The final acquisition of chip manufacturer Xilinx by AMD will be a fact in the first quarter of 2022. The necessary approval for the acquisition has been delayed due to the lack of approval by the various competition regulators.
According to AMD the proposed acquisition of Xilinx, valued at approximately EUR 31 billion ($35 billion) in equities, is coming at a later than expected stage. AMD initially had a target to complete the acquisition by the end of this year, but the company has not yet received the necessary approval from all relevant regulators. This is now expected in the first quarter of 2022, so that the acquisition will only be finalized at that time.
Regulators have recently been very skeptical about takeovers in the chip sector. For example, the acquisition of Arm by Nvidia is still heavily blocked by various competition regulators.
FPGAs
With the acquisition of Xilinx, AMD will acquire a manufacturer of so-called Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). FPGAs are dedicated chipsets that, unlike traditional chipsets, can be reprogrammed after they are built. This makes them suitable for rapid prototype development and for rapidly emerging markets and use cases where companies have limited time to develop specific processors.
These chipsets are mainly used in the telecom sector. They are important components for 5G networks. There are also applications for it in data centers and in the automotive and aviation industry.
Expanding portfolio and competing with Intel
AMD is particularly interested in the acquisition of Xilinx as the manufacturer expands its portfolio beyond standard processors and GPUs. In addition, the chip giant can also compete further with Intel, which already produces FPGAs itself.
Tip: AMD wants to buy chipmaker Xilinx for $ 30 billion
