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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Mellanox announced an agreement on May 15, 2013, to buy privately held Kotura for approximately $82 million in cash, subject to adjustments. The acquisition closed on August 15, 2013. Mellanox sought Kotura’s silicon-photonics technology, products and engineering team to strengthen optical links for 100Gb/s-and-faster networking.
What Mellanox announced in May 2013
Mellanox Technologies Ltd. said it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Kotura, Inc., a privately held developer of silicon-photonics optical-interconnect technology. The companies’ boards had unanimously approved the transaction. Mellanox expected it to close in the second half of 2013, subject to customary conditions, regulatory approvals and Kotura shareholder approval. The announcement was issued May 15; EE Times reported it on May 16.
The announced consideration was approximately $82 million in cash, subject to adjustments. Mellanox’s announcement described the price and expected timetable; they were not yet proof of a completed transaction. Mellanox’s SEC-filed announcement sets out the terms and conditions.
What Kotura made
Kotura developed optical-interconnect technology based on silicon photonics: using optical components integrated with silicon circuitry to move data as light. Such a link still needs optical and electrical functions—including light generation, modulation, detection, waveguides, packaging and electrical interfaces. Silicon photonics is not simply ordinary electronic processing on a silicon chip, nor does a single chip necessarily provide every element of a deployed network connection.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors#1 Best Overall
- 1. CX4121A is a dual 25GbE SFP28 fiber port intelligent RDMA Ethernet adapter with a PCIE Gen 3.0 x8 interface. Based on the Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx EN MT27711A0 converged Ethernet controller, it provides a cost-effective and flexible Ethernet solution for Web 2.0, cloud, data analytics, database, and storage platforms.
- 2. Ethernet Controller: Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx EN MT27711A0；Bus Interface: PCIE 3.0 x8; Ethernet Speed: 2x 25GbE; Connector Type: 2x SFP28 Fiber Ports; Remote Boot: RoCE, PXE, iSCSI; Supports RDMA over RoCE; Support I/O Virtualization and SR-IOV; Support Overlay Networks by providing advanced NVGRE, VXLAN and GENEVE.
- 3. Supports IEEE 802.3by, 25 Gb/s; IEEE 802.3ae 10Gb/s; IEEE 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet; IEEE 802.3ap; IEEE 802.3ad; 802.1AX; IEEE 802.1Q; 802.1P VLAN tags and priority; IEEE 802.1Qaz; IEEE 802.1Qbb; IEEE 802.1Qbg; IEEE 1588V2; Support Jumbo frame (9.6KB).
- 4. PCIE Gen 3.0 Standard, 8Gb/s Per Lane. PCIE x8 Interface, 64Gb/s Bandwidth Totally, Ensure 2x SFP28 Fiber Ports archive 25GbE simultaneously. Auto-negotiates to PCIE X8, X4 Lane. Auto-switch to PCIE Gen 3.0, Gen 2.0. Support MSI/MSI-X mechanisms.
- 5. Support plug and play on Windows 11, 10 64bit and Windows Server 2012, 2012R2, 2016, 2019, 2022, 2025 64bit. Compatible with RHEL, CentOS, FreeBSD, VMware and other Linux kernel-based systems.
Mellanox described Kotura’s platform as integrating multiple high-speed active and passive optical functions on a silicon chip. Its announcement cited a low-power 100Gb/s Optical Engine intended for data-center and high-performance-computing interconnects, and more than 120 granted or pending patents in CMOS photonics and packaging design. These are company-reported descriptions of Kotura’s assets, not independent measures of later performance.
Contemporary EE Times coverage reported that Kotura had roughly 80 employees and shipped its first silicon-photonics chip in 2006. Kotura was principally a technology and component/platform company, not a supplier of complete networking systems; Mellanox sold InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnect products. EE Times’ May 2013 report provides that contemporary context.
Rank #2
- Connector: SFP+
- Product type: Network adapter
- Made by Mellanox
Why Mellanox wanted silicon photonics
Mellanox aimed to strengthen optical connectivity for 100Gb/s InfiniBand and Ethernet and for future systems beyond that speed. Optical links can carry data farther than copper links and support high bandwidth, while integration of optical functions may help increase density. But an optical link also requires optical engines, packaging and conversion between electrical and optical signals; integration does not eliminate those engineering challenges.
Mellanox presented Kotura’s technology as a route to higher-density, scalable connections with lower power and cost, and said owning and controlling the technology could make integration more reliable at 100Gb/s and above. Those were management’s strategic expectations, not independently established outcomes of the acquisition. The company identified high-performance computing, cloud, Web 2.0, enterprise data centers, databases, financial services and storage as potential markets.
Rank #3
- 【Controller】: 25GbE PCI-E NIC with Original Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx controller, which provide true hardware-based I/O isolation with unmatched scalability and efficiency, achieving the most cost-effective and flexible solution for Web 2.0, cloud, data analytics, database, and storage platforms.
- 【Data Rate】:Dual SFP28 Ports(1GbE/10GbE/25GbE) let you connect to network cable for meeting the demands of data center environments.PCIe v3.0 (8.0GT/s) x8(Compatible with 2.0/1.1); X8/X16 Lane.
