AT&T NetBond brings direct connect to Google Cloud Platform

AT&T and Google Cloud announced two areas of collaboration.

First, business customers will be able to use AT&T NetBond for Cloud to connect in a highly secure manner to Google Cloud Platform. Google's Partner Interconnect offers organizations private connectivity to GCP and allows data centers geographically distant from a Google Cloud region or point of presence to connect at up to 10 Gbps. Google has joined more than 20 leading cloud providers in the NetBond® for Cloud ecosystem, which gives access to more than 130 different cloud solutions.

Second, G Suite, which is Google's cloud-based productivity suite for business including Gmail, Docs and Drive, is now available through AT&T Collaborate, a hosted voice and collaboration solution for businesses.

"We're committed to helping businesses transform through our edge-to-edge capabilities. This collaboration with Google Cloud gives businesses access to a full suite of productivity tools and a highly secure, private network connection to the Google Cloud Platform," said Roman Pacewicz, chief product officer, AT&T Business. "Together, Google Cloud and AT&T are helping businesses streamline productivity and connectivity in a simple, efficient way."

"AT&T provides organizations globally with secure, smart solutions, and our work to bring Google Cloud's portfolio of products, services and tools to every layer of its customers' business helps serve this mission," said Paul Ferrand, President Global Customer Operations, Google Cloud. "Our alliance allows businesses to seamlessly communicate and collaborate from virtually anywhere and connect their networks to our highly-scalable and reliable infrastructure."

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Semtech announces PAM4 clock and data recovery platform

Semtech announced a PAM4 clock and data recovery (CDR) platform optimized for low power and low-cost PAM4 optical interconnects used in data center and active optical cable (AOC) applications.

Semtech's Tri-Edge is a new CDR platform technology being developed for the PAM4 communication protocol. It builds on the success of Semtech’s ClearEdge NRZ-based CDR platform technology and extends it to PAM4 signaling.

The company says its Tri-Edge CDR platform will be applicable for 100G, 200G and 400G requirements.

“The rapidly growing demand for bandwidth in the data center market requires a disruptive solution to meet the power, density and cost requirements. By combining leading-edge technologies with a focused application, we can enable a disruptive solution that we believe will meet the needs of the data centers in both the near-term and long-term,” said Imran Sherazi, Vice President of Marketing and Applications for Semtech’s Signal Integrity Products Group.

Semtech notes that its ClearEdge CDRs are the world’s most widely selected optical transceiver CDRs for use in 10G applications and 100G data center applications.

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Oclaro and Acacia collaborate on 100/200G CFP2-DCO

Acacia Communications and Oclaro are collaborating on a multi-vendor environment of fully interoperable CFP2-DCO modules based on Acacia’s Meru DSP.

Specifically, Oclaro plans to launch a new CFP2-DCO module that will feature plug-and-play compatibility with the Acacia CFP2-DCO, providing customers with two proven coherent optics suppliers for the 100/200G CFP2-DCO form factor. 

CFP2-DCOs integrate the coherent DSP into the pluggable module. The digital host interface enables simpler integration between module and system resulting in faster service activation and a pay-as-you-grow deployment model for telecommunication providers whereby the cost of additional ports can be deferred until additional services are needed.

The CFP2-DCO pluggable form factor, which is being introduced by multiple network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) in switch, router, and transport platforms, supports four times higher density than current generation 100G CFP-DCO solutions by doubling the data rate.

The companies said their CFP2-DCO pluggable coherent modules support transmission speeds of 100G and 200G for use in access, metro and data center interconnect markets.  In addition to proprietary operating modes, both companies intend to support the requirements of the Open ROADM MSA for interoperability at 100G.

“Network operators and our system partners have been excited about the ramp of our CFP2-DCO module,” said Benny Mikkelsen, Chief Technology Officer of Acacia Communications.  “By partnering with Oclaro to ensure interoperability with their Meru-based CFP2-DCO module, we believe we will be better positioned to address the DCO market as industry trends shift favorably toward the CFP2 form factor.  We are excited about our relationship with Oclaro and believe that broader adoption of 200G CFP2-DCO modules will be mutually beneficial to our two companies and the customers we serve.”

