Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Marvell Announcement Matches Solarflare Sale

Just three days after Irvine-based Solarflare announced that it has sold its 10 Gigabit Ethernet physical layer (PHY) business, semiconductor maker Marvell, based in Santa Clara, has announced its own line of 40nm, Quad 10GBASE-T PHYs. Solarflare did not announce the buyer of its product, and refused to acknowledge rumors that the buyer was Marvell. However, Marvell's announcement today of its Alaska X PHYs looks to match the specifications of Solarflare's PHY line to the last detail, including the exact power consumption per port, a special 1.5 watts per port "datacenter mode", and other similar specifications. Sources close to both firms have said that Solarflare's Irvine team have joined Marvell. Solarflare has refocused its business on board level server adapter products, and the high frequency trading and HPC market.

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