As the mobile landscape continues to shift towards 5G, components themselves have to follow suit. In order to strengthen its devices for telecommunications applications, National Instruments recently acquired BEEcube. The company supplies high-performance field-programmable gate array (FPGA) prototypes and deployment products for advanced wireless research, wireless infrastructure, and military/defense applications.
This acquisition aims to strengthen NI’s Internet of Things (IoT) offerings as more and more devices become connected. BEEcube delivers end-to-end commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) systems built around FPGA microchips. The systems offer large capacity and high-speed interfaces to aid in the real-time prototyping of deployable systems. The technology is well suited for a variety of applications, including multi-core computer architecture, wireless communications, networking solutions at 100 Gb/s and over, HD video processing, signal intelligence, radar/sonar arrays, bioinformatics, data mining, and medical imaging.
BEEcube will operate as a wholly-owned NI subsidiary under the leadership of Chen Chang, the former company’s founder and CEO. It will continue to sell and support products under the BEEcube name through direct and distributor channels. The acquisition is reportedly not material to NI’s consolidated financial statements.