Compass-EOS

About Compass-EOS

Compass-EOS, founded in 2006 as Compass Networks, was a networking company that aimed to revolutionize routing architectures through silicon photonics. The Israeli startup was co-founded by President Michael Laor, a former Director of Engineering at Cisco, and Chief Scientist Dr. Michael Mesh, an expert in fiber optics with over 40 patents. Their collective experience in data communication and optical systems drove the company's core mission. Laor initiated and managed Cisco's Development Center in Israel, while Mesh had previously co-founded PacketLight Networks, bringing deep knowledge in optical transmission systems.

The company's core business revolved around developing and selling high-capacity routers for service provider networks. Its business model focused on providing hardware that offered significant improvements in bandwidth, power consumption, and physical size compared to conventional routers. Key clients were major telecommunications service providers and large research networks, including NTT Communications, Comcast, Rostelecom, and the China Education and Research Network (CERNET). The company generated revenue through the sale of these advanced routing systems.

Compass-EOS's flagship technology was icPhotonics™, described as the world's first commercial silicon for inter-chip optical interconnect. This technology replaced traditional copper-wire backplanes with an on-chip optical solution, using lasers to transmit data between processors. This enabled the creation of their primary product, a family of carrier-grade routers like the r10004, which launched in March 2013. A key feature was co-packaging an ASIC with optics, which integrated a traffic manager with 168 lasers and 168 photodetectors, creating a compact, low-power design that eliminated the need for a separate switch fabric and backplane. The result was a scale-out, high-density router designed for Software-Defined Networking (SDN) architectures, offering a substantial reduction in footprint and operational costs for data centers and network operators.

Despite attracting over $200 million in investments from top-tier firms like Cisco, Comcast Ventures, Pitango Venture Capital, and Benchmark Capital, the venture ultimately failed to compete with industry giants. In 2016, the company pivoted. The hardware division's chip R&D team spun off to continue developing co-packaged photonics technology, while the remaining entity became a software company, later rebranding as Exaware and focusing on disaggregated networking solutions.