AppliedMicro offloads TPACK to Altera, announces partnership

Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (NASDAQ: AMCC), aka AppliedMicro, has agreed to sell its TPACK A/S FGPA-based “Soft Silicon” subsidiary to Altera Corp. The two companies also announced a partnership to attack the data center market.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The companies expect to complete the transaction later this month.

TPACK, based in Copenhagen, has specialized in devices for Optical Transport Network (OTN) applications within packet transport and optical networking equipment designs (see, for example, “AppliedMicro ships 100G OTN transponder/muxponder chip”). The devices use TPACK IP applied to FPGAs – a somewhat odd fit among AppliedMicro’s other ASSP products. AppliedMicro bought the then privately held company in 2010 for $32 million in cash as well as up to $5 million in cash earn-outs (see “AppliedMicro to acquire FPGA IP ompany TPACK to pursue OTN biz”). It will retain license rights to TPACK technology once the divestiture closes.

AppliedMicro's acquisition of TPACK came during a feeding frenzy among both FPGA and ASSP vendors to acquire the necessary IP to jump into the OTN space (see "FPGAs positioned for 100G OTN, Ethernet designs"). Altera acquired Avalon Microelectronics around this time (see "Altera acquires OTN IP vendor Avalon Microelectronics") and will add the TPACK expertise to beef up its OTN capabilities.

Meanwhile, AppliedMicro and Altera today also say they have signed a cooperation agreement that will pair Altera’s Stratix FPGAs with AppliedMicro’s X-Gene Server on a Chip devices. The agreement targets data-center applications and covers both joint development and marketing. The development activities will include product definition, co-development of reference designs, and supporting software development.

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