Avago Technologies is said to be in advanced talks over the possible acquisition of Broadcom Corporation in a deal that would further accelerate consolidation in the global semiconductor industry, says The Wall Street Journal.

It’s not clear how much Avago would be willing to pay for Broadcom, and the WSJ warns the deal could still fall through, quoting unnamed sources.

Broadcom builds microprocessor chips for a wide range of communications devices, including wired and wireless networks, smart home and smart car equipment and various Internet of Things (IoT) devices. As for Avago, it primarily builds chips for industrial and enterprise storage equipment, as well as wired and wireless networks. Avago was founded in 1961 and has headquarters in both Singapore and the U.S. Broadcom was founded in 1991 and is based in Irvine, California.

Broadcom is well known for being an aggressive competitor in the semiconductor industry, and has developed a fierce rivalry with Qualcomm Inc. in particular. Nevertheless, Avago has a higher market capitalization at $37 billion, compared with just $32 billion for Broadcom. Stocks in both companies jumped significantly in trading yesterday on the back of the WSJ’s report.

Avago has made a number of acquisitions and sales in recent years. In 2007 it bought Infineon to get into the fibre transceiver business, and in 2013 it acquired storage and networking company LSI Corp. for $6.6 billion. Avago then quickly shopped LSI’s flash storage business to Seagate for $450 million, before dumping its networking unit on Intel for $650 million in 2014.

Avago isn’t the only mover and shaker in the semiconductor industry though. Back in March, NXP Semiconductors and Freescale Semiconductor Inc. said they were planning to merge into a $40 billion company that would compete in both the IoT and connected cars spaces. In the same month, Intel said it plans to acquire Altera Corp. for its custom server chip technology, while the hedge fund Jana Partners LLC said it had taken a large stake in Qualcomm, before calling on the company to reorganize.

Neither Avago nor Broadcom were prepared to comment on the news.

Image credit: Skeeze via Pixabay.com