Bringing the Cloud Home by Elevating Wireless Infrastructure: MaxLinear

Analog technology is a market that is ever expanding. One such major player is MaxLinear, which 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. Entropic pioneered ‘multimedia over coax’ (MoCA) home networking technology. The company’s technology transforms how traditional broadcast and IP streaming video is seamlessly, reliably, and securely delivered, processed, and distributed into and throughout the home.

The Optical Networking and Trans-Impedance Amplifier

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. MaxLinear technology is trusted by leading telephone, cable and satellite operators, set-top box manufacturers, networking equipment providers,and consumer technology providers.

Factors that make MaxLinear Different

At MaxLinear, it drives towards excellence and eventually the end result is a sharp focus on creating technology and products that solve some of the world’s most challenging communication technology problems. It all starts with building a great, cohesive team with an exacting quality standard.

The company’s 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 ground-breaking technology that is used worldwide in televisions and set-top boxes today. Its focus on low power technology and engineering excellence remain part of its chip design DNA.

Since those early days, the firm’s 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. The company has come a long way since its early days, but it is still committed to solving the world’s most challenging communication technology problems.

The Fastest Way to the Internet is through Full-Spectrum Capture

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 its 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 those measures only 7mm x 7mm.

Several years after the launch of Project Hercules, millions of products based on Full-Spectrum Capture technology are deployed around the world by satellite and cable providers in multi-channel video gateways, and gigabit speed data services to customers who want to download, watch and record content on their TVs, computers, tablets,and smartphones.

The Man Who Proved to be a Great Leader

Kishore Seendripu, PhD., Chief Executive Officer:

Kishore Seendripu, Ph.D. 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.

“Staying true to our low-power roots, our Full-Spectrum Capture products consume ten times less power than traditional receivers need to process the same amount of data. Another engineering world’s first by MaxLinear.”