ACRN Project targets embedded hypervisor for IoT

The Linux Foundation will manage a new embedded reference hypervisor project called ACRN (pronounced “acorn”) and designed for the Internet of Things (IoT).

ACRN is comprised of two main components: the hypervisor and its device model, complete with rich I/O mediators.

Intel provided the initial code contributions to launch the project.

ACRN will incorporate input from the open source, embedded and IoT developer communities and encourages collaboration and code contributions to the project. Early ACRN project members include ADLINK, Aptiv, Intel, LGE and Neusoft Corporation.

“With project ACRN, embedded developers have a new, immediately available hypervisor option,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of The Linux Foundation. “ACRN’s optimization for resource-constrained devices and focus on isolating safety-critical workloads and giving them priority make the project applicable across many IoT use cases. We’re pleased to welcome project ACRN and invite embedded developers to get involved in the new community.”

“ACRN will have a Linux-based service OS and the ability to simultaneously run multiple types of guest operating systems providing a powerful solution for workload consolidation,” said Imad Sousou, corporate vice president and general manager of the Open Source Technology Center, at Intel® Corporation. “This new project delivers a flexible, lightweight hypervisor, designed to take real-time and safety-critical concerns into consideration and drive meaningful innovation for the IoT space.”

https://www.projectacrn.org

Read More

Finisar develops Miniature Coherent Transmitter and Receiver Assembly

Finisar introduced the industry's smallest fully integrated coherent optics assembly, designed for coherent line cards or DCO (Digital Coherent Optics) transceivers.

Finisar's Integrated Tunable Transmitter and Receiver Assembly (ITTRA) will be marketed as a new product family for helping customers to accelerate their time to market and reduce program and development costs.  It provides the same functionality as a CFP2-ACO but is 70% smaller than the size of a CFP2 module. All key building blocks of an ACO interface (tunable laser, optical amplifier, modulators, drivers, coherent mixer, photodiode array, and TIAs) are incorporated in a single optical sub-assembly, which is combined with a miniature controller board that provides customers a standardized management interface.

Finisar said that because the ITTRA is a fully calibrated and tested assembly instead of a disaggregated set of components, it yields operational cost savings for the line card or module integrator because test times of the end product are greatly reduced.

"Customers that have previewed this product acknowledge the exceptional level of integration achieved in Finisar's ITTRA, and we have a tremendous amount of interest in this product due to its performance, compact footprint, and low power dissipation," said John DeMott, Senior Director of Marketing at Finisar. "A turn-key solution like the ITTRA, greatly reduces the development effort for the line card or module integrator, allowing them to rapidly respond to new market opportunities." The demonstration at OFC 2018 shows the 32Gbaud ITTRA transmitting and receiving data at 200 Gb/s using DP-16QAM modulation. The product will be sampling in the second quarter of 2018.

At OFC 2018, Finisar also demonstrated its WaveShaper A Series of Programmable Optical Processors with newly released WaveShaper App revision 1.3. This software supports arbitrary power splitting on up to 16 ports with ratios of up to 100 to 1. Finisar demonstrated a WaveShaper processor covering the extended C+L band with a total wavelength range larger than 100 nm. Arbitrary filtering of attenuation and phase is supported across the entire range.

Read More

Credo demos 112G PAM4

Credo, a semiconductor company specializing in Serializer-Deserializer (SerDes) technology, demonstrated its low power, high-performance 112 GbpsPAM4 SerDes technology at OFC 2018.

For 112G per lambda optical connectivity (i.e., DR, DR4, FR4), Credo has delivered product solutions in TSMC 28nm.

For 112G electrical VSR and LR reaches, Credo has delivered the solutions in TSMC 16nm.  The conference starts today at the San Diego Convention Center, with exhibits taking place March 13–15.

“Credo’s ability to deliver leading edge performance at the industry’s lowest power in mature TSMC process nodes enables rapid time-to-market at a cost structure that will accelerate the transition to the 112G connectivity radix,” said Jeff Twombly, vice president of business development at Credo. “hyperscale cloud providers want to move to single lane rate 112G connectivity as soon as possible. We are aggressively working with strategic ecosystem partners for 2019 trials which will enable production scale ramping in 2020.”

