-Rambus Inc., a provider of industry-leading chips and silicon IP making data faster and safer, today announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Hardent, Inc. ("Hardent"), a leading electronic design company. This acquisition augments the world-class team of engineers at Rambus and accelerates the development of CXL processing solutions for next-generation data centers. With 20 years of semiconductor experience, Hardent's world-class silicon design, verification, compression, and Error Correction Code (ECC) expertise provides key resources for the Rambus CXL Memory Interconnect Initiative.

"Driven by the demands of advanced workloads like AI/ML and the move to disaggregated data center architectures, industry momentum for CXL-based solutions continues to grow," said Luc Seraphin, president and CEO of Rambus. "The addition of the highly-skilled Hardent design team brings key resources that will accelerate our roadmap and expand our reach to address customer needs for next-generation data center solutions." "The Rambus culture and track record of technology leadership is an ideal fit for Hardent," said Simon Robin, president and founder of Hardent. "The team is looking forward to joining Rambus and is excited to be part of a global company advancing the future of data center solutions." In addition, Hardent brings complementary IP and services to the Rambus silicon IP portfolio, expanding the customer base and design wins in automotive and consumer electronic applications. The transaction is expected to close in the second calendar quarter of 2022 and will not materially impact results.