BANGALORE: Cypress Semiconductor (NYSE: CY) has signed a definitive agreement
to acquire Lara Networks Inc. Total consideration for the transaction is $225
million, to be paid predominantly in cash, with a provision for extra earn-out
based on performance. The acquisition is expected to be dilutive for several
quarters and is subject to standard regulatory and shareholder approvals and
other customary closing conditions.
Wire-speed packet processing is a key requirement of high-performance,
next-generation networking systems. Lara has a longstanding relationship with
Cisco Systems Inc. to provide custom co-processors for Cisco’s Enterprise line
of networking equipment. Lara also counts among its customers a variety of
market leaders and emerging companies, including Juniper Networks, Foundry
Networks, Extreme Networks, Ericsson, NEC and Fujitsu.
Lara’s products are highly complementary to Cypress’s existing product
line for wide-area-network (WAN) infrastructure equipment, which includes a
variety of physical-layer, framing, programmable-logic, timing-technology and
multiport switching solutions for networking linecards. Lara’s solutions
targets switches, routers and multi service gateways handling multiple
high-speed protocols up to OC-768 and including 10-Gigabit Ethernet.
Cypress Semiconductors president and CEO T J Rodgers, said "As packet
processing becomes more complex amid increasing voice, data and video traffic in
the network, the need to use NSEs to quickly and efficiently manage information
across the linecard becomes a requirement and not an option. Lara’s product
line fills out Cypress’s portfolio of networking solutions, enables us to
further penetrate a key, fast-growing communications market, and represents
another milestone in our plans to compete head-to-head with pure-play data
communications companies."
"As today’s software and ASIC solutions cannot process packets at wire
speeds, Cypress networking customers require NSEs and co-processors to build
next-generation infrastructure equipment for wide-area, storage-area,
metropolitan-area and local-area networks (WANs, SANs, MANs and LANs),"
Rodgers said. "At present, none of the pure-play data communications
companies offer NSE capabilities along with a full line of physical layers and
framers," said Rodgers.
Lara’s NSEs have a clear advantage over hardware and software alternatives
because of their high-performance search capability and scalability. NSEs and
co-processors enable routers and switches to classify and forward data packets
to thousands of destinations at wire speed. Lara’s product portfolio addresses
the diverse requirements of leading-edge networking systems. The three NSE
devices currently available can support up to one million table entries and
perform 100 million look-ups per second. The NSEs, coupled with Lara’s
high-performance co-processors, provide a seamless interface to leading network
processors from AMCC/MMC, Entridia, Intel, Motorola/C-Port, and Vitesse/Sitera.
Lara’s portfolio also includes reference design kits, which allow customers to
accelerate their time-to-revenue.