MMC Networks explained itself to investors with a time-lapse photo of a busy freeway interchange at night. Its chips were the interchange. The Sunnyvale company designed network processors, programmable chips that moved packets through switches and routers at wire speed. By its October 1997 IPO it had more than 35 design wins with 27 equipment makers, including Cisco, NEC, Fujitsu and Toshiba. Internet traffic was surging, and every box on the network needed faster silicon.

Programmable Silicon for Networks

MMC Networks was incorporated in California in September 1992 and did not ship products in volume until late 1995. It left chip manufacturing to outside foundries and spent its money on design. The bet was programmability. Equipment makers could load their own software onto MMC's processors and reach the market faster than if they built custom chips. Kleiner Perkins, Institutional Venture Partners and U.S. Venture Partners backed the company.

Eleven Dollars to $4.5 Billion

MMC Networks priced at $11 a share and listed on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol MMCN, with Prabhat Dubey as chief executive. Network processors became one of the hottest corners of the chip business during the telecom boom. In 2000 Applied Micro Circuits agreed to buy MMC in a stock deal valued at about $4.5 billion. It closed that October, and MMC stopped reporting as a public company.

Cover: Wakasa Province: Fishing Boat Netting Flatfish (Wakasa, gyosen karei ami), from the series "Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces (Rokujuyoshu meisho zue)", Utagawa Hiroshige. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a fishing net (networks).