RE:Jimmer's find may be more significant than I first thought
You well may be right, however just a couple of points. Analog circuits are what engineers used for decades (and still use) for certain control or filtering functions. Analog circuits use resistors, capacitors, op amps, transistors and such to accomplish various functions. So designing analog circuits is pretty basic (second year engineering). Not sure exactly what's involved in putting these on a chip, but that's probably pretty standard as well. The key may be the patents (if they can defend those patents, and S7 likely has the resources to do so). So if the patents are bullett proof, S7 is in great shape. As to S7 being the ONLY company able to provide the active component for active cables we'll need a little more info and researc. I'll see if Sean can shed some light on this next week.
If it's true they will dominate a portion of the data centre market requiring higher data rates and longer runs or lower power consumption and that'll be huge. The other markets won't be so bad either.