Short Take: Vitesse Semiconductor acquires communications chipmaker

Vitesse Semiconductor has acquired start-up communications chipmaker Sitera for $750 million in stock. Sitera makes a new breed of fast and programmable network processors that power networking equipment made by firms like Cisco Systems, Lucent Technologies and Nortel Networks. The equipment, in turn, is used by Internet service providers and telecommunications carriers to increase Net bandwidth and offer better security and new services, such as Internet telephony.