Pensando Has Been Quietly Networking A Huge List Of Clients
Pensando is not a household name, even in homes which discuss SmartNICs, but they have provided equipment and expertise to cloud providers such as IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. They have hit the news now, thanks to AMD’s stated intent to buy them for around US$1.9 billion and roll them up into AMD’s Data Center Solutions Group. This could create some interesting synergies, as AMD also recently absorbed Xilinx in their largest acquisition to date.
This could be a very big thing for AMD, though perhaps not directly impacting enthusiasts. Intel is still working out it’s SmartNIC plans which means AMD has a clear field to play in for now. If AMD can manage to build up a large customer base and use their early start to stay ahead of the competition, this could become a huge revenue stream. That would definitely be a good thing for competition if the deal is approved in the next few months.