“Our 43Gbaud Coherent Transmitter Receiver Optical Sub-Assembly (TROSA) is at the heart of our CFP2-DCO. The TROSA leverages proven Indium Phosphide PIC technology from Oclaro’s highly successful CFP2-ACO to achieve industry-leading optical performance in a small form factor,” said Beck Mason President of the Integrated Photonics Business at Oclaro. “By establishing a fully interoperable solution with Acacia, our customers will have two sources of supply for these critical components, enabling them to efficiently upgrade their networks to higher speeds.”

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NYU develops AR learning tool using Verizon's 5G testbed

NYU’s Future Reality Lab are using Verizon’s pre-commercial 5G technology at Alley, a co-working space and site of Verizon’s 5G incubator in New York City, to develop ChalkTalk, an open source AR learning tool that renders multimedia objects in 3D.

The idea is to use AR on mobile devices to create more effective learning tools that are able to update and respond in real time as the instructor makes his or her point.

“We’ve been able to test and experiment with the 5G technology,” said NYU's Dr. Ken Perlin. “We’re looking at simple use cases now, but will be looking at more involved, more interesting applications as time goes on.”

http://www.verizon.com/about/news/chalktalk--using-5g-and-ar-enhance-learning-experience

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Samsung hails the rapid pace in 5G standardization

Two years after hosting the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) meeting in Busan, Korea that kicked off the 5G standardization process,  Samsung Electronics this month hosted another 3GPP meeting to wrap-up the first phase of the effort.

Based on this latest meeting in Busan, the 3GPP is expected to make the final announcement of 5G phase-1 standards at a general meeting to be held in the U.S. in June. The 5G standardization process that started in April 2016 will end next month after a 27-month journey, significantly faster than the LTE standards development process.

In a blog posting, Samsung recounts its contributions to the hectic 5G development process.

“Samsung Electronics has been working on ultra-high frequency three years faster than other companies,” said Younsun Kim, Principal Engineer of Standards Research Team at Samsung Research and Vice Chairman of RAN1 working group in 3GPP. “When the world started to discuss the setting of standards, Samsung had already developed the related technologies. We had strong aspirations to bring the standardization for 5G commercialization faster than any other company in the world.”

Some notes from Samsung:

1. Within 3GPP, Samsung has been in charge of four positions including the Chair of Service & System TSG and Chair of RAN4 working group, which oversees the frequency and performance that is key to 5G, and in 2018, one more Chair position – SA6 working group for mission-critical applications 
2. Samsung has registered 1,254 patents with ETSI as essential to 5G. 

https://news.samsung.com/global/pioneer-in-5g-standards-part-2-a-hectic-27-month-journey-to-achieve-standardization

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Supermicro unveils 2 PetaFLOP SuperServer based on New NVIDIA HGX-2

Super Micro Computer is using the new NVIDIA HGX-2 cloud server platform to develop a 2 PetaFLOP "SuperServer" aimed at artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) applications.

"To help address the rapidly expanding size of AI models that sometimes require weeks to train, Supermicro is developing cloud servers based on the HGX-2 platform that will deliver more than double the performance," said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. "The HGX-2 system will enable efficient training of complex models. It combines 16 Tesla V100 32GB SXM3 GPUs connected via NVLink and NVSwitch to work as a unified 2 PetaFlop accelerator with half a terabyte of aggregate memory to deliver unmatched compute power."

The design packs over 80,000 CUDA cores.

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Mellanox intros Hyper-scable Enterprise Framework

Mellanox Technologies introduced its Hyper-scalable Enterprise Framework for private cloud and enterprise data centers.

