Xilinx Eyes Solarflare Communication Acquisition

Xilinx recently announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Solarflare Communications, one of the leaders in high-performance, low latency networking solutions for customers spanning FinTech to cloud computing.

The acquisition will further enable Xilinx to combine its FPGA, MPSoC and ACAP solutions with Solarflare’s ultra-low latency network interface card (NIC) technology and Onload application acceleration software, to provide new converged SmartNIC solutions, accelerating Xilinx’s “data center first” strategy and transition to a platform company.

Given Xilinx’s and Solarflare’s collaboration since the last two years on advanced networking technology for the last two years, the two companies recently demonstrated their first joint solution – a single-chip FPGA-based 100G SmartNIC, processing 100 million packets-per-second receive and transmit, all at less than 75 watts.

“The Solarflare team has worked very closely with Xilinx on next-generation networking technology and business collaboration since Xilinx became a strategic investor,” says Russell Stern, chief executive officer, Solarflare. “Our shared vision for the future of data center and cloud computing and the integration of our respective technologies makes this acquisition the ideal next step for our customers, employees, and investors, as well as the broader data center industry.”

“Solarflare has been a pioneer in key areas such as high-speed Ethernet, application acceleration, and NVMe-over-fabrics, which are the critical components needed to build the next generation of SmartNICs for cloud and enterprise technologies,” says Salil Raje, executive vice president and general manager, Data Center Group, Xilinx.

Acquiring Solarflare brings Xilinx both market-leading technology and exceptional engineering talent with expertise in networking hardware, software, firmware and drivers, said the company.

The acquisition is expected to close in Xilinx’s second quarter of fiscal year 2020, following regulatory review and other customary closing conditions.

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