Dept of Commerce issues 90-day license to Huawei suppliers

The U.S. Department of Commerce will issue a 90-day, temporary general license allowing U.S. vendors to continue delivering products and services to Huawei Technologies and its affiliates.

The Temporary General License runs from May 20, 2019 through August 19, 2019.

Specifically, the General license allows for:

1. Continued Operation of Existing Networks and Equipment, including software updates and patches, subject to legally binding contracts executed between Huawei and third parties prior to May 16, 2019; 
2. Support to Existing Handsets, including software patches and updates, that were made available to the public prior to May 16, 2019; 
3. Cybersecurity Research and Vulnerability Disclosures critical to maintaining the integrity and reliability of existing and currently fully operational networks and equipment, as well as handsets. 
4. Engagement as Necessary for Development of 5G Standards by a Duly Recognized Standards Body,  allowing engagement with IEEE, IETF, ISO – International Organization for Standards, ITU, ETSI - European Telecommunications Standards Institute, 3GPP - 3rd Generation Partnership Project, TIA- Telecommunications Industry Association, and GSMA.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2019-10829.pdf

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Marvell to acquire Avera Semi, the ASIC division of GLOBALFOUNDRIES

Marvell agreed to acquire Avera Semiconductor, the ASIC business of GLOBALFOUNDRIES, for $650 million in cash at closing plus an additional $90 million in cash if certain business conditions are satisfied within the next 15 months.

Marvell said its ambition is to become the world’s leading supplier of infrastructure semiconductor solutions and that Avera’s ASIC capabilities will accelerate this transformation. 

Avera, which was once part of IBM’s Microelectronics business, has been responsible for more than 2,000 complex designs in its 25-year history. The team brings design competencies in analog, mixed-signal and SoCs as well as a rich IP portfolio including high-speed SerDes, high-performance embedded memory and advanced packaging technology.  Avera also has strong relationships with blue-chip wired and wireless networking OEMs, having delivered custom solutions for multiple generations of switches, routers and base stations.  More recently, Avera has started to address emerging opportunities in next-generation cloud data centers with multiple programs in development.

Marvell's capabilities enable a wide range of digital processing including baseband, processors, Ethernet switches and PHYs.  Marvell’s opportunity set has recently expanded to encompass a number of custom SoCs addressing a broader portion of the base station.  Several of these new products are designed to replace FPGAs with purpose-built optimized silicon.  At the same time, Avera has provided custom products to be deployed in the radio head of a leading wireless infrastructure OEM for multiple generations. 

“Our acquisition of Avera enables us to offer the complete spectrum of product architectures spanning standard, semi-custom to full ASIC solutions,” said Matt Murphy, president and CEO of Marvell.  “With their highly experienced design team and Marvell’s leading technology platform, we will be better positioned to capitalize on our expanding opportunity in wired and wireless infrastructure, starting immediately in the fast growing 5G base station market.  In addition, we are looking forward to furthering our successful partnership with GLOBALFOUNDRIES in the coming years and beyond.”

“This transaction is another example of our commitment to focus on our core business of providing differentiated foundry offerings as a manufacturing service provider, while establishing deeper relationships with customers who are leaders in their respective sectors,” said Tom Caulfield, CEO at GLOBALFOUNDRIES.  “With this deal and our growing strategic partnership with Marvell, we will forge new opportunities for the teams of both companies to leverage GF’s broad set of offerings and capitalize on the 5G infrastructure market as well as other opportunities.  We look forward to becoming a strategic provider for Marvell for decades to come.” 

Marvell to acquire Aquantia for multi-Gig Ethetnet

Monday, May 06, 2019  Aquantia, Marvell  

Marvell Technology Group agreed to Aquantia for $13.25 per share in cash, representing approximately $452 million in transaction value after adjusting for net cash on Aquantia's balance sheet.

Aquantia, which is based in San Jose, California, specializes in Multi-Gig 2.5G/5G/10G Ethernet over copper products. Its portfolio automotive PHYs for in-vehicle Ethernet networks supporting level 4 and 5 autonomous driving.

Marvell said the acquisition complements its portfolio of copper and optical physical layer product, including its gigabit PHY and secure switch products.

"Our acquisition of Aquantia will fuel Marvell's leadership in the transformation of the in-car network to high-speed Ethernet over the next decade," said Matt Murphy, president and CEO of Marvell.  "At the same time, Aquantia extends our reach in the rapidly emerging Multi-Gig segment of network infrastructure and creates a leading end-to-end Ethernet connectivity portfolio."

