The distributed services platform of Pensando includes a packet processor and a software stack designed to expedite networking, storage, security, and other services for enterprise, cloud, and edge applications
Pensando to be acquired by AMD for $1.9bn. (Credit: Anna Carzana/ Advanced Micro Devices, Inc)
Semiconductor major Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has agreed to acquire cloud start-up Pensando for a sum of around $1.9bn in a move to expand the capabilities of its data centre solutions unit.
Pensando, which offers a distributed services platform, has offices in the US and India. Its platform includes a packet processor and a software stack that are said to expedite networking, storage, security, and other services for enterprise, cloud, and edge applications.
The programmable packet processor can be distributed throughout a network to accelerate multiple infrastructure services simultaneously, thereby offloading workloads from the central processing unit (CPU) and boosting overall performance of the system.
Pensando’s products are said to have been deployed at scale across cloud and enterprise customers such as Goldman Sachs, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, and Oracle Cloud.
Pensando CEO Prem Jain said: “In less than five years Pensando has assembled a best-in-class engineering team that are experts in building systems together with a rich, deep ecosystem of partners and customers who have currently deployed over 100,000 Pensando platforms into production.
“Joining together with AMD will help accelerate growth in our core business and enable us to pursue a much larger customer base across more markets.”
Pensando will become a part of AMD’s data centre solutions unit. The former will continue to execute their product and technology roadmaps, and will now have additional scale for expediting their business and address increasing market opportunities across a larger number of customers, said AMD.
AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su said: “To build a leading-edge data centre with the best performance, security, flexibility and lowest total cost of ownership requires a wide range of compute engines.
“All major cloud and OEM customers have adopted EPYC processors to power their data centre offerings. Today, with our acquisition of Pensando, we add a leading distributed services platform to our high-performance CPU, GPU, FPGA and adaptive SoC portfolio.”
The acquisition, which is subject to approval under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 and other conditions, is expected to close in Q2 2022.
Earlier this year, AMD closed its previously announced $35bn acquisition of rival US-based semiconductor company Xilinx.