PLX Technology the leader in connectivity solutions for the data centre and the home, announced it has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire all of the outstanding shares of capital stock of Teranetics, Inc., a privately held fabless provider of high-performance mixed-signal semiconductors. Teranetics, the broadly recognized leader in 10 Gigabit Ethernet over copper physical layer (10GBase-T PHY) technology, delivered the industry’s first fully integrated single-chip implementation of single-port and dual-port 10GBase-T PHY silicon. This silicon is the only known solution in production today.

Teranetics’ corporate headquarters are located in San Jose, California.  Founded in 2003, Teranetics provides state-of-the-art silicon solutions that enable 10 Gigabit rates over widely installed low-cost CAT6 and CAT6a cabling. Teranetics’ products allow data centres and enterprise networks to increase scalability and improve throughput while dramatically lowering the cost of ownership for 10 Gigabit links.

Significant growth is expected over the coming years as 1 Gigabit Ethernet networks are upgraded to 10 Gigabit.  Market leaders of enterprise switches, NICs, and adapters are shipping products today with Teranetics’ 10GBase-T products.  As servers start to ship with 10GBase-T on motherboards next year, demand will accelerate.  The Linley Group estimates that over four million ports will ship in 2012 and over 22 million ports in 2014.  The total potential for this market is much greater and will take years to develop, similar to the transition from Fast Ethernet to 1 Gigabit Ethernet.  Today, 1 Gigabit Ethernet is dominant in the data centre, with over 200 million switch ports shipping annually.

PCI Express and 10G Ethernet have their advantages and will continue to coexist as complementary technologies in the data centre.  PLX will leverage its unique leadership position, technology and IP with these two dominant IOs to bring out new architectures for the data centres of tomorrow and to tap further into the $2 billion Ethernet semiconductor market.  These future solutions can take advantage of both technologies while leveraging the company’s superior switching fabrics, high-speed analogue, and SoC capabilities to increase performance, lower power consumption and reduce overall system costs.