Google Acquire TalkBin for Mobile Business Interaction

Google has acquired TalkBin, a newly formed start-up that is developing "a better way for consumers to connect with their local businesses in a more personal way." The company will work with Google's mobile and local teams.
http://www.google.com
http://www.talkbin.com

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Freescale Improves Base Station RF Power Transistors

Freescale Semiconductor introduced two LDMOS RF power transistors that allow wireless base station amplifiers to cover all channels in an entire allocated frequency band.


Freescale said the surge in mobile data traffic is driving a trend to extend amplifier systems to cover entire wireless frequency bands. Whereas most of today's amplifier systems operate with instantaneous (video) bandwidth limitations of 20 to 40 MHz and require a separate power amplifier for each channel, its new RF power LDMOS transistors deliver a combination of high linearity, high efficiency, wide instantaneous bandwidth and high power that extend the instantaneous signal bandwidth to an industry-leading 160 MHz.


"The need for RF power transistors to deliver exceptional linearity and efficiency over a full wireless band is no longer simply desirable; it is essential," said Ritu Favre, vice president and general manager of Freescale's RF Division. "The devices we are introducing today are the first in a family of broadband RF power transistors that includes all current and emerging wireless bands. Each device will be designed to combine all of the attributes – high efficiency and linearity and high output power – required to allow carriers to meet the challenges of the future."http://www.freescale.com

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Zain Iraq Picks Nokia Siemens Networks

Zain Iraq will consolidate all its mobile subscriber data using the Nokia Siemens Networks' One-NDS platform. The data is currently distributed across the network. The single database enables real-time data access across multiple applications.


Nokia Siemens Networks said its open One-NDS platform allows greater reliability, availability and security of services to more than 12 million Zain Iraq subscribers. Besides simplification of service creation and reduction in costs, the centralized subscriber data system is ready for handling converged services, utilizing different kinds of mobile and fixed access methods along with LTE.
http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com

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Fiberhome Selects Mindspeed's Crosspoint Switch for OTN

Fiberhome Telecommunications Technologies has selected Mindspeed's large crosspoint switch for use within its next-generation OTN product line.


"Fiberhome chose to use the Mindspeed's crosspoint in our OTN system because it solved both our signal-integrity and switching requirements in a highly-integrated device," said Yang Ming, vice general manager of optical networks products division at Fiberhome. "The Mindspeed crosspoints enable our OTN equipment to deliver superior flexibility, intelligent electronic/optical management and terabits per second (Tbps)-class switching capabilities."http://www.mindspeed.com

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AT&T Offers Remote Mobility Zone for Emergency Response

AT&T introduced a Remote Mobility Zone solution that enables organizations to set up their own cell sites during a disaster. This might include emergency responders who need to quickly establish base station coverage following a natural disaster.


AT&T's "Fly-away" solution packs a small cell site into a suitcase and can extend connectivity up to one half of a mile in any direction.


"In the pivotal first minutes of a natural or man-made disaster, AT&T Remote Mobility Zone provides a solution to help maintain critical mobile communications," said Chris Hill, vice president, Advanced Mobility Solutions, AT&T Business Solutions. "With AT&T Remote Mobility Zone, users can set up a cell site in less than 30 minutes."


AT&T said its Remote Mobility Zone is also well suited for organizations that operate in remote locations where AT&T holds licensed spectrum, but in which wireless coverage may not be available. AT&T Mobility Vanguard Services LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T, can install permanent cell sites for customers that work in these areas, providing mobile voice and data service.
http://www.att.com

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Netflix Reaches 23.6 million Subscribers

Netflix added 3.59 million new customer in Q1 2011 to reach a total base of 23.6 million worldwide. The figure was slightly below some forecasts. The number of new additions was nearly double the number added in Q1
of 2010. However, the company said net adds are going to get tougher going forward, especially compared to its recent high growth quarters.


