Nvidia announces the acquisition of Cumulus Networks, an open-source networking specialist behind an own Linux distribution for network switches, network management tools and even an own datacentre switch.
The financial details of the deal are not available, but considering Cumulus funding totals $134 million since 2010 one can safely assume hefty sum was involved.
According to Nvidia, Cumulus will bring innovation and optimisation across the entire networking stack, from chips to systems to software. Currently Cumulus supports over 100 hardware platforms with the Cumulus Linux network switch operating system. Nvidia holds one such hardware platform in the shape of 2019 acquisition Mellanox, who has been working with Cumulus since 2013. Mellanox Spectrum switches ship with Cumulus Linux and SONiC, the open-source offering for Microsoft Azure cloud managed by the Open Compute Project.
With both Mellanox and Cumulus in its portfolio Nvidia is now even more ready to take on the networking likes of Arista, Cisco and HPE, among others. After all, combined the three companies already have a substantial presence with cloud giants and big white-box customers such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Alibaba and Oracle. One also has to consider last quarter Nvidia datacentre revenues total $1 billion, an even more impressive sum considering during the same period Nvidia made $1.5 billion from its supposed bread and butter, gaming.
Go Riding a Cloud: Nvidia Acquires Network-Software Trailblazer Cumulus
