Marvell targets Broadcom with Xelerated purchase

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Marvell targets Broadcom with Xelerated purchase

Buys Swedish network processor vendor, responding to Broadcom's NetLogic buy and extending switch-chip reach

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 4 January, 2012

Companies best known in the mobile world for device chips are pushing back into the guts of the network, with Marvell raising its game against Broadcom in the network processor space with the acquisition of Sweden-based Xelerated.

The smaller firm offers the AX and HX ranges of processors as well as programmable Ethernet switches. Both these are increasingly important in the wireless market as radio networks take on characteristics of the data center, handling huge levels of data processing and running on Ethernet/IP transport links. This is shifting mobile industry power towards firms which do not just provide mobile-specific silicon, but semiconductors for the back end network processors, cloud servers and Ethernet switches and routers.

Marvell and Broadcom, both major players in Ethernet switch-chips, are both expanding their range to include more network processors. The latter acquired NetLogic in September, taking it up against established players like leader Freescale plus Cavium, AMCC, Renesas and Intel (the last of these strengthened by its purchase last year of Ethernet switch-chip vendor Fulcrum). Texas Instruments, from its starting point in the base station heart of the RAN, has also increasingly been stretching to the back of the network with Cloud-RAN extensions to its KeyStone architecture, while switch-chip specialists like Vitesse are also eyeing the wireless market keenly.

Marvell said in its statement that Xelerated's offerings will complement its "portfolio of packet processors, ARM-based SoCs, wireless and low power physical layer devices widely used in infrastructure, data center and enterprise networking equipment." The firm is increasingly targeting cloud providers as well as conventional operators, leading the charge to put ARM-based chips into high end servers to challenge Intel.

Xelerated will be particularly important in the high growth 100Gbps segment, where Marvell has previously been working with EZchip (and often tipped to buy that firm). The official line is that the acquirer will "continue to work with EZChip on NP-4 and NP-5 processors and is committed to the long term relationship with EZChip." While EZchip boasts deals with key network players like Cisco and Juniper, Xelerated has Huawei as a flagship client.