Having struck a prestige deal with Fujitsu Ltd in Japan on its Fury Gallium Arsenide gate arrays, Camarillo, California-based Vitesse Semiconductor Corp has won the backing of the Thomson Composants Microondes subsidiary of Thomson-CSF SA – for the monolingual, ondes are waves, and the rest is self-explanatory. The deal has been sealed by Thomson-CSF Ventures making an undisclosed equity investment in Vitesse. The agreement covers marketing, second source and product licence and provides Vitesse with foundry services at the new Thomson-CSF facility in Grenoble, France. Under the marketing agreement, Thomson will have exclusive distribution rights for all Vitesse products in Western Europe and an option to second source all Vitesse products including the Fury arrays. Thomson Composants Microondes is a long-time designer and developer of microwave GaAs devices for defence applications: the agreement provides it with new GaAs products and an established new manufacturing process.
