Advanced Micro Devices -- the once-beleaguered chipmaker and Intel competitor -- has announced that it will acquire its competitor Xilinx. The $35 billion merger will be AMD’s largest-ever acquisition, and will be among the biggest mergers in this sector in its history. AMD and Xilinx expect the deal to close by the end of 2021. This will put the company in a better position relative to rival Intel at a particularly vulnerable time for that company, given their recent announcement of yet another delay of their 7 nm process chips and the subsequent leadership shake-up, as well as Apple’s long-expected transition to in-house silicon removing a large portion of their chip demand later this year.

The deal comes hot on the heels of the only-slightly-more expensive Nvidia deal with ARM Holdings, reportedly valued at $40 billion, continuing a recent consolidation trend in the chip production industry.

Xilinx, known primarily for datacenter and network communications work, complements AMD in that both companies are similarly known for custom silicon for high performance computing. “Our acquisition of Xilinx marks the next leg in our journey to establish AMD as the industry’s high performance computing leader and partner of choice for the largest and most important technology companies in the world,” says Dr. Lisa Su, President and CEO of AMD.

Though today’s release only briefly mentions gaming, this merger promises to grow the resources and market footprint of the ascendant AMD, known for their Ryzen and Radeon products, both of which are well-known in the world of high-performance gaming PCs.