SiTime Unveils Next Gen Oscillators for Telecom and Networking Systems

SiTime unveiled a new family of Super-TCXOs (temperature compensated oscillators) and oscillators for telecommunications and networking equipment.


The new Elite Platform encompassing leverages the company's MEMS and analog technologies to deliver better performance, higher reliability and higher quality of service than conventional quartz solutions, even in the presence of environmental stressors.

In particular, SiTime's ELITE-Platform addresses environmental issues with potential to impact the performance of timing of network equipment in uncontrolled environments such as basements, curbsides, rooftops, and on poles. The company said precision timing components in these systems must now operate in the presence of high temperature, thermal shock, vibration and unpredictable airflow.

SiTime's Elite timing solutions are based on its unique DualMEMS architecture with TurboCompensation.

This architecture delivers exceptional dynamic performance with three key elements:

• Robust, reliable, and proven TempFlat MEMS that eliminates activity dips and enables 30 times better vibration immunity than quartz
• DualMEMS temperature sensing with 100% accurate thermal coupling that enables 40 times faster temperature tracking, which ensures the best performance under airflow and rapid temperature changes
• Highly integrated mixed-signal circuits with on-chip regulators, a TDC (temperature to digital converter) and a low-noise PLL that deliver 5 times better immunity to power-supply noise, 30 uK temperature resolution that is 10 times better than quartz, and support for any frequency between 1 and 700 MHz

“New telecom infrastructure uses 4G/5G small cells and Synchronous Ethernet to increase network data capacity; the high-power components that are used in such systems will have high and constantly changing heat loads,” said Joe Madden, founder and principal analyst at Mobile Experts. “The dynamic performance of precision timing components during rapid temperature change will become a critical requirement in such equipment. MEMS technology inherently performs better in the presence of dynamic environmental conditions, and has become a very interesting alternative to quartz technology.”

The Elite Platform comprises four new product families with a wide range of frequencies and the following unique features. All Elite solutions offer 0.1 ppb/g vibration immunity and do not have activity dips or micro-jumps.

Stratum 3 precision Super-TCXOs for communications and cloud infrastructure equipment

• ±100 ppb frequency stability over -40°C to +105°C, the widest operating temperature available with any TCXO
• 1 to 5 ppb/°C frequency slope (ΔF/ΔT) at an extremely fast temperature ramp rate of 10°C/minute, a performance level that is unique among timing devices
• 3e-11 Allan deviation (ADEV) at 10 second averaging time, 10 times better than typical quartz TCXOs
• 0.2 ps/mV power supply noise rejection (PSNR), eliminates dedicated system LDO
• Optional I2C/SPI frequency tuning, eliminates external DAC

 Super-TCXOs for GNSS, industrial and automotive applications

• ±0.5 ppm frequency stability over -40°C to +105°C

Ultra-low jitter differential oscillators

• 0.23 ps integrated RMS phase jitter (12 kHz to 20 MHz)
• 0.1 ps integrated RMS phase jitter under Ethernet mask for 10G/40G/100G
• ±10 ppm frequency stability over -40°C to +95°C, enabling better system reliability

High-temperature high-reliability differential VCXOs

• Up to +95°C with excellent phase noise
• Wide pull range from ±25 ppm to ±3600 ppm
• 0.1% frequency tuning linearity under all conditions, 50 times better than quartz 

Engineering samples of the Elite-based ultra-low jitter differential oscillators and high-temperature VCXOs are available to qualified customers now. Samples of Elite-based Super-TCXOs are expected to be available in the first half of 2017. Pricing is available upon request.

SiTime is a wholly owned subsidiary of MegaChips Corporation (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 6875).

http://www.sitime.com

See video:  https://youtu.be/awhiNV1FQgQ

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Microsoft Azure Accelerates its Networking Capabilities

Microsoft rolled out a number networking capabilities for its Azure cloud service, including advancements to its global server fleet that the company says will improve networking bandwidth performance 33% to 50%.

