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Cisco buys another IC design firm

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

Cisco Systems said it has agreed to buy Growth Networks of Mountain View for $355 million in stock, even though the start-up chip design company has no sales. The Growth Networks acquisition adds to the other recent semiconductor design acquisitions Cisco has made; Stratum One Communications and SkyStone.

All three companies specialize in designing semiconductors for computer networking and telecommunications applications. Cisco invests in these companies in order to gain access to technologies that can help its networking products operate faster and offer more

features.

Growth Networks is a leader in the development of so-called Internet switching fabrics, a new area of networking silicon. Routers and switches built around these fabrics will help Internet service providers increase traffic thru-put, especially in the area of integrating voice, data and video signal transmission on the Internet. The acquisition of Growth Networks will also help Cisco keep abreast of emerging technologies such as optical networking, which is being embraced by Internet service providers and offers increased network capacity.

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