Mellanox Technologies

Mellanox Technologies Ltd.

Type	Public
Traded as	NASDAQ: MLNX TASE: MLNX
Industry	Communication Equipment
Founded	1999 (1999)
Founder(s)	Eyal Waldman Roni Ashuri
Headquarters	Sunnyvale, California
Key people	Eyal Waldman, CEO
Revenue	US$154.6 Million (FY 2010)[1]
Employees	675
Website	mellanox.com

Mellanox Technologies is a provider of Ethernet and InfiniBand host bus adapters, founded in 1999. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and Yokneam, Israel. It is dual-listed on both the NASDAQ and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, where it is a component of the TA-100 Index and the TA BlueTech-50 Index.

Corporate history

Mellanox was founded in 1999 by former executives of Galileo Technology Eyal Waldman and Roni Ashuri.^[1] Initially founded as a chipmaker, it evolved into a producer of complete end-to-end systems by 2009.^[2] It provides InfiniBand switches for servers and storage used in enterprise data centers,^[3] and also makes its own chips to support the Infiniband protocol.^[4] The company was venture funded, raising more than $89 million dollars in 3 financing rounds. Venture and other financial investors included Raza Venture Management, Sequoia Capital, US Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Banc of America Securities, China Development Investment Bank, Gemini Israel Funds, Jerusalem Global Ventures, and Walden Israel Venture Capital. Strategic investors included Dell, IBM, JNI, Quanta Computer, Vitesse Semiconductor and Sun Microsystems.^[5][6]

The company went public in 2007, with an IPO on NASDAQ that raised $102 million, and valued the company at over half a billion dollars.^[7] Since 2010, Oracle Corporation has been a major investor in the company, holding around 10% of its stock.^[5] Oracle has stated it has no plans to acquire Mellanox, but uses its Infiniband technology in its Exadata and Exalogic appliances.^[8]

Acquisitions

In 2010, Mellanox acquired networking competitor Voltaire for $218m in cash.^[9][4]

Manufacturing

Mellanox is a fabless semiconductor company.^[10] The current generation of its chips are produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp.^[11]

Hiring practices

Mellanox is one of a few Israeli high-tech firms that have outsourced some of its engineering to the adjacent West Bank. Rather than setting up offshore engineering centers in traditional places such as the Far East or Eastern Europe, Mellanox instead hired five Palestinian engineers from Ramallah through a Palestinian outsourcing firm.^[12] Waldman claims an ideological reason behind the move, of boosting political stability in the region, and has stated Mellanox will move forward with plans to build an R&D center in Ramallah even though it is more expensive than outsourcing to Eastern Europe.^[13]

Products

In an October, 2010 article, Reuters described Mellanox as "the premier switched fabric provider for enterprise data centers and high performance computing". According to the same article, Mellanox's InfiniBand technology is faster, more scalable and provides higher throughput than alternative communications technologies.^[14] Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, has described Mellanox’s main technology, Infiniband, as "by far the fastest and most efficient switch fabric for running enterprise data centers."^[2]

• SwitchX is a multi-protocol ASIC that handles both Infinband and Ethernet traffic.^[11] It builds on the older 90 nanometer architecture of ConnectX technology, originally developed by Mellanox to support both Ethernet and Infiniband on one chip.^[7] SwitchX is the fifth generation, using a 40 nanometer process with 1.4 billion transistors on a 45mm by 45mm chip.^[11]
• ConnectX-3 is a 10/40GbE adapter for VMware ESXi 5.0 that provides virtual protocol interconnect, meaning it can run 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 40Gb Ethernet, or Infiniband at up to 56Gb per second from the same card.^[3] The ConnectX architecture has been described as "novel", with excellent performance that is "very well suited for modern multi-core platforms"^[15]

Customers

As of 2011^[update] Mellanox derived more than a quarter of its revenues from two large customers, Hewlett-Packard and IBM.^[16] Other customers include Chevron, Viacom, JPMorgan, Comcast and Airbus.^[17]

Corporate

Eyal Waldman is Mellanox Chief Operating Officer.