The improvements include hardware technologies such as NVGRE offload, which harnesses the network processing capabilities of the hardware. Windows and Linux VMs will experience these performance improvements while returning valuable CPU cycles to the application.

Microsoft said its Accelerated Networking provides up to 25 Gbps of throughput and drastically reduces network latency up to 10x.

The new hardware technologies including SR-IOV, which allows VMs to communicate directly to the hardware NIC completely bypassing the Hypervisor’s virtual switch, bringing higher bandwidths and lower latencies, along with reduced jitter and improved Packets Per Second (PPS) performance. With Accelerated Networking, Azure SQL DB In-Memory OLTP transaction performance improved 1.5X.

Additional highlights:

• Azure Storage users will benefit from substantially increased IOPS performance based on these advancements, combined with newly developed storage specific offloads. Hardware now efficiently performs data transfers up to the line rate of the NIC. The roll out for Storage will also complete in 2016.
• General availability of Virtual Network Peering (VNet Peering), which connects Virtual Networks (VNets) in the same region, enabling direct full mesh connectivity. VMs in the peered VNets communicate with each other as if they are part of the same VNet, thus benefiting from high bandwidth and low latency. Hub & Spoke topologies are supported with Transit Routing through gateways. The VNet without a gateway still has cross-premises connectivity via the gateway in the peered VNet. VNet Peering works across subscriptions allowing for simplified service management.
• New UltraPerformance Gateway SKU for ExpressRoute that supports up to 10 Gbps throughput. This is a 5x improvement over the existing ExpressRoute HighPerformance gateway with a 99.95% availability SLA. 
• Azure now supports Native IPv6 network connectivity for applications and services hosted on Azure Virtual Machines.
• New Active-Active Virtual Private Network (VPN) Gateway for the High-Performance VPN gateway SKU is recommended for production workloads.
• New Azure Load Balancer configurations, including general availability of multiple VIPs on internal load balancers and new port reuse options across public and internal load balancers. 
• Azure will also be previewing multiple IP addresses on a Network Interface Card (NIC) and enabling all NICs on a VM to have a Public IP address on the NIC or through the load balancer. 
• GA release of Azure DNS, enabling customers to host domains in Azure DNS and manage DNS records using the same credentials, APIs, tools, billing and support as other Azure services.  
• Additional network monitoring and diagnostics capabilities.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-networking-announcements-for-ignite-2016/

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OPNFV Advances with its Colorado Release

The OPNFV Project announced its third platform release: Colorado.

OPNFV Colorado brings advances to accelerate the development of NFV applications and services through key feature enhancements across security, IPv6, Service Function Chaining (SFC), testing, VPN capabilities, and support for multiple hardware architectures.

“Colorado represents a more robust version of OPNFV’s previous Brahmaputra platform,” said Heather Kirksey, director, OPNFV. “The OPNFV community, in close collaboration with other upstream communities, has delivered enhanced capabilities most important to the NFV platform growth and maturity.”

Key enhancements available in OPNFV Colorado include:

• Core feature upgrades. These improvements come via focused collaboration with upstream communities and are centered on improving foundational support for NFV applications and services. All feature enhancements are integrated into the automated install/deploy/testing framework.
• Enhanced security by earning the Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) Badge for best practices in open source development; additionally, the Moon project has been prototyping identity federation and management for OpenStack and OpenDaylight.
• Service Function Chaining (SFC) now runs across multiple nodes, includes installer support for VNF Manager (Tacker) installation and support for enhanced cloud scenarios.
• Improved IPv6 support includes IPv6-only deployments, full underlay and overlay support and integration with additional install tools.
• The SDN VPN project now enables full Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPN support including BGP peering.
• Full support for multiple hardware architectures, including both ARM and x86 architectures.
• Enhanced testing capabilities. Colorado includes a greater integration across testing projects with additional feature testing capabilities, and increased automation. 
• Infrastructure and testing environment advancements. The Phros Test Lab project continues to be a key element of OPNFV release development and validation. Colorado brings increased governance, consistency, availability and quality to the labs, increasing efficiency and ccreating the groundwork for a robust Lab-as-a-Service program. See the full list of Pharos labs --including those participating in Colorado--here. 
• Community expansion. Improved cross-project collaboration via working groups focused on Management and Operation (MANO), Infrastructure, Security, and Testing. Five Committers-At-Large members have been elected to the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) to enhance the meritocratic nature of the project. OPNFV also continues to build relationships with key upstream communities such as OpenStack, OpenDaylight, ONOS, OpenContrail, FD.io, OVS, Open-O, OpenBaton, KVM, DPDK, ODP, and Linux. Additionally, OPNFV launched its intern program during the Colorado release timeframe, already providing valuable contributions across work on the Pharos Labs, VNF on-boarding and CINDR performance testing.

