Intel Corp. today said it has acquired networking infrastructure startup Barefoot Networks Inc. as it seeks to improve the communications capabilities of its data center chips.

The acquisition, which was announced late Monday by Intel Executive Vice President Navin Shenoy (pictured, second from left), is designed to help the chipmaker better compete with its rival Broadcom Inc., analysts said.

Barefoot Networks is a computer networking company founded in 2013 that designs and produces programmable network switch silicon, systems and software.

Intel is the largest U.S. maker of computer chips for data centers, but its silicon is unable to efficiently manage communications via Ethernet, which is a widely used technology for connecting networks of computers and servers. Instead, Broadcom is the main Ethernet chip player in town. But Intel believes it can change that by buying up one of its smaller rivals.

In his announcement, Shenoy said the company is hoping to address an explosion of data that has led to huge demand for greater computing power in order to analyze it. Just as important, it also wants to provide the networking infrastructure necessary to move this information in and around between different data centers.

“We’ve discussed previously the amazing fact that over half of the world’s data was generated in the past two years and only 2% of that data has been analyzed,” Shenoy said. “Driven by that reality, we’re always asking ourselves how we can better enable our customers to harness the potential of this data, by moving, storing and processing it with the speed and efficiency that they demand.”

In order to move more information around, Intel needs to build more advanced data center interconnects, and that’s where Barefoot Networks comes in.

“Upon close, the addition of Barefoot Networks will support our focus on end-to-end cloud networking and infrastructure leadership, and will allow Intel to continue to deliver on new workloads, experiences and capabilities for our data center customers,” Shenoy said.

The executive explained that Barefoot brings with it “deep expertise” in cloud network architectures, P4-programmable high-speed data paths, switch silicon development and various other components of networking. In addition, Intel will gain access to Barefoot’s talent, as the startup’s employees will be offered jobs at the Santa Clara-based firm.

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. told SiliconANGLE Barefoot Networks was a useful acquisition for Intel as its data center business will only stay relevant if it finds a way to equip public cloud infrastructure providers with the gear they need.

“The traditional CPU focus has not helped Intel, so it makes sense double down on it’s other data center business in networking,” Mueller said. “Barefoot Networks gives Intel a lot of desirable network functions to run modern data centers that are increasingly defined by software over commoditized hardware. As Intel states, this is an acquihire, with a talented team joining Intel. And that’s important as the race for the software-defined data center has only just began.”

“This is a shot across the bow of Broadcom as it gives Intel key intellectual property to better serve hyperscalers and fulfill the need of superfast node-to-node communications,” said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “With Intel’s resources, I am very interested to see how it can integrate this with its interconnect technology Compute Express Link in the future and make the network application-specific integrated circuit an equal citizen to the central processing unit.”

Shenoy said the deal is set to close in the third quarter. He declined to say how much Intel had paid for the company.

Photo: Intel