Mellanox Technologies

Company overview

Mellanox Technologies provides InfiniBand and Ethernet switches for servers and storage used in enterprise data centers and also makes its own integrated circuits to support the InfiniBand protocol. Mellanox offers interconnect products: adapters, switches, software and silicon for a range of markets including high performance computing, enterprise data centers, Web 2.0, cloud, storage and financial services.

The company is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol MLNX.

In 2016, Mellanox Technologies began to employ programmers in the Gaza Strip in addition to its team of Israeli Arab programmers and programmers in Ramallah and Nablus.

Corporate history

Mellanox was founded in 1999 by former executives of Intel Corporation and Galileo Technology (which was acquired by Marvell Technology Group in October 2000 for $2.8bn) Eyal Waldman, Shai Cohen, Roni Ashuri, Micheal Kagan, Evelyn Landman, Eitan Zahavi, Shimon Rottemberg, Udi Katz and Alon Webman.. Initially founded as a integrated circuit (chip) manufacturer, it evolved into a producer of complete end-to-end systems by 2009. The company raised over $89 million in 3 financing rounds of venture capital. Investors included Raza Venture Management, Sequoia Capital, US Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Banc of America Securities, China Development Investment Bank, Gemini Israel Funds, Jerusalem Global Ventures, and Walden Israel Venture Capital. Strategic investors included Dell, IBM, JNI, Quanta Computer, Vitesse Semiconductor and Sun Microsystems.

The company went public in 2007, with an initial public offering on NASDAQ that raised $102 million, and valued the company at over half a billion dollars. Since 2010, Oracle Corporation has been a major investor in the company, holding around 10% of its stock. Oracle stated it has no plans to acquire Mellanox, but uses its InfiniBand technology in its Exadata and Exalogic appliances.

Strategic acquisitions

In February 2016, Mellanox acquired publicly held EZchip, a leading provider of Networking Processor Units (NPUs) and advanced multi-core processors (from EZchip's earlier acquisition of Tilera). The addition of network and multi-core processor technology enables Mellanox to provide end to end intelligent interconnect solutions.

In July 2014, Mellanox acquired privately held Integrity Project, an accomplished team of software technology veterans, for its software expertise in connectivity, low-level development, real-time applications and security.

In July 2013, Mellanox acquired privately held Kotura, Inc., a leading innovator and developer of advanced silicon photonics optical interconnect technology for high-speed networking applications. Silicon photonics is expected to play a significant role in high-speed networks. With over 120 granted or pending patents in CMOS photonics and packaging design, Kotura offers innovations in optical interconnects by integrating multiple high speed active and passive optical functions onto a silicon chip. Kotura technology enables Mellanox's interconnect products to scale to bandwidths of 100Gbit/s and beyond, and have longer reach optical connectivity at a lower cost. Mellanox believes that the Kotura acquisition enhances its ability to provide technologies for high speed, scalable and efficient end-to-end interconnect solutions. This acquisition is synergistic with Mellanox's acquisition of IPtronics because Mellanox 100Gbit/s silicon photonics interconnect solutions will incorporate the high-speed opto-electronic technology from Kotura and the modulator drivers and TIAs from IPtronics.

In July 2013, Mellanox acquired privately held IPtronics A/S, a leader in optical interconnect component design for digital communications. Strategically focused on optical interconnects and active copper interconnect solutions for the communications market, IPtronics offers Multichannel Vertical Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) Drivers, Modulator Drivers (MD) and Transimpedance Amplifiers (TIA) with significantly lower power consumption, richer feature sets and lower costs compared to existing solutions in the market place today. The technology Mellanox acquired bridges the gap between optical and electrical interfaces and overcomes the physical constraints of using copper-based connections in 100Gbit/s and beyond high-speed interfaces and backplanes. Mellanox 100Gbit/s silicon photonics interconnect solutions will incorporate the high-speed opto-electronic technology from Kotura and the modulator drivers and TIAs from IPtronics.

In 2013 Mellanox acquired certain assets of XLoom Communications Ltd., an industry innovator in the domain of opto-electric chip-scale packaging, relating to XLoom's key technologies, as well as hired XLoom's senior technology personnel.

In February 2011, Mellanox acquired Voltaire Ltd., a leading provider of scale-out data center fabrics. The performance requirements for faster, better, and more cost-efficient computing and storage platforms in the virtualized data center and cloud markets are driving the need for superior connectivity solutions. Mellanox's acquisition of Voltaire addresses this need by strengthening Mellanox's market leadership position as the premier provider of end-to-end connectivity systems. The acquisition combined the two company's highly complementary products, markets and customers, as well as enhanced company scale, system product knowledge and software capabilities.

The transaction expands the company's software and product offerings to allow it to serve a wider range of data center markets, including High-Performance Computing, financial services, database, Web 2.0, Internet and the Cloud.

Manufacturing

Mellanox is a fabless semiconductor company. The current generation of its chips are produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp.

Products and market

In 2010, a press release from Oracle described Mellanox as "the premier switched fabric provider for enterprise data centers and high performance computing". According to the same press release, Mellanox's InfiniBand technology is faster, more scalable and provides higher throughput than alternative communications technologies. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, described Mellanox’s main technology, InfiniBand, as "by far the fastest and most efficient switch fabric for running enterprise data centers."

High-performance computing

Mellanox Technologies' InfiniBand products for computer clusters have been deployed in many of the TOP500 list of high-performance computers. Mellanox interconnect solutions provide low-latency, high-bandwidth, high message rate, transport offload for extremely low CPU overhead, remote direct memory access (RDMA) and advanced communications offloads. They are used in large-scale simulations, replacing proprietary or low-performance solutions. Mellanox's scalable HPC interconnect solutions are considered precursors to exascale computing through scalability, efficiency and performance. Mellanox scalable HPC solutions are certified for a large variety of market segments, clustering topologies and environments (Linux, Windows). Mellanox is an active member of the HPC Advisory Council and is contributing to high-performance computing outreach and education around the world.

Storage

Mellanox Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) and Storage Acceleration (VSA) storage products improve storage infrastructure performance with lower costs and complexity compared to traditional storage networks. This results in better server utilization, increased application performance, reduced back up times, increased data center simplicity and consolidation, lower power consumption and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

Customers

As of 2011 Mellanox derived more than a quarter of its revenues from two large customers, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. Intel Corporation accounts for over 2% of revenues. As of June 2011, Oracle owns 10% of Mellanox and is also a major customer. Other customers include Chevron, Viacom, JPMorgan, Comcast and Airbus.

Hiring practices

Mellanox has outsourced some of its engineering to the West Bank. Rather than setting up offshore engineering centers in the Far East or Eastern Europe, Mellanox hired Palestinian engineers from Ramallah through a Palestinian outsourcing firm. Waldman stated that Mellanox would build a research and development center in Ramallah even though it is more expensive than outsourcing to Eastern Europe.

Awards and recognition