“We’re seeing a maturity of process with the Colorado release, reflected by things like achievement of the CII Best Practices badge for security and the growing maturity of our testing and DevOps methodology,” said Chris Price, TSC chair, OPNFV and Open Source Manager for SDN, Cloud & NFV, Ericsson. “The creation of working groups across MANO, Infrastructure, Security, and Testing also help the project evolve towards a foundational and robust industry platform for advanced open source NFV.”

https://www.opnfv.org/colorado

OPNFV Brahmaputra Adds IPv6, VPN Config, Fault Detection

Wednesday, March 02, 2016  #NFV, #OPNFV, #SDN, Open, OpenDaylight  No Comments

The OPNFV Project, which is the community based effort sponsored by the Linux Foundation to develop an open source platform to accelerate the introduction of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), announced its OPNFV Brahmaputra release. Key enhancements in OPNFV Brahmaputra include: Hardened feature enhancements. Layer 3 VPN instantiation and configuration Initial support for IPv6 deployment and testing in IPv6 environments, Improved fault...

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OPNFV Community Delivers Arno, its First Release

Thursday, June 04, 2015  #NFV, OPNFV, Standards  2 Comments

The OPNFV Project, which is the community based effort sponsored by the Linux Foundation to develop an open source platform to accelerate the introduction of Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), announced the availability of OPNFV Arno, its first software release. Arno provides an initial build of the NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) and Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM) components of ETSI NFV architecture. Key capabilities of OPNFV Arno: Availability...

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Nokia Intros Gainspeed Platform for Unified Cable Access

Nokia introduced its new Gainspeed portfolio for unified cable access, supporting all cable access networks including hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC), passive optical networking (PON) and point-to-point Ethernet.

Nokia said its new platform takes a software-defined Virtualized Converged Cable Access Platform (CCAP) approach that provides the capacity, agility and flexibility cable operators need to deliver new revenue-generating services while significantly reducing operating expenses.

The architecture pushes cable-specific functions out to access nodes close to the subscriber while centralizing control and management. This approach significantly reduces the costs of traditional cable architectures by eliminating the CCAP as a physical box and replacing the analog optical transmission with 10Gbps Ethernet.

"The cable industry is at a crossroads and facing change at a level it has never seen before. The current way of building cable networks simply will not scale to meet the tidal wave of IP video and high-speed data demands faced by cable operators. We're helping operators add capacity, greatly simplify the network operations and prepare for an all-fiber, all-IP network," stated Jeff White, head of business development and strategy for cable in Nokia's Fixed Networks business group.

The new Nokia portfolio of cable access products includes:

• Gainspeed Access Controller
• Gainspeed Video Engine
• Gainspeed Access Node SC-2D supporting DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1
• Gainspeed Access Node SF-4X supporting 10G EPON

The company said lab and field trials are underway.

http://company.nokia.com/en/news/press-releases/2016/09/26/nokia-accelerates-cable-operators-transition-to-all-digital-ip-and-fiber-networks-with-industry-first-solution-for-unified-cable-access

Nokia to Acquire Gainspeed for Virtualized Cable Architecture

Thursday, June 09, 2016  Cable, Gainspeed, Mergers, Nokia  No Comments

Nokia agreed to acquire Gainspeed, a start-up specializing in DAA (Distributed Access Architecture) solutions for the cable industry via its Virtual CCAP (Converged Cable Access Platform) product line. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Gainspeed's Virtual CCAP enables cable operators to increase the capacity of their existing HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax) infrastructure and rapidly deploy new services, while simultaneously reducing space and power requirements in the headend. The solution also enables cable operators to migrate their networks to a software-driven, all-IP architecture.