See also

• Economy_of_the_Palestinian_territories#Israel-Palestinian_high-tech_initiatives

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "CORPORATE OVERVIEW". Mellanox Technologies. 2011. http://www.mellanox.com/pdf/company/Corporate_Fact_Sheet.pdf. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Ackerman, Gwen (January 5, 2011). "Mellanox CEO Sees Sales Rising 10-Fold With Voltaire". Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-04/mellanox-ceo-waldman-sees-revenue-growing-10-fold-after-voltaire-purchase.html. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
3. ^ ^{a b} Amodio, Michelle (October 06, 2011). "On the Road with Mellanox Technologies". TMCnet. http://10-gigabit-ethernet.tmcnet.com/topics/10-gigabit-ethernet/articles/226214-the-road-with-mellanox-technologies.htm. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
4. ^ ^{a b} Morgan, Timothy Prickett (November 29, 2010). "Mellanox gobbles up Voltaire for $218m". The Register. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/29/mellanox_acquires_voltaire/. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
5. ^ ^{a b} Tsipori, Tali (September 25, 2011). "Oracle acquires $11m more Mellanox shares". Globes. http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000685576&fid=1725. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
6. ^ Kovar, Joseph F. (February 11, 2002). "VC Money Continues To Drain Into InfiniBand: Mellanox Secures $56M". CRN. http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/18827937/vc-money-continues-to-drain-into-infiniband-mellanox-secures-56m.htm;jsessionid=p3jwDPOPqFQFywCdlyPgUQ**.ecappj01. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
7. ^ ^{a b} Walko, John (February 8, 2007). "Mellanox raises $102 million with IPO on Nasdaq". EE Times. http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4186774/Mellanox-raises-102-million-with-IPO-on-Nasdaq. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
8. ^ Bagh, Carl (October 29, 2010). "Oracle buys 10 pct stake in Mellanox, will Dell, HP, IBM follow suit?". International Business Times. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/77108/20101029/oracle-mellanox-hp-dell-ibm-switch-chip-infiniband-siwtches-solaris-sun-acquired.htm. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
9. ^ Stynes, Tess (November 30, 2010). "Mellanox Agrees to Acquire Voltaire". The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704584804575644914189007440.html. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
10. ^ "Web-chip fabless Mellanox poised to raise $50m at company value of $250m". TheMarker. October 30, 2001. http://www.thestreet.com/story/10003192/web-chip-fabless-mellanox-poised-to-raise-50m-at-company-value-of-250m.html. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
11. ^ ^{a b c} Morgan, Timothy Prickett (April 26, 2011). "Mellanox uncloaks SwitchX network switch-hitter". The Register. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/26/mellanox_switchx_switch_chip/. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
12. ^ Heruti-Sover, Tali (November 7, 2010). "High-tech company aims to be first Israeli firm to hire Palestinian engineers". Haaretz. http://www.haaretz.com/themarker/high-tech-company-aims-to-be-first-israeli-firm-to-hire-palestinian-engineers-1.323311. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
13. ^ Mitnick, Joshua (April 22, 2011). "Tech diplomacy: Israeli CEO hires Palestinian programmers". The Christian Science Monitor. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/0422/Tech-diplomacy-Israeli-CEO-hires-Palestinian-programmers. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
14. ^ "Oracle Corporation Makes Strategic Investment In Mellanox Technologies, Ltd.". Reuters. October 27, 2010. http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/MLNX.O/key-developments/article/2008406. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
15. ^ Sur, Sayantan; Koop, Matthew J.; Lei; Panda, Dhabaleswar K. (2007). "Performance Analysis and Evaluation of Mellanox ConnectX InfiniBand Architecture with Multi-Core Platforms". hoti (15th Annual IEEE Symposium on High-Performance Interconnects (HOTI 2007)): 125-134. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.81.4890&rep=rep1&type=pdf. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
16. ^ Harif, Tal Barak (August 30, 2011). "Mellanox Buffered by Orders as Economy Flags: Israel Overnight". Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-29/mellanox-buffered-by-orders-as-economy-flags-israel-overnight.html. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 
17. ^ "Corporate and Financial Update". Mellanox Technologies. June 2011. http://www.mellanox.com/related-docs/company/MLNX_Corp_Inv_deck.pdf. Retrieved 2011-10-29. 

External links

• "Mellanox Technologies Ltd.". Yahoo Business profile. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=MLNX. Retrieved October 15, 2011.