AMD will soon acquire Xilinx, a chipmaker specializing in custom chips such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and system-on-chips (SoCs). The acquisition, announced today, is a $35 billion purchase of the computing company by AMD, maker of Ryzen, Radeon, and Epyc chips, with an eye toward expanding AMD's data center and custom silicon portfolio.

Xilinx is valued at $35 billion, close to the $40 billion Nvidia paid for Arm. Nvidia also spent $6.9 billion on data center networking company Mellanox last year, and AMD's decision to acquire Xilinx is intended to give it the freedom to address high-performance computing and data center environments with custom chips. [AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Suh said, "The Xilinx acquisition is the next step in our journey to establish AMD as a leader in the high-performance computing industry and the partner of choice for the world's largest and most important technology companies. This merger will bring tremendous value to all stakeholders, including AMD and Xilinx shareholders, and both companies will benefit from the potential for future growth and breakthroughs." [The Xilinx team is one of the strongest in the industry, and we are thrilled to welcome them to the AMD family. "By combining our world-class engineering team with their deep expertise, we will create an industry leader with the vision, talent and scale to define the future of high-performance computing. [AMD's focus on Xilinx is data center technology, but they also briefly touch on gaming, just as Nvidia's acquisition of Mellanox and Arm likely won't have a significant direct impact, so don't expect the gaming landscape to change much as a result of this acquisition While not, it is possible that Xilinx's FPGA and SoC skills could be used in AMD's embedded and semi-custom products.

If the Xilinx deal turns out to be profitable, AMD's R&D spending will increase further. In other words, in a roundabout way, there is some benefit to us. [AMD seems to want to consolidate, as does the rest of the high-tech industry, and it would not be surprising if Xilinx was high on their list. Dr. Lisa Su is reportedly largely responsible for AMD's shift from PC chips to consoles.

The deal between AMD and Xilinx is expected to be finalized by the end of next year, and until then the two will operate as separate entities.