In a bid to buoy its leadership position in communications processing, Freescale Semiconductor Inc. said today it has acquired the assets of privately held Seaway Networks Inc., a fabless semiconductor supplier of content processing technology and solutions for the data networking industry.

Freescale, which has opened a technology center in Ottawa, Canada - home to Seaway - plans to integrate Seaway technologies into its roadmap for next-generation PowerQuicc communications processors. Specifically, the semiconductor company hopes the Seaway acquisition will help drown out the competition in the growing market for converged Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol applications.

"This acquisition aligns Seaway''s content-processing expertise, technology and products with Freescale''s communications processor roadmap and PowerQuicc processor portfolio," said David Perkins, senior VP of Freescale and general manager of Freescale''s Networking and Computing Systems Group, in a statement.

"Seaway''s strong technical team and intellectual property assets complement and add value to our dataplane strategy, enabling us to enhance our technology leadership and momentum in the networking equipment market," he added.

Seaway is anchored in high-performance, silicon-based content processing, advanced security and traffic-management solutions for data networking applications. It delivers high-performance processors and subsystem products for Layer 4-7 applications that enable next-generation networking equipment.

Freescale gains 40 employees, which represent the majority of the Seaway organization that will staff Freescale''s newly formed Ottawa Technology Center. Freescale said employees at its Ottawa site will work with other Freescale design centers to advance the company''s communications processor roadmap and data-plane processing technologies.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.