Solarflare Drops 10GBase-T

IRVINE, Calif. -- Solarflare, the leader in high-performance, low-latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) server adapters and software, due to recent key business milestones, product accomplishments and customer opportunities, announced today its exit from the physical layer (PHY) business through the sale of the company’s 10GBASE-T assets to an unnamed merchant semiconductor company, the details of which cannot be disclosed. This deal will enable Solarflare’s existing 10GBASE-T customers to continue to use the company's leading 10GBASE-T products.

Major international equities exchanges are processing billions of transactions a day, worth trillions of US dollars. (See http://www.world-exchanges.org/statistics) Exchanges and trading houses are under tremendous competitive pressure to process trades with sub millisecond, if not microsecond, latency. To support this changing landscape, Solarflare launched a family of 10GbE SFP+ and 10GBASE-T server adapters and a robust portfolio of OpenOnload and EnterpriseOnload application acceleration middleware in 2010 and Q1 2011. Solarflare’s 10GbE adapters, in combination with its OpenOnload middleware, have created a compelling value proposition for high frequency traders by reducing latency and increasing message rates for TCP/IP traffic in market data feeds, while maintaining compatibility with customer applications and installed Ethernet and TCP/IP infrastructure.

“Our deal to sell the 10GBASE-T business is good for our current installed base of 10GBASE-T customers who will now benefit from having continued support for the best 10GBASE-T product on the market,” said Russell Stern, CEO at Solarflare. “We have now reached critical mass. Solarflare will continue to build on its success in the 10GbE server adapter market by growing share in high frequency trading and HPC segments, and launching solutions targeting the virtualization and big data segments. We’re excited by what the rest of 2011 will bring to the company.”

Solarflare Communications Inc.