Read More

Zayo lands contract with web content provider

Zayo announced another contract to provide dark fiber to a global webscale customer on its Reno to Umatilla route, which is currently under development. The route will also be available for 100G wavelengths in addition to dark fiber once completed.

The deal further supports Zayo’s investment in this route as a follow-on to the initial anchor customer sale announced earlier this year. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Zayo notes that webscale companies increasingly are moving to "triversity or quadversity" to ensure fully resilient networks.

“In addition to this follow-on customer sale, this strategic route has generated a funnel of other sales opportunities,” said Jack Waters, CTO and president of Fiber Solutions at Zayo. “As more companies add data centers in Oregon and Nevada, Zayo is well positioned to provide high-capacity fiber infrastructure.”

Read More

Alibaba Cloud Opens Indonesian Data Center

Alibaba Cloud commenced operations in its first data center in Indonesia.

The data center, which is described as the first global cloud hosting facility of its type in the country, will offer cloud products and services ranging from elastic computing, database service, networking, security and middleware to analytics and big data.

“As the only global cloud services provider originating from Asia, we are uniquely positioned with cultural and contextual advantages to provide innovative data intelligence solutions and computing capabilities to customers across this region,” said Alex Li, General Manager of Asia Pacific, Alibaba Cloud.

The launch of the data center is part of Alibaba Cloud’s ongoing commitment to support the Indonesian government’s initiative to create 1,000 startups by 2020. For SMEs and startups, access to scalable and affordable cloud services are essential to accelerate their growth. By migrating IT infrastructure to Alibaba Cloud, these growing firms can leverage the available powerful cloud services to scale rapidly, accelerate innovation and reduce cost. They can expand their geographic reach through Alibaba Cloud’s established global network to support international operations and better compete in global trade.

In order to incubate a local internet-related ecosystem, Alibaba Cloud also announced that it will bring the Alibaba Cloud Certified Professional (“ACP”) program to Indonesia. Within a year, the program aims to train 300 and certify 100 cloud-savvy professionals in Indonesia, providing both entrepreneurs and local talent with knowledge regarding the best-in-class technology in cloud computing, big data and security.

Read More

Ericsson restates financials for 2016 and 2017

Ericsson announced restated financial information for full year 2016 and each quarter of 2017.

The reason given for the restatement was the new accounting standard IFRS 15, effective as of January 1, 2018.

The company's 2020 financial targets and near-term planning assumptions remain unchanged.

Read More

Tintri appoints Tom Barton as CEO

Tintri, which supplies enterprise cloud storage solutions, named Tom Barton as its new CEO, replacing Ken Klein, who departed following the company's recent and disappointing Q4 financial report.

Barton previously served as CEO of Rackable Systems and held senior executive roles at Planet Labs, Canara and Red Hat.

“Tom is the ideal candidate to propel Tintri forward," said Pete Sonsini, General Partner at NEA and member of the Tintri Board of Directors. "Tom has a track record of growing companies with highly differentiated technology. At Tintri he will be able to draw on his deep data center experience to focus our go-to-market approach, cultivate key talent and align the organization around the markets where it leads.”

“I am excited to join Tintri at such an important stage in its development. Tintri is widely recognized for its visionary technology—now the company needs to execute to expand its footprint with existing customers and land in new accounts,” said Mr. Barton. “I look forward to working with the company to expand our reach.”

Read More

Finisar debuts 400G QSFP-DD Active Optical Cable and Transceivers

Finisar introduced a 400G QSFP-DD LR8 and FR8 transceivers, a 400G QSFP-DD active optical cable, a 100G serial QSFP28 transceiver, and two 50G SFP56 transceivers.  The rollouts were featured in a series of demonstrations at OFC 2018.

The QSFP-DD (Quad Small Form Factor Pluggable Interface Double Density) module form factor provides an eight-lane electrical interface, compared to traditional single or four-lane interfaces, thereby increasing bandwidth, channel capacity and port density.

