Consolidation in the chip industry as the geepie giant eyes new markets
GPU giant Nvidia is to cough $6.9bn for chipmaker Mellanox, known for its data centre networking kit and InfiniBand interconnect tech widely used in HPC.
Sunnyvale-based Mellanox is a hot property — businesses reported to have been interested in getting their hands on its silicon include Microsoft, Xilinx and Intel .
Mellanox is a fabless semiconductor house — it designs ASICs, which are then made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC). The company was established in Yokneam, Israel — where much of its R&D is located — in 1999, but is headquartered in Silicon Valley.
Its InfiniBand interconnect provides one of the fastest ways to link together individual servers, competing with Chipzilla’s Omni-Path technology .