Gainspeed's design eliminates the physical CCAP by leveraging SDN and NFV to distribute the CCAP’s functions to other devices and locations in the network. This centralizes routing, control and management in the data center or cloud and pushes
the physical layer, DOCSIS processing and RF modulation into the node, deep within
the access network

Gainspeed is based in Sunnyvale, California and has approximately 70 employees.

Federico Guillen, president of Nokia's Fixed Networks business group, said: "We are very excited to have Gainspeed, the technology leader in its field, joining us. Cable is one of the fastest growing areas in our fixed networks business, and we are committed to delivering a complete solution set to cable operators. Gainspeed's Virtual CCAP perfectly complements our leading fiber access solutions for cable MSOs."

http://www.nokia.com
http://www.gainspeed.com/

• Gainspeed is headed by Krish Padmanabhan, who previously was Senior Vice President of Products and Solutions at Harmonic Inc., where he oversaw overall strategy for its video playout and compression portfolio.
• Gainspeed was founded in 2012 by Shlomo Rakib (previously co-founded Novafora and Terayon Communication Systems, where he invented the SCDMA technology that was the basis for DOCSIS 2.0), Jeff White (previously president of Hatteras Networks),  Mark Stalica (previously Vice President of Strategic MSO Accounts for Metaswitch Networks), and Drew Perkins (previously a co-founder at Infinera, On-Fiber Communications, Lightera Networks, FORE Systems, and InterStream).

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Telefónica Picks Juniper Networks' SRX Series Services Gateways

Telefónica has chosen Juniper Networks' SRX Series Services Gateways as its preferred solution for delivering their global network security. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Juniper said its new cloud-based network architecture with integrated security functions will allow Telefónica to scale, automate and simplify its business operations, and improve network performance while future-proofing to enable a software defined secure network (SDSN) where security issues can be detected and where mitigating policy can be enforced anywhere in the network.

Additionally, Juniper will provide Telefónica with Professional Services to increase its overall network stability for enhanced business operations. Telefónica

"Our partnership with Juniper is yet another step forward in Telefónica's technological transformation strategy. We are making huge advancements towards our goal to secure, simplify and modernize our network to offer differentiated services that greatly enhance the customer experience. We partnered with Juniper for its proven capability to deliver end-to-end solutions, services, innovative technologies and strong leadership," stated Javier Gavilan, Planning and Technology Director, Global CTO, Telefónica.

http://www.juniper.net/us/en/company/

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Puppet appoints Sanjay Mirchandani as CEO

Puppet announced the appointment of Sanjay Mirchandani as chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors, replacing founder Luke Kanies, who will remain a strong advocate for the company as a member of the board.

Mirchandani joined Puppet in May as the company’s first-ever president and chief operating officer. He previously served as corporate senior vice president and general manager at VMware for Asia Pacific and Japan. Before this, Mirchandani held several management positions at EMC, including CIO of the company’s IT organization. He also led the company’s Global Centers of Excellence, emerging markets and international development initiatives. Prior to EMC, Mirchandani held several field-based senior management roles at Microsoft over an 11 year period.

“Puppet is a truly revolutionary company. In a short time, Puppet has grown to become the market-standard platform for IT automation – helping customers deliver and operate their software no matter where it runs,” said Sanjay. “I have enormous respect for Luke. He built a company that has transformed the industry. I am honored to continue what he started and lead the business as we embark on an exciting new period of growth. I look forward to working with our talented team, customers, partners, and community to scale the use of Puppet worldwide through product innovation, go-to-market execution, and operational excellence.”

https://puppet.com/company/press-room/releases/puppet-appoints-sanjay-mirchandani-chief-executive-officer

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