The five key elements of the ‘Mellanox Hyper-scalable Enterprise Framework’ are:

• High Performance Networks – Mellanox end-to-end suite of 25G, 50G, and 100G adapters, cables, and switches is proven within hyperscale data centers who have adopted these solutions for the simple reason that an intelligent and high-performance network delivers total infrastructure efficiency
• Open Networking – an open and fully disaggregated networking platform is key to scalability and flexibility as well as achieving operational efficiency
• Converged Networks on an Ethernet Storage Fabric – a fully converged network supporting compute, communications, and storage on a single integrated fabric
• Software Defined Everything and Virtual Network Acceleration – Enables enterprise to enjoy the benefits of the hyperscalers who have embraced software-defined networking, storage, and virtualization – or software-defined everything (SDX)
• Cloud Software Integration – networking solutions that are fully integrated with the most popular cloud platforms such as OpenStack, vSphere, and Azure Stack and support for advanced software-defined storage solutions such as Ceph, Gluster, Storage Spaces Direct, and VSAN

“With the advent of open platforms and open networking it is now possible for even modestly sized organizations to build data centers like the hyperscalers do,” said Kevin Deierling, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “We are confident and excited to release the Mellanox Hyper-scalable Enterprise Framework to the industry – and to provide an open, intelligent, high performance, accelerated and fully converged network to enable enterprise and private cloud architects to build a world-class data center.”

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Samsung hits mass production of 10nm-Class 32GB DDR4

Samsung Electronics Co. started mass producing the industry’s first 32-gigabyte (GB) double data rate 4 (DDR4) memory.

The small outline dual in-line memory modules (SoDIMMs) are used in gaming laptops.

Samsung said that compared to its 16GB SoDIMM based on 20nm-class 8-gigabit (Gb) DDR4, which was introduced in 2014, the new 32GB module doubles the capacity while being 11 percent faster and approximately 39 percent more energy efficient. A 64GB laptop configured with two 32GB DDR4 modules consumes less than 4.6 watts (W) in active mode and less than 1.4W when idle.

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Salesforce is now on a $12 billion per year run rate

Salesforce reported first quarter revenue og $3.01 billion, an increase of 25% year-over-year, and 22% in constant currency. Subscription and support revenues were $2.81 billion, an increase of 27% year-over-year. Professional services and other revenues were $196 million, an increase of 4% year-over-year. First quarter GAAP diluted earnings per share was $0.46, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $0.74. The company also reported unearned revenue (deferred revenue) of $6.20 billion, an increase of 25% year-over-year, and 23% in constant currency.

"Salesforce delivered more than $3 billion in revenue in the first quarter, surpassing a $12 billion annual revenue run rate," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce. "Our relentless focus on customer success is yielding incredible results, including delivering nearly two billion AI predictions per day with Einstein."

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KKR to acquire BMC for its enterprise software

KKR, a leading global investment firm, agreed to acquire BMC for an undisclosed sum. BMC is currently owned by a private investor group led by Bain Capital Private Equity and Golden Gate Capital together with GIC, Insight Venture Partners and Elliott Management.

Founded in 1980, BMC is a leading systems software provider which helps enterprise organizations manage and optimize information technology across cloud, hybrid, on-premise, and mainframe environments. The company claims more than 10,000 customers worldwide, including 92% of the Forbes® Global 100.

"With the support and partnership of our Investor Group, BMC significantly accelerated its innovation of new technologies and new go-to-market capabilities over the past five years," said Peter Leav, President and Chief Executive Officer of BMC. "Our growth outlook remains strong as BMC is competitively advantaged to continue to invest and win in the marketplace. Our customers can expect the BMC team to remain focused on providing innovative solutions and services with our expanding ecosystem of partners to help them succeed across changing enterprise environments. We are excited to embark on our next chapter with KKR as our partner."

"In an ever-changing IT environment that is only becoming more complex, companies that help simplify and manage this essential infrastructure for their enterprise customers play an increasingly important role," said Herald Chen, KKR Member and Head of the firm's Technology, Media & Telecom (TMT) industry team, and John Park, KKR Member. "With more than 10,000 customers and 6,000 employees, BMC is a global leader in managing digital and IT infrastructure with a broad portfolio of software solutions.  We are thrilled to partner with the talented BMC team to accelerate growth—including via M&A—building on BMC's deep technology expertise and long-standing customer relationships."

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Toshiba debuts portable SSDs based on 64-layer 3D Flash

Toshiba Memory America introduced its XS700 Series of portable solid state drives (SSDs) offering capacity of up to 240GB.

The new drives use Toshiba's in-house 3D flash memory, 64-layer BiCS FLASH technology. The XS700 includes USB 3.1 Gen 2 support, and features the latest USB Type-CTM connector.

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