Cisco has agreed to buy SpansLogic, a privately held designer of network processing chips based in Mountain View, Calif., for an undisclosed sum.

It plans to embed chips developed by SpansLogic into its switch platforms to keep up with demands for ever-faster Ethernet networking equipment, it said Wednesday. Using SpansLogic's network processors will allow it to improve network efficiency and throughput, it said.

Cisco will bring SpansLogic's 14 employees into its Datacenter business unit, where they will report to divisional Senior Vice President Tom Edsall. Cisco expects to close the deal by April 28, the end of its current fiscal quarter, subject to standard closing conditions.

SpansLogic, founded in 2004 with funding from Crescendo Ventures and ATA Ventures, has said little about its work to date.

"We are developing a line of products that challenge long-held assumptions about a fundamental function in computing," it said on its Web site. "Our technology derives from an elegant reformulation of the problem, an insight that allows us to overcome serious bottlenecks related to power consumption, speed, and cost of key applications."

While that technology can be applied to several fields, the company initially focused on networking, it said. The company has recently tried to recruit a software engineering manager with experience of embedded networking software development for network processors, and a product and test engineer with a background in testing integrated circuits with high-speed I/O (input/output).

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.