Monday, June 1, 2015

Intel to Acquire Altera for its Programmable Logic Devices

Intel agreed to acquire Altera a for $54 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $16.7 billion.

Altera, which is based in San Jose, California, offers programmable logic, process technologies, IP cores and development tools . Its portfolio includes its Stratix series FPGAs with embedded memory, digital signal processing (DSP) blocks, high-speed transceivers, and high-speed I/O pins. Altera's Arria system-on-chip solutions integrate an ARM-based hard processor and memory interfaces with the FPGA fabric using a high-bandwidth interconnect. These devices include additional hard logic such as PCI Express Gen2, multiport memory controllers, error correction code (ECC), memory protection and high-speed serial transceivers.

Altera had 2014 revenue of $1.9 billion, of which 44% of sales were for telecom/wireless, 22% for industrial/military/automotive, and 16% for networking/computer/storage. Altera holds about 39% market share of the PLD segment compared to 49% for Xilinx. The company was founded in 1983 and has approximately 3,000 employees.

"Intel's growth strategy is to expand our core assets into profitable, complementary market segments," said Brian Krzanich, CEO of Intel. "With this acquisition, we will harness the power of Moore's Law to make the next generation of solutions not just better, but able to do more. Whether to enable new growth in the network, large cloud data centers or IoT segments, our customers expect better performance at lower costs. This is the promise of Moore's Law and it's the innovation enabled by Intel and Altera joining forces."

"Given our close partnership, we've seen firsthand the many benefits of our relationship with Intel—the world's largest semiconductor company and a proven technology leader, and look forward to the many opportunities we will have together," said John Daane, President, CEO and Chairman of Altera. "We believe that as part of Intel we will be able to develop innovative FPGAs and system-on-chips for our customers in all market segments."

http://www.intel.com
http://www.altera.com

  • In February 2013, Altera announced that its next generation FPGAs will be based on Intel’s 14 nm tri-gate transistor technology. These next-generation products target ultra high-performance systems for military, wireline communications, cloud networking, and compute and storage applications. Under a partnership deal announced by the firms, Altera’s next-generation products will now include 14 nm, in addition to previously announced 20 nm technologies.

Nokia Launches its AirFrame Data Center Servers and Switches

Nokia unveiled its AirFrame Data Center Solution for combining the benefits of cloud computing technologies with the stringent requirements of the core and radio in the telco world.


The Nokia AirFrame Data Center Solution is the company's foundation for meeting the latency and data processing requirements of the future, including 5G and distributed cloud applications. The portfolio is build around highly integrated, Intel-based servers and switches that are optimized for low-latency, scalability, flexibility and business agility.

Key advantages of AirFrame:

  • Offers significant efficiency gains when running data-demanding telco applications like mobile network Virtual Network Functions (VNFs)
  • Fully compliant with IT standards and able to run the most common IT cloud applications in parallel to telco cloud
  • Enables operators to implement not only their NFV strategy, but also expand into new business models, such as renting data center capacity for customers' IT applications
  • Implements the most advanced telco cloud security practices, which have been tested and approved at the Nokia Security Center in Berlin
  • Adheres to Nokia Networks' open standards approach as well as complies with ETSI NFV, ensuring the success of telco cloud deployments
  • Ready for 5G, with an advanced cloud management solution to handle the telco cloud architecture (centralized / distributed), including security orchestration which automates and manages the lifecycle of security policies and security functions
  • Ready to support several Nokia VNFs, including OSS/CEM and the company's recently announced Radio Cloud architecture

AirFrame components include:

  • Nokia AirFrame Cloud Servers and Switches - Pre-integrated racks with ultra-dense servers, high performance switches and software defined storage, including Nokia Networks specific enhancements that make it more efficient than other solutions to run demanding VNFs
  • Data center services - AirFrame is complemented by a suite of professional services provided by the company's services experts and geared to implement, monitor and operate telco cloud data centers

"Nokia Networks is changing the game in telco cloud. We are taking on the IT-telco convergence with a new solution to challenge the traditional IT approach of the data center. From the beginning, Nokia Networks has been a forerunner in telco cloud innovation*. This newest solution brings telcos carrier-grade high availability, security-focused reliability as well as low latency, while leveraging the company's deep networks expertise and strong business with operators to address an increasingly cloud-focused market valued in the tens of billions of euros," stated Marc Rouanne, Executive Vice President, Mobile Broadband, Nokia Networks.

http://www.nokia.com

Chuck Robbins Shakes Up Cisco's Top Leadership Structure

Cisco's newly-appointed CEO, Chuck Robbins, announced plans for a flatter leadership structure at the firm. As a result, Rob Lloyd, president of Sales and Development, and Gary Moore, president and COO, will be leaving the company, effective July 25th.

In a blog posting, Robbins said his focus areas are acceleration, simplification, operational rigor and culture.  He plans to announce a new organizational structure and team within two weeks.

http://blogs.cisco.com/news/leadership-transitions-for-the-digital-age

ADVA Intros "CloudConnect" Data Center Interconnect Solution

ADVA Optical Networking introduced a new Data Center Interconnect (DCI) solution designed for Internet Content Providers (ICPs) and Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).

The ADVA FSP 3000 CloudConnect, which is available in multiple chassis configurations including four rack units (4RUs), features a 400 Gbps single line card. It can transport up to 25.6 Tbps  duplex capacity per fiber pair from a single rack, delivering 51.2 Tbps of total throughput at 1.4 Tbps per rack unit. It includes amplifiers, multiplexers and all other necessary components.a

ADVA said its FSP 3000 CloudConnect has been specifically engineered to scale and there’s no client port lock-in. As new Ethernet data rates emerge, they can be supported by plugging new line cards into the entire range of chassis. Instead of an active backplane, the ADVA FSP 3000 CloudConnect features a modular design that eliminates unnecessary electrical processing. The system offers auto discovery and provisioning of the optical layer. It also supports a range of customizable APIs for programmability, including CLI, REST, NETCONF, and RESTCONF. For advanced virtualized and multi-tenant networks, a network hypervisor with fully open Northbound interfaces is available to abstract the DCI transport network so that end-to-end optimization of multi-layer packet flows is possible.