"Marvell and Aquantia share a vision where the network – whether in an autonomous vehicle, an enterprise application or in cloud infrastructure – can seamlessly power the data economy," said Faraj Aalaei, chairman and CEO of Aquantia. "This is a fantastic opportunity as our customers will benefit from Marvell's global scale and expanding footprint in Multi-Gig network applications."

The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to Marvell's non-GAAP earnings per share and generate significant annual run-rate synergies of $40 million to be realized within 12 months after the transaction closes.

Marvell intros silicon for 5G infrastructure

Friday, March 01, 2019  5G, Marvell  

Marvell, whose 3G and 4G solutions are widely deployed in 3G and 4G networks worldwide, announced an end-to-end silicon platform for 5G infrastructure.

Whereas initial deployments of 5G NR have been dominated by FPGA-based solutions, Marvell said its 5G solution encompasses baseband DSPs, Arm multi-core SoCs, purpose-built hardware accelerators, Ethernet connectivity engines and system-level security solutions.

Marvell's 5G NR Platform includes:

• Radio Access SoCs: The OCTEON Fusion-M product line is optimized for cost/power and programmable with a 3GPP protocol stack split and massive MIMO capabilities. Marvell's SoCs set the performance benchmark for both LTE-A and 5G NR, with multiple deployments through key industry partners.
• Transport/EPC Core Processors: Multi-core OCTEON processors that are optimized to address the most demanding use cases of 5G NR. Marvell's scalable data-plane acceleration makes its embedded processors ideal for 5G Core/EPC applications at the heart of the network as well. Marvell uniquely offers a single unified architecture for both transport and EPC core.
• Ethernet Networking: switches and PHYs for carrier infrastructure. Marvell Prestera switches contain hierarchical traffic management for mobile infrastructure. In addition, Marvell's differentiated switching solutions allow advanced flow identification and access control to enable user-level security.
• Wi-Fi Connectivity: Marvell is ramping high volume production of 8x8 and 4x4 Wi-Fi 6 solutions. The 802.11ax engines include full MU-MIMO and OFDMA uplink and downlink, multi-gigabit peak speeds, precision location, cloud management, best-in-class beamforming and integrated Bluetooth 5 technology. 
• ThunderX2 Arm-based Server: Marvell has introduced workload optimized ThunderX2 server processors to augment and enhance its 5G portfolio. 

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Mellanox debuts Ethernet Cloud Fabric for 400G

Mellanox Technologies introduced its data center Ethernet Cloud Fabric (ECF) technology based on its second generation, Spectrum-2 silicon, which can deliver up to 16 ports of 400GbE, 32 ports of 200GbE, 64 ports of 100GbE, or 128 ports of 50/25/10/1GbE. 

Mellanox ECF combines three critical capabilities:

Packet forwarding data plane

• 8.33 Billion Packets per second – Fastest in its class
• 42MB Monolithic and fully shared packet buffer to provide high bandwidth and low-latency cut-through performance
• Robust RoCE Datapath to enable hardware accelerated data movement for Ethernet Storage Fabric and Machine Learning applications
• Half a million flexible forwarding entries to support large Layer-2 and Layer-3 networks
• Up to 2 Million routes with external memory to address Internet Peering use cases
• 128-way ECMP with support for flowlet based Adaptive Routing
• Hardware-based Network Address Translation
• 500K+ Access Control List entries for micro-segmentation and cloud scale whitelist policies
• 500K+ VXLAN Tunnels, 10K+ VXLAN VTEPs to provide caveat-free Network Virtualization

Flexible and fully programmable data pipeline

• Support for VXLAN overlays including single pass VXLAN routing and bridging
• Centralized VXLAN routing for brown field environments
• Support for other overlay protocols including EVPN, VXLAN-GPE, MPLS-over-GRE/UDP, NSH, NVGRE, MPLS/IPv6 based Segment routing and more
• Future-proofing with programmable pipeline that can support new, custom and emerging protocols
• Hardware optimized stages that accelerate traditional as well as virtualized network functions
• Advanced modular data plane and integrated container support enables extensibility and flexibility to add customized and application specific capabilities

Open and Actionable telemetry

• 10X reduction in mean time to resolution by providing a rich set of contextual and actionable Layer 1-4 “What Just Happened” telemetry insights
• Hardware based packet buffer tracking and data summarization using histograms
• More than 500K flow tracking counters
• Open and Extensible platform to facilitate integration and customization with 3rd party and open source visualization tools
• Support for traditional visibility tools including sFlow, Streaming and In-band telemetry

Marvell said its Ethernet Cloud Fabric incorporates Ethernet Storage Fabric (ESF) technology that seamlessly allows the network to serve as the ideal scale-out data plane for computing, storage, artificial intelligence, and communications traffic. 

