Intel held an "everything must go" transponder sale this week, shipping the telecom bits of its Optical Platform division to EMCORE for $85m.

Lucky duck that it is, Emcore will have at Intel's tunable lasers, tunable transponders, 300-pin transponders and integrable tunable laser assemblies. The company figures that it can now fill out its fiber optics portfolio and go to customers with "a more complete product offering." The vendors expect the deal to close in the first quarter of 2008.

"In addition to this announced transaction, Intel is currently exploring strategic alternatives regarding the enterprise-focused portion of its Optical Platform Division," Intel said.

Close to 130 employees will be affected by this deal.

Intel spent a fair bit of the last 18 months selling off businesses that it viewed as unCore. For example, parts of Intel's optical-networking business went to Cortina in Sept. of 2006, while Marvell bought the XScale business in June of 2006. ®

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