Cisco is planning to acquire privately-owned semiconductor memory intellectual property (IP) maker, Memoir Systems, in a bid to ramp up its networking mechanism and enhance data centre speeds.
The latest acquisition would assist the networking firm to bolster its application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) business, as well as meet next-generation IT requirements.
Aimed at speeding up memory access by tenfold, Memoir Systems’ licensed soft-logic IP would facilitate Cisco to build faster switches and routers that are integrated into data centres.
Cisco executive Hilton Romanski said: "Currently in the data center switching market, denser infrastructure and data-intensive workloads are driving demand for higher port density (feeds) and greater bitrates (speeds).
"At the same time, the accelerating growth of scale-out (non-virtualized) Big Data applications like Hadoop are driving increasing East-West data traffic – furthering the need for greater data centre network density.
"Unfortunately, the physical memory in typical ASIC switch chips cannot cope with the design requirements for these more intense needs and as a result, can become the bottleneck that limits the density and performance of future data center switches."
Upon the completion of the transaction in the first quarter of fiscal 2015, Memoir team will be placed in Cisco’s Insieme Business Unit, headed by senior vice president Mario Mazzola.
