Cavium was a fabless semiconductor company based in San Jose, California,[2] specializing in ARM-based and MIPS-based network, video and security processors and SoCs.[3] The company was co-founded in 2000[4][5][6] by Syed B. Ali and M. Raghib Hussain,[7] who were introduced to each other by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Cavium offers processor- and board-level products targeting routers, switches, appliances, storage and servers.
The company went public in May 2007 with about 175 employees.[5] As of 2011, following numerous acquisitions, it had about 850 employees worldwide, of whom about 250 were located at company headquarters in San Jose.
In November 2017, Cavium's board of directors agreed to the company's purchase by Marvell Technology Group for $6 billion in cash and stock.[17] The merger was finalized on July 6, 2018.
On March 23 2022, Cavium was named[18] as an NSA "enabled" CPU vendor in a PhD thesis titled "Communication in a world of pervasive surveillance". The "enabled" term refers to a process with which a chip vendor has a backdoor introduced into their designs.