AMD enters lo-w-power server sector via purchase of SeaMicro
by Steven Mostyn - Mar 2 2012, 07:45
Image: AMD.
Expanding its business focus beyond the crafting of core processors, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has this week announced the acquisition of low-power server vendor SeaMicro.
According to reports, AMD will stump up some $334 million USD in cash and stock for the purchase, which will see it absorbing a Silicon Valley startup with a workforce of 80 people.
SeaMicro has come to the fore in the technology industry thanks to crafting highly dense and power-efficient servers for use within large-scale cloud computing environments.
“SeaMicro has a proven technology that has been benchmarked in key customer sites to show improvements in power consumption and total cost of ownership,” outlined Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of AMD Products. “That [intellectual property] was very attractive to us.”
By purchasing SeaMicro, AMD has also stolen something of a march on main market rival Intel, which has worked closely with the startup in recent times and has supplied Atom processors to power all of its low-power servers.
That being said, Su has also said that AMD will continue to sell SeaMicro platforms powered by Intel-based processors “for the foreseeable future” but the first servers equipped with AMD Opteron technology are expected to arrive before the close of 2012.
Comment on this Story