Cavium, Inc. was a fabless semiconductor company based in San Jose, California,[2] specializing in ARM-based and MIPS-based network, video and security processors and SoCs.[3] The company was co-founded in 2000[4][5][6] by Syed B. Ali and M. Raghib Hussain,[7] who were introduced to each other by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Cavium offers processor- and board-level products targeting routers, switches, appliances, storage and servers.
Cavium was acquired by Marvell Technology Group on July 6, 2018.[8]
On June 17, 2011, Cavium Networks, Inc. changed its name to Cavium, Inc.[9]
In November 2017, Cavium's board of directors agreed to the company's purchase by Marvell Technology Group for $6 billion in cash and stock.[17] The merger was finalized on July 6, 2018.
Cavium began selling security processors in late 2001 with the Nitrox line. The processor had support for features like IPsec, SSL, intrusion-detection services as well as VPNs. In 2004 the company launched the Octeon processor, which was using a 64-bit MIPS instruction set. At launch Cavium offered Octeon processors with two, four eight or sixteen cores.[18] In 2012, the company announced a 1-48 core MIPS-processor from the Octeon-line.[19] In 2014, the company announced the ThunderX, a 48 core server SoC based on the ARMv8 architecture.[20][21] Cavium also offered ethernet switches that were produced in cooperation with Xpliant since 2014.[22]
