Xilinx has entered into a takeover agreement for Solarflare Communications. Solarflare, a privately owned company based in southern California Irvine, is a leading provider of low-latency, high-performance networking solutions for a broad user community from FinTech to cloud computing. The acquisition will enable Xilinx to combine its industry-leading FPGA, MPSoC and ACAP solutions with Ultra-Low-Latency Network Interface Card (NIC) technology and Onflat Solarflare application-accelerating software to create converged SmartNIC solutions. This is another step in Xilinx's "Data Center First" strategy of rapid transformation into a platform company.

Xilinx and Solarflare have been collaborating on advanced networking technologies for two years, with Xilinx taking on the role of strategic investor in 2017. Both companies have recently demonstrated their first joint solution - an FPGA-based single-chip 100G SmartNIC version that receives and transmits 100 million packets per second, with less than 75 watts.

It is expected that the acquisition will be completed by Xilinx in the second fiscal quarter of 2020, with customary closing conditions and regulatory review.