ServerEngines

ServerEngines was a fabless semiconductor company established in 2004 by a team of serial entrepreneurs: Raju Vegesna, Sujith Arramreddy, and Sai Gadiraju. This venture was effectively a continuation of their previous success, ServerWorks, a server chipset maker they founded in the mid-1990s and sold to Broadcom in 2001 for $1.8 billion. After leaving Broadcom, Vegesna, who had a distinguished career including engineering roles at Motorola and co-founding Ross Technology, reunited with the ServerWorks co-founders to self-fund and launch ServerEngines.

Operating from Sunnyvale, California, with engineering teams in Texas and India, ServerEngines specialized in developing silicon chips to enhance the functionality and performance of enterprise servers. The company's business model was centered on designing and selling application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Its client roster included major industry players such as Cisco, HP, NEC, and Unisys. ServerEngines established itself as a key player in the network and storage convergence market.

The company's product portfolio was divided into two main lines. The first was the BladeEngine family, a series of 10Gbit/s Ethernet ASICs designed for Local Area Network on Motherboard (LOM) applications. These chips were integral to Converged Network Adapters (CNAs), which combine the functionalities of Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters and Ethernet network interface cards. The second product line was the Pilot family of server management controllers, which enabled remote, IP-based "lights out" management of servers. A significant milestone was the strategic partnership with Emulex, which utilized the BladeEngine ASIC for its OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs). This close relationship culminated in Emulex acquiring ServerEngines in 2010 for a deal valued at approximately $155-$159 million in cash and stock, plus potential milestone-based payments. The acquisition secured critical Ethernet intellectual property for Emulex, allowing it to control its network convergence strategy. Following the acquisition, Raju Vegesna joined Emulex as its Chief Strategist.

Keywords: fabless semiconductor, server chipsets, network convergence, storage convergence, Raju Vegesna, ServerWorks, Emulex acquisition, 10Gb/s Ethernet, ASICs, LOM applications, Converged Network Adapters, server management controllers, BladeEngine, Pilot controllers, data center technology, Fibre Channel over Ethernet, remote server management, silicon building blocks, OEM components, semiconductor design