- 【Technical Support】:iPXE, DPDK, iSCSI, TCP/IP, UDP/IP, Jumbo Frames, RDMA（RoCE v1, RoCE V2）,ASAP², VMDq, SR-IOV, RSS, IPsec.
- 【Supported Operating Systems】:Windows; Windows Server; Linux Stable Kernel version; Ubuntu; Vmware ESXi; Citrix XenServer; Deepin; RHEL/CENTOS; Freebsd; OFED AND WINOF-2; Mikrotik; Debian; BCLINUX; ALIOS; Euler; KYLIN; etc.
- 【I/O virtualization, multi-VM support】：SR-IOV technology enables efficient management of I/O resources of virtual machines by sharing physical resources. And Infiniband technology fully meets the needs of high bandwidth and low latency in big data, its aggregation on virtual I/O and flat network architecture provide a huge pipeline that can be dynamically distributed on demand to improve availability and load balancing.
The deal also brought intellectual property and an engineering organization in-house. Mellanox said it planned to establish its first U.S. research and development center at Kotura’s existing location and retain Kotura’s product lines for customer and partner continuity. The announcement identified Kotura’s location as Monterey Park, California; Mellanox listed offices in Sunnyvale, California, and Yokneam, Israel.
The acquisition closed in August 2013
Mellanox completed the Kotura acquisition on August 15, 2013, at an approximately $82 million cash purchase price, subject to working-capital and other adjustments. The completion filing resolves the central uncertainty in the original “to acquire” headline: this was not merely a proposed transaction. The completion announcement confirms the closing.
Rank #4
- Industry-leading throughput and latency performance
- I/O consolidation
- Virtualization acceleration
- TCP/UDP/IP and iSCSI Stacks
- Dual Gigabit Ethernet Ports
Kotura was one part of a broader optical strategy
On June 4, 2013, Mellanox separately announced an agreement to acquire IPtronics A/S for approximately $47.5 million. IPtronics supplied high-speed analog optical-interconnect components, including VCSEL drivers, modulator drivers and transimpedance amplifiers. Mellanox described IPtronics as complementary to Kotura: Kotura brought silicon-photonics capability, while IPtronics added analog components. The companies and technologies should not be conflated, and the $47.5 million figure belongs to the separate IPtronics transaction. Mellanox’s IPtronics announcement explains the complementary portfolio rationale.
At the time, the move fit a wider industry push to control optical-interconnect technology as data-center bandwidth needs rose. Contemporary optics-industry coverage noted Intel’s internal silicon-photonics work and Cisco’s 2012 acquisition of Lightwire. That context indicates a competitive race, not proof that Mellanox’s deal produced a particular market position or commercial result. Optics.org’s contemporary coverage described that landscape.
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- 【Controller】: 100GbE PCI-E NIC with Mellanox connectX-5 VPI controller,which provide high performance and flexible solutions with up to two ports of 100GbE connectivity, 750ns latency, up to 200 million messages per second (Mpps). and a record setting 197Mpps when running an open source Data Path Development Kit (DPDK) PCIe (Gen 4.0).
- 【Data Rate】:Dual QSFP28 Ports(10GbE/25GbE/40GbE/50GbE/100GbE) and EDR let you connect to network cable for meeting the demands of data center environments.PCIe v4.0 (16.0GT/s) x16(Compatible with 2.0/1.1/3.0); X16 Lane.
- 【Technical Support】:iPXE, DPDK, iSCSI, UEFI, TCP/IP, UDP/IP, Jumbo Frames, RDMA（RoCE v1, RoCE V2）,ASAP², VMDq, SR-IOV, RSS, IPsec, IB, IEEE1588.
- 【Supported Operating Systems】:Windows; Windows Server; Linux Stable Kernel version; Ubuntu; Vmware ESXi; Citrix XenServer; Deepin; RHEL/CENTOS; Freebsd; OFED AND WINOF-2; Mikrotik; Debian; BCLINUX; ALIOS; Euler; KYLIN; etc.
- 【I/O virtualization, multi-VM support】：SR-IOV technology enables efficient management of I/O resources of virtual machines by sharing physical resources. And Infiniband technology fully meets the needs of high bandwidth and low latency in big data, its aggregation on virtual I/O and flat network architecture provide a huge pipeline that can be dynamically distributed on demand to improve availability and load balancing.
What happened to Kotura afterward
Later corporate filings list the former Kotura entity as Mellanox Technologies Silicon Photonics, Inc. Mellanox was acquired by NVIDIA on April 27, 2020. NVIDIA’s closing filing reported consideration of approximately $7 billion; its later accounting disclosure reported total purchase consideration of approximately $7.13 billion. These figures describe NVIDIA’s acquisition of Mellanox, not the Kotura purchase. NVIDIA’s subsidiary list identifies the former Kotura entity, and its closing filing documents the Mellanox acquisition.
The corporate filings establish ownership and the former Kotura name, but do not establish which Kotura-branded products remained available, were renamed or were discontinued by August 2026. Nor do the cited records isolate Kotura’s revenue or establish the acquisition’s return on investment. Mellanox’s announcement forecast $0.01–$0.03 per share of non-GAAP accretion for full-year 2014; that was a forecast, not evidence of the result.
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