2007 through an initial funding round of $1.5m led by Belfast-based Crescent Capital. It has since achieved significant global success with its highly innovative Optical Transport Network (OTN) technology solutions which are now used by some of the world’s leading telecoms suppliers.

Based at the Whitewell Road in North Belfast, the company employs sixteen dedicated telecoms engineers led by CEO, Gary Hamilton who co-founded Omiino along with fellow entrepreneurs, Mark Carson and Andrew Brown.

Throughout the company’s rapid growth, the management team has been assisted by chairman, Dr Bryan Keating – a local technology specialist – and by Deirdre Terrins who represents its VC backers, Crescent Capital.

Welcoming the acquisition, CEO Gary Hamilton said: “This is great news for Omiino because we have worked very hard to develop this exciting technology and then bring it to market. It is good news for Xilinx because they will now be able to use that technology across whole families of products. It is also good news for Northern Ireland because it shows we have the capabilities and the know how to grow successful world-class companies.

“Omiino’s success is an important endorsement of the approach taken by Invest NI to energise the venture capital sector, enabling it to make a real contribution to economic development here in Northern Ireland,” added Mr Hamilton.

Omiino board member, Deirdre Terrins said: “Crescent Capital have invested around $1.5 million in Omiino since it was established just over three years ago. For the company to be acquired so quickly represents a very successful outcome for everyone involved.

“We are thrilled that this is but the latest example of an indigenous world class high technology company that we have been able to work with to help them achieve their full potential.”

Alastair Hamilton, Chief Executive of Invest NI added: “Invest NI has worked closely with Omiino in recent years to support research and development activities. This acquisition by a leading global company based in the technology centre of San Jose is a clear endorsement of Omiino’s capabilities and the value of investment in R&D. I wish Omiino every success as they build a strong partnership with Xilinx.”

The announcement was also welcomed by Vicky Dummigan, Partner at Tughans Solicitors who provided legal advice to Omiino: “Omiino is an excellent example of how leading edge innovation can be translated into business success by a talented management team, as well as a case study which should be an inspiration to others in the high-tech start-up field.”

Financial advice was provided to Omiino by Brendan McGuckin and Colm McMullan of Harbinson Mulholland while Ian Kerr of Beltrae Partners supported the acquisition.

The Optical Fibers in Communications Conference opens 7th March 2011 in Los Angeles, and Xilinx Inc. will be there with its first Targeted Design Platform for the optical transport market. As an added bonus, Xilinx will announce the acquisition of Omiino, an IP specialist from Belfast, Northern Ireland. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, just think of Omiino as the former engineering specialists for Sonet/SDH and Optical Ethernet within Nortel Networks.

By taking some critical Layer 2 and 3 core IP internal at a time when 10G Ethernet networks are being upgraded to 40G and 100G backbones, Xilinx is preparing itself for the generations to come, when multiplexed channels will allow backbones of 400 Gigabits per second. Gilles Garcia, Director of wireline communications at Xilinx, said that 28-nm Virtex-7 families will be able to serve fiber Ethernet needs beyong 100 Gbits/sec. The TDP being shown at OFC uses the Virtex-6 HXT device, but users can upgrade to Virtex-7 HT as soon as FPGAs move into production.

The TDP is aimed at Optical Transport Network (OTN) designs, a generalized fiber transport backbone that is taking the place of Sonet/SDH in most multi-gigabit public network applications. Xilinx sought Omiino’s expertise because the company has established itself as an expert in Layer 2 framing of OTN. Omiino has worked with a couple ASSP developers in the past, but Garcia said that the bulk of its work had been with Xilinx prior to the acquisition, so taking the Omiino staff internal will have little effect on the overall business operations in Belfast.

The reference design is flexible enough to serve several specific tasks, such as transport switching, transponding from 100G Ethernet to OTU-4, and transponding from 10 x 10 to OTU-4. Garcia said that the TDP also is flexible enough to serve several hybrid functions at once, such as muxponding and switching. In addition to IP from Omiino and Xilinx itself, the TDP also uses some Gigabit Forward Error Correction and overhead processing IP from independent software company Xelic.

The 28-Gbit transceivers on the Virtex-6 already comply with the Optical Internetworking Forum’s CEI-28G interface, and the Virtex-7 HT family is design to work with CFP2 and QSFPF2 optical modules, follow-ons to the popular SFP anf QSFP, which are designed to scale to 400 Gbits/sec. Xilinx new TDP sells for $25,000 without optical modules, and will begin shipping in April.

21.7% of Northern Ireland’s exports amounts to around US$2billin, going to North America in 2005/06. Northern Ireland has been leading trade missions to the USA for a number of years. ” Today alongside its continuing world-class indigenous engineering prowess, Northern Ireland is pursuing a vision to become a world class centre of knowledge-led companies and internationally rated university research institutes specialsing in biotechnology, information technology, nanotechnology, communications and digital media”, says Tersea Madden, Invest NI’s Missions Manager.

Gary Hamilton commented, ”this is a great opportunity for Omiino to coordinate with Northern Ireland’s regional economic development agency in order to maximize the effectiveness of our visit to Silicon Valley”, he continused, ” we can focus on facilitating productive meetings with both new and current business contacts, while Invest NI looks after the local logistics and assists us with market research.”

Omiino have heralded a new era for virtual ASSPs, with the launch of a range of unique products that delivers a highly efficient solutions for specific packet optical network (P-OTN) transport spplications, whether PDH or NG-SDH, Ethernet or OTN, 2MBit to 40GBits or beyond.

For further Information, Contact

Gary Hamilton

Gary.hamilton@omiino.com

Tel: +44(0)28 9099 7390

Omiino develops “FPGA-based” silicon for telecommunications equipment vendors, according to Gary Hamilton, Omiino’s chief executive officer. The company names FOGA vendor Xilinic Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) as a partner, suggesting that it is programming up Xilinx FPGAs and selling them on.
A quote from the company’s website states “Omiino has responded and by pioneering the process of building solutions on the latest generation of commodity FPGAs,” the company states.

Elsewhere the company states: “Over the next few months we will be rolling out a family of high order framers and packet mappers for packet optical networks in the 10G, 20G and 40G and Ethernet segments. These FPGA-based Omiino solutions will compete aggressively with ASIC-based offerings.”
Their primary backer of Omiino is Crescent Capital, a Belfast, Northern Ireland based venture capital firm which has invested £750,000 (about $1.5 million). The rest of the money was provided by the management team, private investors and bank funding under a small loans guarantee scheme.
“So-called application-specific silicon requires vast up-front investment and verification costs. For telecommunications network equipment vendors the return on investment is getting longer for such devices,” argued Deirdre Terrins of Crescent Capital, in a statement.

In other words Terrins believes that networking companies can no longer afford custom silicon made at the leading edge of manufacturing and will therefore turn to programmable silicon with a lower development cost.

“We are delighted that Crescent Capital has recognised that our teams experience in telecommunications and silicon design gives us a unique ability to tap into this significant market opportunity.” said Hamilton in the same statement.

“We apply industry and silicon design understanding to create market defining industry specific integrated circuits.” he added before going on to say “With Crescent’s support we will be able to start developing our initial product offerings and development road-map. We are already in dialogue with several equipment vendors who have shown considerable interest in our product plans.”