Cisco Systems Inc. today announced plans to acquire Exablaze Pty. Ltd., an Australian firm that makes ultra-low-latency networking devices and chips for financial applications such as algorithmic stock trading.

The dollar value of the deal is not being disclosed. Cisco expects to wrap up the transaction in its fiscal third quarter ending April 27.

Sydney-based Exablaze has a broad portfolio of networking hardware that includes switches and network interface cards, as well as other types of gear ranging from cables to optical transceivers. The seven-year-old firm lays claims to multiple industry records. Exablaze boasts of having the market’s highest-density Layer 1 switch as well as the lowest-latency network interface card in the form of the ExaNIC X10, an adapter that can process traffic with delays of under one millionth of a second.

The company’s adapters are powered by field-programmable gate arrays that it designed internally. Exablaze sells a development kit that enables companies to reprogram the FPGAs for new applications such as network threat scanning.

Cisco will fold the firm’s products into its Nexus family of switching hardware with the goal of courting enterprises in the financial sector. 

“In the case of the high frequency trading sector, every sliver of time matters,” Rob Salvagno, the company’s vice president of business development, wrote in a blog post. “By adding Exablaze’s segment leading ultra-low latency devices and FPGA-based applications to our portfolio, financial and HFT [high-frequency trading] customers will be better positioned to achieve their business objectives and deliver on their customer value proposition.”

Cisco hinted that it also sees other uses for Exblaze’s technology. The company detailed in a FAQ accompanying the acquisition announcement that the Australia’s firm products lend themselves to applications across areas such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, edge computing and telecommunications infrastructure.

Exablaze’s FGPAs will provide a boost for Cisco’s growing semiconductor operations. The company this year inked a $2.6 billion deal to acquire Acacia Communications Inc., a maker of chips for optical networks, and last December bought another photonics chip maker called Luxera Inc. in a $660 million transaction.

Cisco’s organic semiconductor development investments, meanwhile, have produced the much-touted Silicon ONE processor family. The first product in the series is a chip dubbed the Q100 that the company claims can process packets three times as fast as the competition while using half the power. 

Photo: Cisco