“The DCI market is experiencing one of the most fundamental shifts in its history. The phenomenal success of ICPs and CSPs, along with the continued adoption of cloud-based services, means that DCI networks are struggling to transport enormous amounts of data,” said Christoph Glingener, CTO, ADVA Optical Networking. “Such a fundamental shift in demand requires a fundamental shift in technology. This is the genesis of our new FSP 3000 CloudConnect. It’s something truly unique within the industry. We worked closely with the key players here to build exactly what was required. Our 4RU chassis is a clear example of this. Everyone we spoke to said they needed a chassis that isn’t too large and isn’t too small – the 4RU is the sweet spot for the DCI market. ”

http://www.advaoptical.com/en/newsroom/press-releases-english/20150601-adva-optical-networking-unveils-all-new-data-center-interconnect-solution

Hedvig Raises $18 Million for Distributed, Software-Defined Storage

Hedvig, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, announced $18 million in Series B funding for its software-defined storage solution designed to bring "the power of Amazon and Facebook-like infrastructure to any enterprise data center.".

Hedvig has developed a Distributed Storage Platform combines cloud and commodity infrastructure.  The system creates a virtualized pool that provisions storage with a few clicks, scales to petabytes and runs seamlessly in both private and public clouds. The company cited customers such as Intuit, Dovilo, Van Dijk and Paul Hastings LLP.

“We’ve identified the potential in a broken and fragmented storage market, and are not only looking to bring software-defined storage mainstream, but fundamentally change how companies store and manage data,” said Avinash Lakshman, founder and CEO of Hedvig. “Riding the wave of momentum from our recent company launch, this new investment round further validates our technology and approach, and will fuel our unwavering commitment to be the leading force of innovation in software-defined storage.”

The funding was led by Vertex Ventures with participation from existing investors True Ventures and Atlantic Bridge. Vertex Ventures General Partner In Sik Rhee also joined Hedvig’s Board of Directors. Hedvig has raised approximately $30.5 million to date.

http://www.hedviginc.com

Hedvig was founded by Avinash Lakshman, who previously built distributed systems including Amazon Dynamo, the foundation of the NoSQL movement, and Apache Cassandra for Facebook.

Crehan: High-Speed Server Networking Adoption Accelerates

Combined 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 40GbE shipments have increased more than 30% year-over-year to account for almost 30% of total 1Q15 Ethernet server-class adapter and LOM shipments, according to new reports from Crehan Research Inc. s. Over the same time period, 16 Gigabit per second (Gbps) Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA) shipments have seen a two-and-a-half fold increase to comprise 20% of total Fibre Channel shipments. These higher server networking speeds are now at inflection points in terms of adoption.

"Customers are more-rapidly upgrading their server networking capabilities to faster speeds to take advantage of the higher bandwidth capabilities of the most recent server platforms," said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. "Currently, this is more evident in the hyper-scale, telco and high-performance computing segments, and we expect it to become evident in the general enterprise environment by the second half of this year," he added. "Furthermore, we expect this migration to higher-bandwidth servers to in turn drive more widespread deployments of higher-bandwidth data center switches.”

http://www.crehanresearch.com/

HP Brings Out Denser, Faster, Cheaper Flash Storage

HP announced a new class of massively scalable, ultra-dense flash arrays along with price cuts that could reduce the cost of all flash storage by 25%.

The new HP 3PAR StoreServ Storage 20000 enterprise flash family boosts performance with over 3.2 million IOPS at sub-millisecond latency and consumes 85% less space than traditional high-end arrays. Combined with HP flash optimization and hardware-accelerated data compaction that increases usable capacity by 75 percent, these new 3.84 terabyte drives bring down the cost of all-flash storage to $1.50 per usable gigabyte, approaching that of 10K RPM SAS hard disk drives.

HP is also unveiling flash-optimized software for end-to-end availability and non-disruptive workload balancing across the data center.

"Early flash adopters are seeing added benefits such as extreme savings and productivity enhancements that are leading to an all-flash strategy for more applications," said Manish Goel, senior vice president and general manager, HP Storage. "HP 3PAR StoreServ is in a class of its own, with the affordability, scale and resiliency required for datacenter-wide flash adoption."

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/data-storage/3parstoreserv.html

Wireless Power Standards Bodies to Merge

The Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) and Power Matters Alliance (PMA) are merging to create a more unified industry association for wireless charging. The merger will lead to a core charging standard supporting a wide range of consumer, medical, military and industrial applications. A preliminary agreement had been announced earlier this year at CES.

"The combination of equal partners in support of a vision for wireless power with an initial focus on consumer applications is on schedule and provides a clear path for industry to shift to volume economics," said Dr. Kamil Grajski, Board Chair and president, Alliance for Wireless Power. "Combined, we have rededicated our commitment to delivering timely high quality technical specifications and a world-class certification program to support members' innovative solutions."

"This new organization is uniquely positioned to accelerate and grow the wireless charging market.  From the start we are putting our efforts behind increasing consumer awareness of wireless charging, backed by our marquee member roster," said Ron Resnick, president, Power Matters Alliance. "The ability to choose the right technology with added intelligence, the depth and breadth of our membership, and commitment to excellence will enable consumers to more rapidly experience the true potential that wireless power has to offer today, tomorrow, and into the future."

http://www.Powermatters.org