EZchip to Acquire Tilera for $130 Million

1 July, 2014

Integrated chip, with Tilera’s multi-core technology and EZchip’s network processing technology can bring a unique processor to the market

Integrated chip with Tilera’s multi-core technology and EZchip’s network processing technology can to bring to market a unique processor

EZchip Semiconductor from Yoqneam, Israel, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Tilera Corporation, a privately-held US-based company that develops high-performance multi-core processors, intelligent network interface cards and white-box appliances for data-center networking equipment.

Tilera Multi-core network adapter
Tilera Multi-core network adapter

EZchip will pay Tilera’s stockholders up to $130 million in cash; of which $50 million is payable at closing and up to an additional $80 million is payable subject to certain performance milestones. The transaction has been approved by the EZchip and Tilera boards of directors and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2014.

“We welcome the Tilera team to the EZchip family. The addition of a multi-core product portfolio to EZchip expands and diversifies our product offerings and addressable markets. While our NPU portfolio and in particular our new NPS targets high-end carrier and data center equipment in which a high-performance data-plane only NPU is required, the Tilera multi-core CPUs address a wide range of data-center systems in which both data-plane and control-plane run on the multi-core CPU,” said Eli Fruchter, CEO of EZchip Semiconductor.

“Furthermore, the combination of EZchip’s and Tilera’s market-proven leading technologies, in particular EZchip’s networking expertise and Tilera’s multi-core expertise, will enable us to develop new multi-core CPUs that uniquely integrate powerful networking capabilities with the highest number of processor cores addressing a wide range of applications and market segments.”

“With this acquisition, EZchip becomes one of the leading vendors of high-performance processors for networking,” said Bob Wheeler, principal analyst at The Linley Group.

Combining CPU and NPU

Multi-core CPUs are used in network appliances, enterprise routers, cloud computing, video and voice encoders, to perform security, DPI, network monitoring, routing, load balancing, SDN and NFV for data-center and carrier network infrastructure. Typically, multi-core CPUs perform the data-plane packet-by-packet processing as well as the control-plane management and application processing. Tilera’s technology innovations have resulted in over 100 awarded and pending patents.

EZchip’s next generation NPU family, the NPS, is targeting carrier edge routers and data center networking equipment. NPS brings very high performance data-plane packet processing. Unlike the use cases for multi-core CPUs, the systems that use high-speed NPUs such as the NPS are high-end systems in which the data-plane is separate from the control-plane. In these high-end systems the control-plane is typically performed on a separate general purpose CPU.

EZchip said that Augmenting Tilera’s high core-count multi-core technology with EZchip’s high-performance network processing technology into one integrated chip, holds the potential to bring to market a unique processor that addresses the various multi-core CPU market segments with a highly differentiated solution.

Share via Whatsapp

Posted in: Business , News , Semiconductors , Telecom and Communication

Posted in tags: featured