Cisco announced its plans to acquire memory IP provider Memoir Systems today, a bid to boost the ASICs that are so near and dear to the company's heart.

The acquisition, which has Memoir being added to the Insieme Networks business unit, will let Cisco build programmable network switches with increasing speeds and a smaller footprint. Memoir claims its technology increases performance of  memory macros by up to 10x in terms of memory operations per second (MOPS), making it possible to develop switch and router ASICs with speeds, feeds, and costs typically not possible with physical memory design.

Cisco already is using Memoir’s technology in its Nexus 9000 switches, a key component of Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), the company’s version of SDN.

The memory boost will be important as port densities and port speeds move from 10 Gb/s to 40 or 100 Gb/s, Cisco Senior VP of Business Development Hilton Romanski said in the blog post announcing the acquisition plans. Physical memory in typical ASIC switch chips can’t handle increasing demand for higher port density and greater bit rates.

The announcement comes just one day after Cisco said it plans to acquire startup Metacloud. The Memoir acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2015. No word on financial terms of the deal.