Vitesse acquires Ethernet cores company, Exbit Technology A/S

Vitesse acquires Ethernet cores company
By Craig Matsumoto, EE Times
April 3, 2001 (12:58 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010403S0068

SAN MATEO, Calif. — Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. (Camarillo, Calif.) has offered to acquire Exbit Technology A/S (Herlev, Denmark), a maker of intellectual-property cores, for up to $164 million in stock.

Exbit makes cores for high-end Ethernet networking, concentrating on Gigabit Ethernet and 10-Gbit/second Ethernet.

Under the deal, announced April 1, Vitesse would offer 4.4 million shares of stock for Exbit, plus 2.5 million shares if certain goals are met. Based on Vitesse's stock price of roughly $23.81, Vitesse could pay as much as $164 million for Exbit. Vitesse officials expect to close the deal during the current fiscal quarter, which ends June 30.

Exbit's cores are grouped under the name Copenhagen and include media-access controllers (MACs) for Gigabit Ethernet and 10-Gbit/s Ethernet. Exbit also offers a core for the Gigabit Ethernet physical-coding sublayer, a part that links an Ethernet MA C to a Fibre Channel physical-layer part.

Exbit also had been planning to develop chip sets for Ethernet. Among the simplest is a 16-port Gigabit Ethernet switching chip code-named Heathrow. On a more ambitious front, Exbit is planning a family of 10-Gigabit Ethernet chips, called Chicago, which would include a switching chip set capable of handling 64 ports of 10-Gigabit Ethernet or 640 ports of Gigabit Ethernet.