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Cypress to acquire Lara Networks

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

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.

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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.

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