Xilinx has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Solarflare Communications, Inc., an Irvine, Calif.-based privately-held company. Solarflare is a leading provider of high-performance, low latency networking solutions for customers spanning FinTech to cloud supercomputing. The acquisition will enable Xilinx to combine its industry-leading FPGA, MPSoC and ACAP solutions with Solarflare's ultra-low latency network interface card (NIC) technology and Onload application acceleration software, to enable new converged SmartNIC solutions, accelerating Xilinx's "data center first" strategy and transition to a platform company.

Xilinx and Solarflare have been collaborating on advanced networking technology for the last two years, with Xilinx becoming a strategic investor in 2017. 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. {module In-article}

"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. We are very excited about the possibilities with Solarflare as part of the Xilinx family to enable the adaptable, intelligent world."

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