SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- PMC-Sierra, Inc. (NASDAQ:PMCS), a leading provider of high-speed broadband communications and storage semiconductors, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Silver Lake Partners to acquire the storage semiconductor business of Agilent Technologies for approximately $425 million in cash. The storage semiconductor business is part of Agilent's Semiconductor Products Group, which KKR and Silver Lake Partners are in the process of acquiring.

The acquisition of this business significantly strengthens PMC-Sierra's position in the storage semiconductor market and creates one of the industry's most complete end-to-end enterprise storage silicon solutions. The storage semiconductor business of Agilent's Semiconductor Products Group (SPG) is a long-term technology leader in Fibre Channel protocol controllers with its Tachyon product line and is developing next-generation multi-protocol controllers supporting Fibre Channel and SAS/SATA/iSCSI storage systems, as well as other storage-related products. When closed, the acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive for PMC-Sierra.

"PMC-Sierra offers one of the most popular lines of Fibre Channel loop switches and SAS/SATA expanders and multiplexers. Our products, architectures, and technology roadmaps are highly complementary with the storage semiconductor business of Agilent and we both have excellent enterprise storage customer relationships," said Bob Bailey, Chairman and CEO, PMC-Sierra. "The combination of the two businesses allows us to significantly expand our presence in the enterprise storage markets. I am very excited to be acquiring such a market leader and working with their talented people. For the customers, this combination is intended to improve time-to-market, tighten reference designs across a common software architecture, and lower overall cost of ownership."

PMC-Sierra Inc.