AMD just announced the purchase of Xilinx for $35 billion . AMD thus becomes a leading company in the field of FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) and HPC (High-performance computing). The acquisition was part of a stock purchase for a total amount valued at $35 billion. Lisa Su, AMD's CEO, confirms that this purchase will allow AMD to position itself well, particularly in the field of HPC and FPGA, thus propelling AMD ahead of Intel and Nvidia on these fronts. This purchase would expand the customer base of AMD and Xilinx and allows the two companies to work on a wider range of products by combining the skills and knowledge of each.
FPGAs are programmable components and thus make it possible to accelerate certain calculation processes. These FPGAs can thus be reused as desired in different algorithms. The latest generations of FPGAs can be reprogrammed in a 10th of a second. This avoids having to go back to the manufacturers each time a modification or improvement is necessary.
What does this purchase mean?
Following this purchase, AMD is no longer limited to the production of usual CPUs and GPUs but will be able to produce programmable integrated circuits and chips that are fairly fast in calculation. AMD thus offers a response to Intel following its purchase of the Altera Company, which specializes in the manufacturing of semiconductors, and to Nvidia following the acquisition of Mellanox, a specialist in networking and servers. AMD is thus positioning itself as a leader in different sectors of activity using GPUs , CPUs and FPGAs. AMD will also offer spin-off products and services such as clouding and edge computing solutions.
Lisa Su says the purchase will propel AMD as a leader in computer chips. AMD is targeting a gain of nearly $300 million within 18 months of closing this purchase. When the purchase closes, Xilinx shareholders will have 26% of the combined shares while AMD shareholders will have 74%.
What are the next steps ?
Victor Peng, CEO of Xilinx, says he is delighted to have joined the big AMD family. This purchase of AMD allows Xilinx to advance a little further in its areas of expertise such as the data center sector and clouding. It also makes it possible to find more customers for its preferred products such as FPGAs , SmartNIC solutions , HPCs , adaptive SOCs and to further broaden its fields of action.
This transaction will go through the approval of the shareholders of the two companies and the usual regulators for this type of purchase. This purchase has already been approved by the boards of directors of both Companies (AMD and Xilinx). If all goes well, the purchase will close towards the end of 2021. Lisa Su will take the place of CEO of the two groups and Victor Peng will be the President in charge of Xilinx's activities and strategic growth initiatives. He will also join AMD's Board of Directors.
This purchase allows AMD to offer its customers better products and solutions in the field of advanced technology. The competition promises to be tough and its two main competitors, Intel and Nvidia, will not let it happen.