400G QSFP-DD LR8 and FR8 Transceivers
Finisar' 400G QSFP-DD LR8 transceiver uses 50G PAM4 technology. It offers a 10km reach over duplex single mode fiber (SMF). In addition to the 10km LR8 module, a 2km FR8 variant of this module will also be available from Finisar, primarily for intra-data center applications. Both the LR8 and FR8 modules leverage DML transmitter technology, providing a low power, low risk, cost-effective solution for 400G.

400G QSFP-DD Active Optical Cable
Finisar is introducing the industry's first 400G active optical cable (AOC) in the QSFP-DD form factor. It uses VCSEL technology to achieve the low power dissipation and low cost structure.

100G Serial QSFP28 FR Transceiver
Finisar is introducing a 100G serial FR transceiver in the popular QSFP28 form factor for inter-data center, transport and router applications with 2km reaches. While leveraging a standard 4x25G electrical interface, so that it plugs into standard QSFP28 slots, this module employs just one serial 100G PAM4 optical channel. Once deployed in sufficient volume, it is expected to replace existing 100G QSFP28 CWDM4 modules. Finisar also plans to introduce a 500m DR version of this module. Four of these FR or DR modules will be able to be used in a fan-out configuration with an IEEE standard 400G DR4 module, thus providing both 100G point-to-point and 100G-to-400G fan-out connectivity at 100G per lane. The module transmits data over 2km of SMF.

50G SFP56 SR and LR Transceivers
Finisar is also introducing the industry's first 50G SFP56 SR and LR transceivers, using serial PAM4 technology. Primary applications for these products include server-to-switch and switch-to-switch 50G Ethernet connections, and future 5G wireless applications.

During OFC, Finisar demonstrated the SFP56 SR module transmitting over 100 meters of OM4 multi-mode fiber (MMF), and the SFP56 LR module transmitting over 10km of SMF.

The modules use Finisar's in-house vertically integrated optics and ICs. They provide interoperability with previous generations of 25G SFP28 and 10G SFP+ optical transceivers. Both modules comply with the corresponding 50GBASE-R specifications as defined in the IEEE standards and offer 50G PAM4 electrical and optical interfaces.

"Today, we have established a number of industry first optical modules that will enable Finisar to maintain its leadership position for the next generation of products," said Rafik Ward, Senior Vice President, Global Marketing at Finisar. "Building upon 30 years of success, we are gearing up for a new era of optical interfaces that will be built on 50G and 100G PAM4 technology. This will enable us to deliver unprecedented bandwidth to customers in form factors that are backward compatible with industry established footprints.

Read More

Luxtera advances its silicon photonics

AT OFC 2018, Luxterra showcased its latest advances in  100G/λ technology, PAM4 signaling, extended reach, increased operating temperature range, liquid immersion cooling, increased density and photonic integration.

Product demonstrations included:

• IEEE802.3bs compliant 400G-DR4 technology platform demonstrating increased throughput and performance in Luxtera’s next generation products
• 30km, 50G-PAM4 single-lambda QSFP link demonstrating Luxtera’s extended reach capabilities with PAM4 signaling over duplex fiber
• 4x25G-LR QSFP28 modules running error-free at industrial temperature extremes (-40C and +85C) over 10km of SMF demonstrating increased operating temperature range and extended reach
• 100G-PSM4 QSFP28 module running error-free while fully immersed in liquid immersion coolant demonstrating why Luxtera silicon photonics transceivers are ideally suited for liquid immersion applications
• Production 3.2Tb 0.5RU switch with 32 x 100G-PSM4 ports using Luxtera’s 2x100G-PSM4 embedded optical module demonstrating Luxtera’s higher density products
• The evolution of optics: An example high-density integrated photonics+ASIC switch demonstration
• Advanced photonics wafers from the latest TSMC 300mm CMOS wafer foundry process demonstrating Luxtera’s new technology platform

“Luxtera is excited to showcase its latest technology innovations at OFC 2018. These innovations will further expand our product portfolio to address the growing demands of our data center and mobile infrastructure customers,” said Ron Horan, VP of Marketing for Luxtera. “As the trusted market leader in Silicon Photonics, Luxtera is well positioned to continue its mission of investing and innovating in the industry’s most advanced and integrated optics platform."

Read More