Freescale buys Mindspeed's ARM processor business

Founded in 2003, Mindspeed is a fabless semiconductor manufacturer based in California, whose portfolio includes multicore, ARM based embedded processors and associated software. Tom Deitrich, pictured, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale's Digital Networking product group, said: "This acquisition will extend Freescale's reach into gateways and network-attached storage at a time when both are on the cusp of advances in ease of use, cloud technology, home automation and security, and the Internet of Things. "These products will also extend the breadth of our networking multicore processor portfolio, present new revenue growth opportunities, and allow us to offer even more options to our customers." The acquired business includes the Comcerto 100, 1000 and 2000 product families. The Comcerto 2000 SoC is supported by an extensive software library and combines two 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPUs with packet engines and communications accelerators. As part of the agreement, key members of the business will join Freescale. The transaction is expected to close in Q2 of this year.