Marvell takes Cavium under its wing for $6 billion

The big acquisition deal in progress in the semiconductor space might be Broadcom's rejected bid to take over Qualcomm, but a pair of less-prominent names in the space have come to terms. Marvell Technology Group, a manufacturer of storage, networking, and processing chips, will purchase fellow fabless semiconductor firm Cavium for $6 billion. Cavium is one of the early players in the still-developing ARM server CPU space, and its ThunderX and ThunderX2 SoCs with up to 54 cores have Intel's Xeon processors in their sights for certain applications. Marvell hopes the acquisition will position the company to better compete with Intel, Qualcomm, and Broadcom.

Marvell offered over $84 per share for Cavium, an 11% premium compared to the company's stock market value this past Friday afternoon. In the final deal, ...