“The Spectrum-2 switch ASIC operates at speeds up to 400 Gigabit Ethernet, but goes beyond just raw performance by delivering the most advanced features of any switch in its class without compromising operation ability and simplicity,” said Amir Prescher, senior vice president of end user sales and business development at Mellanox Technologies, “Spectrum-2 enables a new era of Ethernet Cloud Fabrics designed to increase business continuity by delivering the most advanced visibility capabilities to detect and eliminate data center outages. This state-of-the-art visibility technology is combined with fair and predictable performance unmatched in the industry, which guarantees consistent application level performance, which in turn drives predictable business results for our customers. Spectrum-2 is at the heart a new family of SN3000 switches that come in leaf, spine, and super-spine form factors.”

The Spectrum-2 based SN3000 family of switch systems with ECF technology will be available in Q3.

With Mellanox, NVIDIA targets full compute/network/storage stack

Monday, March 11, 2019  Mellanox, Nvidia  

NVIDIA agreed to acquire Mellanox in a deal valued at approximately $6.9 billion.

The merger targets data centers in general and the high-performance computing (HPC) market in particular. Together, NVIDIA’s computing platform and Mellanox’s interconnects power over 250 of the world’s TOP500 supercomputers and have as customers every major cloud service provider and computer maker. Mellanox pioneered the InfiniBand interconnect technology, which along with its high-speed Ethernet products is now used in over half of the world’s fastest supercomputers and in many leading hyperscale datacenters.

NVIDIA said the acquired assets enables it to data center-scale workloads across the entire computing, networking and storage stack to achieve higher performance, greater utilization and lower operating cost for customers.

“The emergence of AI and data science, as well as billions of simultaneous computer users, is fueling skyrocketing demand on the world’s datacenters,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Addressing this demand will require holistic architectures that connect vast numbers of fast computing nodes over intelligent networking fabrics to form a giant datacenter-scale compute engine.

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Lattice’s MachX03D FPGA offers Hardware Root-of-Trust

Lattice Semiconductor has begun sampling its MachXO3D FPGA for securing systems against a variety of threats.

The MachXO3 FPGA devices are typically the “first-on/last-off” component on circuit boards.

Lattice Semiconductor said that by integrating security and system control functions, its device becomes the first link in a chain of trust that protects entire systems.

Key features of the new MachXO3D include:

• Control function FPGA that provides 4K and 9K look-up tables for implementing logic that instantly configures at power up from on device flash memory
• On-device regulator for single 2.5/3.3-volt power supply operation
• Support for up to 2700 Kbits of user Flash memory and up to 430 Kbits sysMEM™ embedded block RAM to provide more flexible design options
• Up to 383 I/Os, configurable to support LVCMOS 3.3 to 1.0, and designed to integrate into a wide variety of system environments with features such as hot-socketing, default pull-down, input hysteresis, and programmable slew rate
• Embedded security block that provides pre-verified hardware support for cryptographic functions such as ECC, AES, SHA, PKC and Unique Secure ID
• Embedded secure configuration engine to ensure only FPGA configurations from a trusted source can be installed
• Dual on-device configuration memories to enable fail-safe reprogramming of component firmware in the event of compromise

“System developers commonly take advantage of FPGA flexibility to enhance system functions after deployment,” said Gordon Hands, Director of Solutions Marketing, Lattice Semiconductor. “With MachXO3D, we took care to retain that flexibility while adding a secure configuration block to deliver the industry’s first control-oriented FPGA compliant with NIST’s Platform Firmware Resilience specification.”

Sampling is underway.

http://www.latticesemi.com/MachXO3D

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ADVA's FSP 3000 TeraFlex brings fractional QAM

ADVA announced that its open, ultra-high-capacity FSP 3000 TeraFlex terminal now enables existing optical networks to carry up to 30 times more traffic using new fractional QAM capabilities ultra-flexible bandwidth modulation across brownfield and subsea networks of all distances.

“Up until now, traditional 50GHz grids have had a 100Gbit/s speed limit. 200 Gbps was possible over short reaches, but it simply couldn’t go the distance. Now, with the fractional QAM capabilities of our FSP 3000 TeraFlex, 300 Gbps can be achieved across all metro links without upgrading the OLS. And up to 600 Gbps becomes possible in 100GHz grids. What’s more, enabling this massive capacity increase couldn’t be simpler or more cost-effective," said Stephan Rettenberger, SVP, marketing and investor relations, ADVA.