In response to data caps recently introduced by Canadian ISPs, Netflix has changed the default streaming setting for
Canadian Netflix members to an encoding that consumes only 9 gigabytes for 30 hours of viewing versus
30 -70 gigabytes for 30 hours of viewing under its standard encoding.
http://www.netflix.com

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Big Switch Raises Funding for OpenFlow Network Virtualization

Big Switch Networks, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, raised $13.75 million in Series A financing to build a new platform for virtualization and cloud architecture in enterprise networks.



Big Switch is pursuing a virtualized network architecture based in OpenFlow, a new network protocol pioneered at Stanford University that enables the path of network packets through a series of switches to be determined by software running on a separate server. This network control plane would managed virtualized switching elements in the network. Virtualized programmable network could open the door to various high-performance applications in campus or enterprise networks.

Big Switch is headed by Guido Appenzeller (Co-Founder and CEO), who previously was a Consulting Professor at Stanford University and Head of the Clean Slate Lab where he managed the OpenFlow standards effort and led the team that developed the OpenFlow reference implementation.



The funding was led by Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures. With this infusion of capital, four new directors joined Big Switch Networks Co-Founders Guido Appenzeller, CEO, and Kyle Forster, VP of Sales and Marketing, on the board:

• Mark Leslie, Lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Former CEO of Veritas



• Bill Meehan, Raccoon Partners Lecturer in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Director Emeritus at McKinsey and Co. and Leader of the Firm's West Coast and Private Equity Practices



• Shirish Sathaye, Partner at Khosla Ventures and Former VP of Engineering and CTO of FORE Systems and Alteon WebSystems



• Mike Volpi, Partner at Index Ventures and Former Head of M&A, Chief Strategy Officer and SVP/GM of the Routing Technology Group at Cisco.

"Enterprise networking is exciting again. We're seeing new customer problems that aren't well addressed with traditional networking technologies and changes in the large IT suppliers that are creating opportunities for startups like Big Switch Networks," said Mike Volpi, Partner at Index Ventures and Former SVP/GM of the Routing Technology Group at Cisco.



Big Switch Networks also announced that it has joined the newly formed ONF, a nonprofit group focused on promoting OpenFlow and other Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technologies as a way to speed innovation in the networking industry.



OpenFlow is a standard protocol that enables networks to evolve more rapidly by giving owners and operators better control over their networks and the ability to optimize network behavior.http://www.bigswitch.com http://www.openflow.org/

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Verizon Wireless Offers BoxTone Mobile Management

Verizon Wireless is offering its enterprise customers BoxTone's mobile management platform to secure, manage, monitor and support the leading mobile devices, users, applications and services.
Qualifying enterprises may be eligible to add BoxTone's software license cost directly to their Verizon Wireless bills.



In addition to traditional Mobile Device Management (MDM), such as initial activation, provisioning, configuration and change tasks for each device, BoxTone takes the process further and delivers a unified mobile management platform that provides the enterprise a single point of control to address the full mobile lifecycle. The supported smartphone and tablet devices include BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Mobile/Phone 7. Mobile messaging platforms are also supported, including BlackBerry Enterprise Server, Microsoft ActiveSync and Good Technology.http://www.boxtone.com

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NetLogic Packs 64 Cores in Communications Processor

NetLogic Microsystems introduced its XLP864 multi-core processor featuring 64 NXCPUs cores -- double the number of its XLP832 processor. The device is capable of delivering 80 Gbps throughput and 120 million packets-per-second (Mpps) of intelligent application performance for next-generation 3G/4G mobile wireless infrastructure, metro Ethernet, security, storage, enterprise, edge and core infrastructure network applications.



The new processor features quad-issue, quad-threaded and superscalar out-of-order execution capabilities operating at up to 2.0 GHz. The XLP cores are quad-threaded to minimize application bottlenecks due to memory latency, thereby greatly improving performance for network data plane processing applications. Furthermore, the NXCPUs are equipped with a tri-level cache architecture with over 25 Mbytes of fully coherent on-chip cache which delivers 40 Terabits/sec of extremely high-speed on-chip memory bandwidth.



