Solarflare Communications

Solarflare Communications and Level 5 Networks, two leading early stage Ethernet companies merged with substantial backing from a syndicate led by Oak Investment Partners. The merger was driven by the common vision shared by the two companies to deliver high-performance, cost-effective, standards-based Ethernet products that enable one network for compute, storage, and network traffic. The combined company will be called Solarflare Communications and has its headquarters in Irvine, Calif., with development centers in Sunnyvale, Calif. and Cambridge, UK. Russell Stern, Solarflare president and CEO, heads the combined company.

Solarflare is the leading developer of 10GBASE-T chips which enable simple, relatively inexpensive 10 Gb interconnects that leverage the installed base of copper twisted pair cabling and Ethernet switching infrastructure. The combined company’s high-performance 1 Gb/10 Gb Ethernet controller technology is fully compliant with the Ethernet paradigm. By the simple installation of its accelerated Ethernet controllers, server system performance is increased with no need either to change existing applications or to deploy new protocols.

Products from Solarflare will transform the way the world uses Ethernet. Solarflare is located online at www.solarflare.com.