Gemfire and Covega merge to develop next-generation integrated photonics

February 15, 2008, Fremont, CA--Gemfire Corporation announced the completion of the merger with Covega Corporation (Jessup, MD), a provider of indium-phosphide and lithium niobate components and modules to the telecommunications, industrial, medical, defense, and test and measurement industries.

Covega will become a wholly owned subsidiary and the active component division of Gemfire's growing planar light circuit (PLC) product family. Products from the Covega facility include superluminescent light-emitting diodes (SLEDs), Fabry-Perot lasers, tunable laser gain chips, semiconductor optical amplifiers, and lithium niobate modulators.

Richard Tompane, president and CEO of Gemfire, highlighted the benefit of integrating active and passive wafer-scale architectures. "Through integration of more optical functions into PLCs, it is possible to provide better performance and cost-effective solutions to meet the needs of large system integrators under pressure to deliver solutions capable of supporting the rapid growth in demand for bandwidth. This world-class team has the best technology and shares our vision of photonic integration."

For more information, visit www.gemfirecorp.com.