Nvidia looks to grow further into datacentre space as it shells out $6.9 billion for Mellanox Technologies, the Israel-based maker of end-to-end ethernet and InfiniBand smart interconnect solutions and services.
“The emergence of AI and data science, as well as billions of simultaneous computer users, is fueling skyrocketing demand on the world’s datacentres,” Nvidia says. “Addressing this demand will require holistic architectures that connect vast numbers of fast computing nodes over intelligent networking fabrics to form a giant datacentre-scale compute engine."
Reportedly Nvidia had to beat Intel for the acquisition of Mellanox, with Intel apparently offering $6bn for the Israeli company. Also said to be involved in the bidding are Microsoft and Xilinx. As Nvidia puts it, the purchase brings together two leaders in high performance computing (HPC), with the combination of the Nvidia computing platform and Mellanox interconnects powering over 250 of the TOP500 supercomputers in the world.
Mellanox is best known for InfiniBand high-performance interconnect technology, as well as high-speed ethernet hardware. It also makes networking adapters, silicon and software, all products the industry finds useful as datacentre workloads include include compute-hungry applications such as AI, machine learning and data analytics.
Post-purchase Mellanox will retain its technology centre in Israel, and should not change customer sales and support. The transaction is expected to close by end 2019, following regulatory approvals.