Announced in preview in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretzIntel has formalized on March 31, the acquisition of the start-up Granulate Cloud Solution. The amount of the operation has not been disclosed, but it could be around 650 million dollars.
Optimization is what Granulate AI is all about
Granulate is a company that specializes in optimizing IT workloads for the cloud. Its solution is based on an AI that learns the operation of servers in a data center. Once sufficiently trained, it will increase the performance of the server, reduce the use of the microprocessor, lower the latency of its applications. The company claims an improvement in response time of up to 40%, up to five times the throughput and reduces costs by up to 60% by easing the workload.
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Sandra Rivera, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Datacenter and AI Group, the branch where Granulate will be nestled, explains that ” Granulate’s industry-leading standalone optimization software can be applied to production workloads without the customer having to make code changes, driving optimized hardware and software value for every cloud and data center customer. data “.
For Intel and its branch, this is the opportunity to acquire a technology that is difficult to access internally and to offer a more varied range of tools to its customers for traffic management. Techcrunch notes that the network management sector tends to concentrate, players offering a solution are bought by large suppliers.
Granulate would have very much interested Nvidia in the same way as Intel, the two companies are competing in the race to take over startups specializing in high performance computing and traffic management. Intel’s data center business is certainly growing, but its competitors in the field, Nvidia and AMD, are progressing faster.
Group CEO Pat Gelsinger sees software as a competitive differentiator. A position explained by Greg Lavender, Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of Intel’s Software and Advanced Technology Group, We are building our portfolio of software optimization tools with flexible and scalable capabilities that allow us to meet the growing demands of the age of ubiquitous computing “.
The love affair between Intel and Israeli companies
According to information obtained by The Register, Granulate software will be offered in addition to Xeon server processors. Since the end of 2019, the startup and Intel have been working together to develop software specifically to optimize Xeons. This takeover is an almost logical continuation.
Granulate will also continue to provide its software to third parties on a stand-alone basis. The company of 120 employees, based in Israel, is located in a country that Intel already knows perfectly. The Jewish state is one of its bases for international research and development. Intel has already carried out its two main acquisitions there, Mobileye, its autonomous driving subsidiary and Tower Semiconductor.
The establishment in Israel serves as a model for the group’s 33 billion euros of investments in Europe, which could reach 88 billion euros in the long term. The takeover, decided in a week, should be finalized during the second quarter of 2022.