Cavium Networks Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire MontaVista Software

Cavium Networks, a provider of highly integrated semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for networking, wireless, storage and video applications, reportedly has signed a definitive agreement to acquire MontaVista Software for $50 million.

The deal is expected to close in December 2009.

MontaVista (News - Alert) Software is a major player in multi-core embedded Linux operating systems, virtualization, development tools and professional services with a broad array of Tier-1 customers.

"Software is becoming an increasingly important part of the total solution with the rapidly increasing adoption of multi-core processors," said Syed Ali, president and CEO of Cavium Networks (News - Alert), in a release.

Ali said the acquisition will complement Cavium's market leading processor portfolio with world-class software expertise and will enable the company to deliver highly compelling and differentiated solutions to the market.

"Embedded Linux is poised for rapid growth," said Rusty Harris, president and CEO, MontaVista Software.

Harris said that by becoming part of Cavium Networks, MontaVista can confidently continue to offer industry leading commercial grade embedded Linux, support and services to the customers and partners.

Company officials said that after the acquisition, MontaVista Software will run as a separate operating unit and will retain the MontaVista brand name.

TMCnet in October reported that Hitachi, Ltd., a global electronics company, had selected and deployed Cavium Networks’ NITROX PX security adapters in the recently introduced BladeSymphony 320 Server family to deliver record crypto performance.

Hitachi (News - Alert) said its BladeSymphony 320 is a highly integrated blade server system used in data centers and enterprises for secure Internet applications.

Cavium officials said that NITROX Security Processor (News - Alert) product line includes four families of security processors including NITROX, NITROX Lite, NITROX II and NITROX PX.

These families span in performance from 50 Mbps to 10 Gbps of IPsec, SSL WLAN security and 1K to 40K RSA (News - Alert) OPS.

Officials said these products provide a high degree of flexibility, hardware scalability and software compatibility.