The FSP 3000 TeraFlex is a 1RU platform that enables super channels of up to 1200 Gbps and a total capacity of 7.2 Tbps.

The FSP 3000 TeraFlex now optimizes all optical paths over every distance, ensuring the lowest cost per bit for any network. It achieves this through fractional QAM modulation, which switches between lower and higher schemes for maximum spectral efficiency, significantly boosting capacity or extending the reach of installed legacy infrastructure. This transforms existing carrier networks, with those designed for 10 Gbps channels able to transport 30 times more traffic and outperforming upgrades based on 200 Gbps by 50%.

“The FSP 3000 TeraFlex leverages Acacia’s AC1200 module, based on our Pico coherent DSP ASIC, to deliver a flexible transmission solution that was designed to address a wide range of multi-haul applications by leveraging 3D shaping features, including fractional QAM modulation and adaptive baud rate capabilities. For CSPs, we believe that translates into enhanced performance, as well as improved network and port efficiency, which helps to enable capex and opex savings,” commented Eric Fisher, vice president, global sales, Acacia Communications.

The solution will be showcased at NGON and DCI World in Nice, France, from May 21 to 23.

http://adva.li/fractional-qam

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Huawei cites momentum with optical transport

Huawei announced that its Super 200G optical transport solution has over 80 commercial deployments around the world.

At Huawei's Sixth Optical Network Innovation Forum this week in Nice, France, the company also announced the following:

• Huawei has cooperated with operators in Asia and Europe to achieve Super C-Band innovation, increasing the effective spectral width by 50% compared with the traditional C band.
• Huawei's new OXC all-optical cross-connect solution has been commercially deployed multiple operators to provide all-optical interconnection for hundreds of super core nodes/
• Huawei's OSN 9800 M series and OSN 1800 series support the extension of OTN to the metro network. More than 60% of OTNs have been moved to COs in China, and that number exceeds 50% in Europe.
• New smart O&M: Huawei has worked closely with 38 operators around the world to develop OTN premium private lines and help operators achieve revenue growth. 
• Huawei, together with leading operators in China and Europe, is working on the introduction of AI into optical networks to predict faults on optical networks and better anticipate future network resource requirements, improving O&M efficiency and marking a critical step towards zero-touch optical networks.

Richard Jin said that "Looking to the future, the bandwidth potential of optical fibers is infinite. In a fully-connected 5G era, Huawei proposes to redefine the optical industry. Massive connectivity will promote the continuous expansion of optical networks."

https://www.huawei.com/en/press-events/news/2019/5/huawei-on2-all-optical-networks-operators

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Ajit Pai voices support for T-Mobile+Sprint merger

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is voicing support for the pending T-Mobile + Sprint merger:

“Two of the FCC’s top priorities are closing the digital divide in rural America and advancing United States leadership in 5G, the next generation of wireless connectivity.  The commitments made today by T-Mobile and Sprint would substantially advance each of these critical objectives.

“For example, the companies have committed to deploying a 5G network that would cover 97% of our nation’s population within three years of the closing of the merger and 99% of Americans within six years.  This 5G network would also reach deep into rural areas, with 85% of rural Americans covered within three years and 90% covered within six years.  Additionally, T-Mobile and Sprint have guaranteed that 90% of Americans would have access to mobile broadband service at speeds of at least 100 Mbps and 99% would have access to speeds of at least 50 Mbps.

Pai's statement also mentioned a commitment from the companies not to raise prices for three years, to divest Boost Mobile, and to build out their mid-band spectrum holdings.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr also issued a statement in support of the merger.

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Bloomberg: FTC probe targets Broadcom

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into Broadcom, according to Bloomberg. The inquiry reportedly concerns exclusive licensing practices of Wi-Fi and switching chip products. The company did not comment in the report.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-20/broadcom-chip-business-targeted-in-widening-u-s-antitrust-probe?

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Kingston Digital ships next gen NVMe PCIe SSD

Kingston Digital announced its next gen M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD for enterprise and power users based on the latest Gen 3.0 x 4 controller and 96-layer 3D TLC NAND. It offers read and write speeds up to 3,200 and 2,200MB/s, respectively.

The KC2000 is a self-encrypting drive that supports end-to-end data protection using 256-bit AES Hardware-based encryption and allows the usage of independent software vendors with TCG Opal 2.0 security management solutions.

Drive capacities are 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB.

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