AMD wraps up £209m purchase of SeaMicro

Chipmaker AMD has completed its $334m (£209m) acquisition of server maker SeaMicro, a longtime partner of rival processor giant Intel.

With the completion of the deal on Monday, SeaMicro becomes AMD Data Center Server Solutions. The unit, which is expected to release systems based on Opteron processors before the end of the year, will boost AMD's prospects in selling to businesses with cloud-driven datacentres, the company said.

"The combination of [SeaMicro's fabric] technology with our processor design expertise greatly enhances our ability to attack the fastest-growing portion of the server market,” Lisa Su, general manager for AMD's global business units, said in a statement.

For many years, SeaMicro has provided microservers built around Intel's Xeon and Atom chips, so the purchase marks a big shift in its approach. After the acquisition was announced on 29 February, Intel told GigaOm it had been offered the chance to buy the Sunnyvale, California-based microserver specialist, but passed on the offer.

AMD paid $293m in cash for the server maker, with the remainder in shares and option. It said in February it did not expect to see an earnings benefit from the purchase until after its 2012 financial year.