After acquiring Mellanox for approximately $7 billion, NVIDIA now announced its plans to acquire data center networking software provider Cumulus, which already had a previous partnership with Mellanox. NVIDIA announced that the combination enables the new era of the accelerated, software-defined data center. The company also stated that with Cumulus, NVIDIA can innovate and optimize across the entire networking stack from chips and systems to software including analytics like Cumulus NetQ.
More than 100 hardware platforms
Cumulus, supports more than 100 hardware platforms with Cumulus Linux, its operating system for network switches. NVIDIA also noted that Mellanox Spectrum switches already ship with Cumulus Linux and SONiC, the open-source offering forged in Microsoft’s Azure cloud and managed by the Open Compute Project. With this acquisition, NVIDIA’s approach to creating both the hardware and software for accelerated computing expands deeper into networking software.