Marvell has snapped up an ethernet-focused rival, Aquantia, for $452mn – a 39% premium on its closing share price. While there is considerable opportunity for Marvell to use Aquantia’s technologies in conventional data center applications, specifically its high-bandwidth transceivers, Marvell has pointed to the growing demand for in-vehicle networking in the automotive sector, where Aquantia has a few semiconductor designs that cater to autonomous vehicles. Though we loathe the term ‘data centers on wheels,’ it would make sense for cars to begin using some of the data center technologies available in their own automotive applications. While we probably aren’t going to be swapping the spare tires for 2U racks, or CAN-bus for InfiniBand, early automotive experiments with ethernet have shown…