SILICON LINE
GREAT OPTICS
SILICON LINE
4 | BUSINESS FOCUS MAGAZINE
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SILICON LINE
GREAT OPTICS
WE LEARN HOW SILICON LINE IS CHANGING THE FACE OF OPTICAL CABLE.
PROJECT MANAGED BY: TREVOR GRETSINGER
Silicon Line began in 2007 as a company offering third-party design services, but would very quickly learn that the tech sector is a fast-moving one.
“I
n 2008 we got our first direct customer, and our first product which we could sell, an IC driving an optical link between a display and keyboard clamshell mobile phone,” recalls Ruud Van Der Linden, Silicon Line’s CEO. “The customer wanted to come out with a phone in the shape of a clamshell at the time, but it never made it to market as Apple came out with a new kind of candy bar-shaped phone.” Moving on from that Silicon Line built itself a foundation of expertise into making very low power, low-cost optical links using 3D-printing technology. “That became the basis of our portfolio, low power optical links for consumer applications,” Van Der Linden says.
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Silicon Line immediately ran into challenges, however. “We came to a situation where we wanted to sell the interconnects but the suppliers were still making optical modules for high-end customers so even if you sell them at lowcost they were still making 200 or 300 dollar module that aren’t suitable for your TV,” Van Der Linden says. The next development was going to be the game-changer however. “So four years ago we decided to go more vertical in our business. We decided to make the modules ourselves. We started to develop a very costcompetitive module for optical cable with the performance of a very high-end cable. It’s a simple miniature plug and play module where you cut the fibres, put them in and it works. Even better, it is easily scalable for very high volume needed in the High Volume Consumer business”
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“WE STARTED TO DEVELOP A VERY COSTCOMPETITIVE MODULE FOR OPTICAL CABLE WITH THE PERFORMANCE OF A VERY HIGH-END CABLE. IT’S A SIMPLE MINIATURE PLUG AND PLAY MODULE WHERE YOU CUT THE FIBRES, PUT THEM IN & IT WORKS.”
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Van Der Linden is speaking to us from Belgium where Silicon Line’s factory is making the core components of this module. The module will allow Silicon Line to reach cost levels where modules that used to be 40, 50 or 60 dollars are now closer to four, five or six dollars.
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“Those are much lower cost levels where you can afford to put us in consumer tech,” Van Der Linden points out. “Speeds went up in communication, speeds which you normally have in data centres and we’ve found solutions to use that in consumer applications.”
PUNCHING ABOVE THEIR WEIGHT
Their unique selling points go beyond simple price competitiveness, however. “You find it, for example, in home security, or for the use of optical links for the night vision on a helmet. But they use our interconnects where they want very low power, such as endoscopes for medical applications, because despite having this consumer interconnect we have the technology to serialize and deserialize the signal,” Van Der Linden explains. “It lets us e.g. use one fibre instead of ten, reducing the number of lines.”
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Silicon Line’s optical modules aren’t just low power and low cost but have by far the smallest footprint, a factor smaller than any traditional optical links letting it link to even the smallest connectors. However, this is no time for the company to rest on its laurels. “The biggest challenge is how fast the sector is developing,” Van Der Linden tells us. “The new games consoles coming out such as the X-Box X and Playstation 5, they have for the first time very high-end signal outputs like HDMI2.1 a 48Gbps link. So the biggest challenge is the execution and ramp-up. We’re working with big Japanese and Korean customers in gaming and TV sectors, and we are a relatively small company still. Then, of course, you work with those big companies, some of whom have a quality team bigger than my whole company, and you need to work with them on the quality
and go through this process with them.” Despite being a relatively small company, Silicon Line is having to leverage their collective expertise with some big corporate names. “Luckily, I have an experienced management team with backgrounds in big companies. Myself, I spent 20 years in Philips in a senior position, so I know those processes,” Van Der Linden points out. “But as a small company when you’re starting these processes it’s always a challenge.”
“SPEEDS WENT UP IN COMMUNICATION, SPEEDS WHICH YOU NORMALLY HAVE IN DATA CENTRES AND WE’VE FOUND SOLUTIONS TO USE THAT IN CONSUMER APPLICATIONS.”
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The most recent challenge Silicon Line has faced, of course, is the COVID-19 pandemic. “Wuhan was closed in January and our customers were also in lockdown,” Van Der Linden remembers. “Now they’re slowly ramping back up. In the last six months, we had some impact on our customers, especially with end customers in the US and Asia because nobody was buying and that had a snowball effect. We don’t know how long this will go on for. We expected a peak, but now we’re expecting a long U but hopefully not an L. Then companies like our customers need to do qualification, and people are working from home and you can’t do that from home. We’re not the only one having that challenge, we haven’t lost business but we’re taking a much longer time to achieve our goals because of COVID-19.”
“I THINK WE HAVE EVERYTHING IN PLACE TO ACHIEVE VERY SIGNIFICANT GROWTH IN YEARS TO COME.THEN WE’RE GOING TO WORK MAYBE ON AN IPO OR M&A.” Beyond COVID-19, Silicon Line is already making big plans for the future. “Well, I think we have everything in place to achieve very significant growth in years to come,” Van Der Linden reflects. “Then we’re going to work maybe on an IPO or M&A. We produce in Belgium for a good reason. We can secure our manufacturing here. We’ve got economy of scale, and we’re a company with very high-tech technology.” These elements combined, at a time when Silicon Line’s solutions are more essential than ever, paint a bright picture of the future for the company.
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