AMD completes acquisition of FPGA pioneer Xilinx

AMD has officially completed its acquisition of FPGA maker Xilinx, a record-breaking deal valued at around $35 million.

The all-stock deal, which was originally announced in October 2020, places AMD in a competitive position among computing, graphics, and adaptive System on Chip (SoC) products.

News of the closing of the deal comes on the heels of Nvidia's decision to abandon its purchased of British chipmaker Arm, citing regulatory hurdles.

In addition to advancing adaptive SoCs and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), the newly-formed AECG group will lead the development of software roadmaps.

“The rapid expansion of connected devices and data-intensive applications with embedded AI are driving the growing demand for highly efficient and adaptive high-performance computing solutions,” said Victor Peng.

“Bringing AMD and Xilinx together will accelerate our ability to define this new era of computing by providing the most comprehensive portfolio of adaptive computing platforms capable of powering a wide range of intelligent applications.”

With differentiated solutions for cloud, edge, and intelligent end-devices, AMD will help enterprises tackle a wide array of emerging workloads, ranging from artificial intelligence (AI) to smart networking and software-defined infrastructure.

Xilinx shareholders, in lieu of any fractional AMD common stock shares, received 1.7234 shares of AMD common stock and cash at closing of the acquisition. Aside from this, Xilinx common stock will no longer be listed for trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

In the first year following the acquisition, AMD expects to improve its non-GAAP margins, non-GAAP earnings per share, and free cash flow generation.

“The acquisition of Xilinx brings together a highly complementary set of products, customers and markets combined with differentiated IP and world-class talent to create the industry’s high-performance and adaptive computing leader,” said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD president and CEO.

“Xilinx offers industry-leading FPGAs, adaptive SoCs, AI engines and software expertise that enable AMD to offer the strongest portfolio of high-performance and adaptive computing solutions in the industry and capture a larger share of the approximately $135 billion market opportunity we see across cloud, edge and intelligent devices.”