Chip and intellectual property vendor Rambus Inc. will acquire Inphi Corp.’s memory interconnect business for $90 million in cash, the company said Thursday (June 30).

Rambus, which re-entered the fabless semiconductor market last year after years of doing business strictly as a technology licensor, said the deal would strengthen its position in the memory buffer chip market. The acquisition includes product inventory, customer contracts, supply chain agreements and IP, Rambus (San Jose, Calif.) said.

“By combining our buffer chip team with the memory interconnect business of Inphi, we are able to instantly gain a strong market position and be well situated for future growth,” said Ron Black, Rambus president and CEO, in a statement.

Inphi (Santa Clara, Calif.) said divesting the memory interconnect business would allow the company to focus on the communications market. The company said it would focus on expansion in data center communications chips, specifically the metro-optical market, inter data center connects and its pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) product lines inside the data center.

Ford Tamer, Inphi’s president and CEO, described the deal in a statement as a “win-win” for employees, customers, partners and stockholders. He said the company expects the sale to improve its gross margins and balance sheet.

“We are planning to double down on our product roadmap for long-haul, metro, inter-data center and intra-data center customers,” Tamer said.

Rambus, which started its business 25 years ago as a developer of RDRAM (Rambus DRAM) technology, last year began selling server memory interface chipsets. Prior to that, Rambus has spent years operating solely as a technology licensor and was considered by many to be a patent troll.

Rambus said the acquired technologies would become part of its memory and interfaces division. The deal is expected to close in the first half of the third quarter.

By: DocMemory
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