Rumblings of a possible acquisition surfaced this spring with the murmurs picking up over the weekend, but this morning it became official: Intel announced it is buying chipmaker Altera for $16.7 billion.

Today's news marks the second major acquisition in less than a week, with Broadcom being sold to Avago Technologies for $37 billion, the largest technology deal in history. Earlier this year, Nokia signed a deal to buy Alcatel-Lucent for close to the same amount of Altera's purchase price.

The all-cash Intel-Altera deal is expected to close in the next six to nine months, giving Altera stockholders $54 for each share. Both companies signed off on the deal.

In the communications space, Altera's FPGAs — chips whose hardware can be programmed after the customer buys them — have been used in equipment such as cell base stations and are now appearing in data centers for cloud computing. Intel also foresees Altera chips to make an impact in the Internet of Things (IoT) market.

Trading after the announcement had Altera's stock up $3.02 (6%) at $51.82. Intel shares fluctuated, but at time of publication, stood at $33.90, down 56 cents (1.6%).