AMD is acquiring Pensando for $1.9 billion. Pensando develops high-performance, fully programmable packet processors and comprehensive software stacks. Those products accelerate networking, security, storage, and other services for cloud, enterprise, and edge applications.
Reduces workloads on CPU
Pensando products are already being used by some big cloud and enterprise customers such as Goldman Sachs, IBM Cloud, Microsoft, Azure, and Oracle Cloud. Those products can efficiently accelerate multiple infrastructure services simultaneously; reducing the workload on the CPU, thus increasing the overall system performance. Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO of AMD said:

« To build a leading-edge data center with the best performance, security, flexibility, and lowest total cost of ownership requires a wide range of compute engines. All major cloud and OEM customers have adopted EPYC processors to power their data center offerings. Today, with our acquisition of Pensando, we add a leading distributed services platform to our high-performance CPU, GPU, FPGA, and adaptive SoC portfolio. The Pensando team brings world-class expertise and a proven track record of innovation at the chip, software, and platform level which expands our ability to offer leadership solutions for our cloud, enterprise, and edge customers »
The acquisition will be closed in the second quarter of this year. The CEO of Prensando, Prem Jain, and the rest of the team will be joining AMD’s Data Center Solutions division which is led by Forrest Norrod.