The fabless system-on-chip product company, designing highly integrated, radio-frequency, and mixed-signal Communications ICs for broadband and infrastructure applications: MaxLinear

MaxLinear delivers high-performance broadband and networking semiconductors based on its highly integrated radio frequency analog technology, high-performance optical networking technology and its pioneering MoCA and Direct Broadcast Satellite ODU single-wire technology.

MaxLinear was founded in 2003. The company’s original high performance, radio-frequency receiver products capture and process digital and analog broadband signals for applications including terrestrial, cable and satellite television and DOCSIS broadband. These products include both RF receivers and RF receiver systems-on-chip, or SoCs, which incorporate highly integrated radio system architecture and demodulator technology. The company’s products were based on its pioneering low power, low-cost CMOS process technology.

In 2015, the company acquired Entropic, the world leader in semiconductor solutions for the connected home. The company’s technology transforms how traditional broadcast and IP streaming video is seamless, reliable, and securely delivered, processed, and distributed into and throughout the home. MaxLinear also offers optical networking driver and trans-impedance amplifier ICs for 100G / 400G optical data center networks. The devices use advanced technology that cut in half the number of channels needed in optical transmission modules, reducing power consumption, size and cost for 100Gbps and 400Gbps networks.

Excellence by Design – The MaxLinear Difference

It all starts with building a great, cohesive team with an exacting quality standard. Our eight founders started MaxLinear in the fall of 2003, with a commitment to building a great engineering company. The low-power broadband CMOS single-chip tuner they developed is at the core of groundbreaking technology that is used worldwide in televisions and set-top boxes today. Our focus on low power technology and engineering excellence remain part of our chip design DNA.

Since those early days, our product portfolio has expanded to include complex multi-gigabit transceivers for broadband data and satellite channel stacking switches, 400 Gbps high-speed interconnect chips for data centers and telecommunications, home networking MoCA and G.hn technology that transmits broadband data throughout your connected home, and more. We’ve come a long way since our early days, but we are still committed to solving the world’s most challenging communication technology problems. And our drive towards excellence in all we do permeates our culture from our CEO down to every last employee. Below are some of the industry-first technologies that set MaxLinear apart from the competition.

Full-Spectrum Capture: The Fastest Way to the Internet

In 2010, cable and satellite providers were searching for a technology to boost the bandwidth and increase the number of video channels they could deliver to our homes. The technology needed for scaling up bandwidth to a gigabit per second levels without paying a prohibitive penalty in size and power dissipation just did not exist yet. As our engineering team took on this challenge, Project Hercules was born.

The core technology behind Project Hercules is called Full-Spectrum Capture. Full-Spectrum Capture digitizes, filters, processes and then outputs a high-resolution digital version of the entire cable or satellite signal spectrum. As a result, when Hercules connects to the Internet it delivers up to 1.6 Gbps of digital data. All this technology is packed into a single chip that measures only 7mm x 7mm.

High-Speed Home Networking

MaxLinear is a pioneer in the market for the technology that lets consumers create home networks for their Internet and video services using a variety of cabling types. MaxLinear is a leader in Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) standard ICs, delivering the fastest and most reliable home networking technology available. MoCA turns the coaxial cable already installed in a consumer’s house into a robust, high-speed, whole-home entertainment network for multi-room DVR, superior online gaming, seamless delivery of internet video content, PC-to-TV streaming, Wi-Fi extension, place shifting and more. MaxLinear is also a leader in G.hn technology which transmits digital content over any wire – powerline, coax, and phone lines – for flexible, simple connectivity. MaxLinear G.hn networks support the latest technology innovations, like Wi-Fi backbones, multi-room Ultra-HD video networks, online gaming and others.

The Best-of-Breed Products

Broadband: Bringing the Cloud Home

MaxLinear broadband ICs deliver high-performance broadband video and data connections for cable, satellite and consumer applications.

• Cable: Delivers a complete line of video, DOCSIS, MoCA and G.hn semiconductors to empower high-speed data services and multi-channel video services.
• Satellite: From the rooftop to the living room, MaxLinear satellite technology helps operators keep pace with consumer demand for IP-based and multi-channel TV services.
• Consumer: MaxLinear works with leading television and consumer electronics companies to provide the ideal terrestrial TV experience.

Infrastructure: Agile Networking Meets Web Speed

MaxLinear provides a broad range of products for connecting the world's data and telecommunications networks.

• High speed interconnects: MaxLinear offers a wide range of leading-edge to interconnect products that keep the world's fastest networks connected. Find out how we're solving the network challenges of tomorrow.
• Wireless networking: MaxLinear offers new and innovative solutions to support the burgeoning needs the fast-paced growth of cellular data.

The Man behind the Picture

Dr. Kishore Seendripu, CEO: Dr. Seendripu has served as the Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer since the company’s inception in September 2003 and is also a co-founder of the company. From July 1996 to July 2002, Dr. Seendripu served in both engineering & engineering management roles developing integrated radio frequency & mixed-signal systems-on-chip solutions addressing wireless and broadband communications markets. He has previously worked at Rockwell Semiconductor Systems (predecessor of Skyworks), Broadcom Corporation, and Silicon Wave Inc. (acquired by Qualcomm). From 1990 to 1996 Dr. Seendripu served as a graduate research assistant at the Lawrence Berkeley Livermore National Laboratories, and at the Electronics Research Laboratory, U.C. Berkeley.

Dr. Seendripu received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. in Materials Science Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, a B. Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

“We’ve developed a full line of products for satellite communications, cable modems, and terrestrial TV; diversified into high-speed products addressing Datacom applications such as 400 Gbps fiber-optic interconnect chips for high-speed networks; and MoCA technology for home networking.”