NetLogic said its new processor also offers a low-latency Enhanced Fast Messaging Network capability that enables high-bandwidth communication among the 64 NXCPUs and to support billions of in-flight messages and packet descriptors between all on-chip elements. To complement the 64 NXCPUs, the XLP864 processor offers over 80 fully-autonomous processing engines that provide independent and complete offload of certain network functions from the NXCPUs, including:

• 80 Gbps fully-autonomous Security Acceleration Engine supporting networking, wireless and storage encryption/decryption/authentication protocols



• 80 Gbps Network Acceleration Engines for Ingress/Egress Packet Parsing and Management



• 256 Gbps RAID-5/RAID-6 Acceleration



• 20 Gbps Compression/Decompression



• Packet Ordering



• Storage De-Duplication Acceleration



• TCP Segmentation Offload



• IEEE 1588 Hardware Time Stamping

"We are pleased to raise the bar once again and be on the forefront of technical leadership with our new XLP864 processor, which will deliver unprecedented performance and functionality for our customers' next-generation systems," said Chris O'Reilly, vice president of marketing at NetLogic Microsystems. "This comes at an ideal time as the communications industry struggles to keep pace with the dramatic increase in bandwidth and traffic complexity. We believe our XLP multi-core processor is the best solution to capitalize on this trend."

http://www.netlogicmicro.com

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Mellanox Samples its Next Gen Data Center Silicon

Mellanox Technologies began sampling its next-generation switch silicon -- "SwitchX" with Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) technology, providing scalability for up to 36-ports of FDR 56 Gbps InfiniBand or 40 Gigabit Ethernet. The switching fabric is aimed at convergence of LAN, SAN and IPC (Inter Processor Communications) service architectures.



The chip delivers more than 4 Tbps of non-blocking switching throughput while enabling new levels of protocol flexibility in the data center for server-to-server, server-to-storage or storage-to-storage connectivity.



SwitchX can operate as an InfiniBand switch or Ethernet switch (including Data Center Bridging - DCB) with extremely low-latency and power. It also includes integrated convergence technology for Fibre Channel NPIV gateways. It also allows flexible partitioning of the network into multiple management domains to support multi-tenancy and the delivery of an extensive array of network services over a common infrastructure.



"The new class of data centers requires lossless, high density, low power switching capabilities that removes bottlenecks, supports convergence and maximizes efficiency for the best return-on-investment," said Eyal Waldman, chairman, president, and CEO of Mellanox Technologies. "SwitchX delivers on these requirements with best-in-class features and performance over both InfiniBand and Ethernet protocols for maximum flexibility. We are proud to provide the industry's first 56Gb/s FDR InfiniBand and the highest density Ethernet switch, both in the same IC with SwitchX."



The new SwitchX silicon leverages TSMC's 40nm process technology.http://www.mellanox.com

• Mellanox Technologies recently completed its acquisition of Voltaire Ltd., a provider of scale-out data center fabrics, for $8.75 per share, or a total equity value of approximately $218 million ($176 million net of cash). Voltaire developed a family of server and storage fabric switches and advanced management software. These products are included in server and blade offerings from Bull, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, NEC and SGI. Founded in 1997, Voltaire is headquartered in Ra'anana, Israel and Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
  
  
  
  Mellanox Technologies is a supplier of end-to-end connectivity solutions for servers and storage that optimize data center performance. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and Yokneam, Israel. The combined businesses currently have approximately 700 employees and achieved revenues of $217 million for the twelve months ended Sept. 30, 2010.

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Broadcom Completes $313 Million Acquisition of Provigent

Broadcom completed its previously announced acquisition of Provigent, a supplier of mixed signal semiconductors for microwave backhaul systems. Broadcom paid approximately $313 million, net of cash assumed, to acquire all of the outstanding shares of capital stock and other rights of Provigent.


Provigent's System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions address the backhaul bottleneck, including high capacity modem, baseband, networking and RF chain components. The company is based in Israel and it has offices in Santa Clara, California.



Broadcom said the addition of Provigent's engineering expertise in microwave radio products will expand its portfolio to more thoroughly address the $5B microwave backhaul equipment business.
http://www.broadcom.com

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