Monday, December 9, 2019

Intel unveils cryogenic control chip for quantum systems

Intel Labs unveiled a cryogenic control chip — code-named “Horse Ridge” — for quantum computing systems. Horse Ridge is a mixed-signal SoC that brings the qubit controls into the quantum refrigerator — as close as possible to the qubits themselves. It effectively reduces the complexity of quantum control engineering from hundreds of cables running into and out of a refrigerator to a single, unified package operating near the quantum device.

Intel said the Horse Ridge design radically simplifies the control electronics required to operate a quantum system. It replaces bulky instruments with a highly-integrated system-on-chip (SoC) that will simplify system design and allow for sophisticated signal processing techniques to accelerate set-up time, improve qubit performance and enable the system to efficiently scale to larger qubit counts. Designed to act as a radio frequency (RF) processor to control the qubits operating in the refrigerator, Horse Ridge is programmed with instructions that correspond to basic qubit operations. It translates those instructions into electromagnetic microwave pulses that can manipulate the state of the qubits.

The Horse Ridge chip, which was developed with TU Delft and TNO (Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research), will enable control of multiple quantum bits (qubits) and set a clear path toward scaling larger quantum systems. Horse Ridge is fabricated using Intel’s 22nm FinFET technology.

“While there has been a lot of emphasis on the qubits themselves, the ability to control many qubits at the same time had been a challenge for the industry. Intel recognized that quantum controls were an essential piece of the puzzle we needed to solve in order to develop a large-scale commercial quantum system. That’s why we are investing in quantum error correction and controls. With Horse Ridge, Intel has developed a scalable control system that will allow us to significantly speed up testing and realize the potential of quantum computing,” states Jim Clarke, Intel’s director of Quantum Hardware.


AI and the Customer Experience



How can AI and automation help to redefine the customer support experience?

Umesh Sachdev, co-founder and CEO of Uniphore, briefly shares his 2020 vision for AI and customer service.

Uniphore, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, targets Conversational Service Automation. The company was incubated in 2008 in IIT Madras, the premier research institute in India, and has grown to over 150 employees located in the U.S., India, and Singapore. Earlier this year, Uniphore raised $51 million in Series C funding led by March Capital Partners, with participation from Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures), Sistema Asia, CXO Fund, ITP, Iron Pillar, Patni Family, plus other investors. John Chambers, CEO and founder of JC2 Ventures and former CEO of Cisco, is an active advisor to Uniphore and holds a 10% stake in Uniphore.

https://youtu.be/5GkxfqTyt04

See our full series of Thought Leadership videos at https://nginfrastructure.com/network-...


Apstra accelerates NOS upgrades in multi-vendor networks

Apstra has updated its flagship AOS with the ability to automate and validate Network Operating System upgrades across an entire IP fabric. The new feature, which supports multiple vendors, ensures compliance and reduction in maintenance time from weeks or months to hours or days.

Apstra said it leverages a sophisticated, extensive automated testing platform that verifies the quality of the Apstra AOS software at scale, and models the different services and payloads. The company runs fifteen million unit tests per day, covering 600+ topologies, 100+ physical devices with a variety of hardware vendors, models, and chipsets (Arista, Cisco, Juniper, Dell, Edgecore, Mellanox, Quanta, Celestica, etc) as well as virtual appliances (vEOS, NXOSv, Cumulus, OPX, Ubuntu/CentOS). Any device in the data center can be connected to any other device (physical or virtual) through the use of a reservation system and an automated programmable L1/2 patch panel, which allows Apstra to replicate and test any customer topology in its own infrastructure prior to deployment.

As an example, Apstra said a major financial services company had a single engineer working on OS upgrades, taking upwards of eight months to upgrade 174 switches. The same tasks could have been completed with AOS Maintenance Mode and Device OS Upgrade in approximately 87 hours.

https://apstra.com




The dream of fully automated networks has been with us for decades, but with the rise of machine learning and virtualized network architecture, the industry finally appears ready to step ahead with Next Gen Network Automation.

In this series of videos, we speak with the thought leaders who are redefining the concept of automation. This 4-minute overview video gives us some high-level definitions:

See our full series of Thought Leadership videos, and download the exclusive report from our partner AvidThink, at https://nginfrastructure.com/network-automation/


GlobalConnect tests 400G coherent transmission with metro

GlobalConnect, which owns a 42,000 km fiber network and 18,000 sqm high-security data center space in Northern Europe, competed a field trial demonstrating 400 Gbps coherent transmission over a 50 gigahertz (GHz) fixed grid metro transport network concurrently with pre-existing 10G channels.

The trial was conducted over a live GlobalConnect optical link in the Oslo metropolitan area using the Infinera Groove G30 Compact Modular Platform. The trial demonstrated seamless interoperability with deployed metro transport infrastructure. The error-free testing included multiple 300G and 400G alien wavelength transmission use cases over a live metro network link originally designed for and currently running 10G wavelengths using on-off keying (OOK) modulation technology.

The companies said the field trial showcased the ability to boost the capacity of a 10G-engineered OOK-based network by going from 10G to 400G per wavelength, thus increasing the fiber capacity to 32 terabits on an existing 50 GHz fixed grid metro network.

“With the explosive growth in data traffic and acceleration of digital transformation, optical network flexibility and scalability remain critical to our ability to be responsive to our customers’ evolving communications needs,” said Anders Kuhn Saaby, CTO, GlobalConnect. “We remain committed to advancing our fiber infrastructure with cutting-edge technologies to keep pace with growing capacity demands and allow us to expand our addressable market.”

The Infinera Groove G30 is an open, disaggregated networking solution designed to be compatible with third-party optical line systems and diverse network environments, including conventional 10G-engineered non-coherent metro networks designed with OOK, a legacy transport technology that poses limitations for upgrading to higher-capacity wavelengths.

https://www.infinera.com/press-release/Infinera-and-GlobalConnect-Complete-Successful-400G-Coherent-Transmission-Field-Trial

CenturyLink builds out its Content Delivery Network in Asia

CenturyLink has strengthened its content delivery network (CDN) service capabilities in 11 cities across Asia Pacific (APAC) to cater to growing demands from global broadcasters, over the top (OTT) video streaming platforms and gaming companies to deliver high-performing web applications, ultra-high-definition (UHD) video streaming and game downloads.

Specifically, CenturyLink recently acquired video delivery solutions provider Streamroot and its peer-assisted streaming and multi-CDN capabilities as part of its strategic CDN expansion plans. Streamroot's disruptive content delivery model incorporates consumer devices into an edge-based delivery architecture offering the ability to achieve performance otherwise not feasible with conventional CDN delivery methods.

Francis Thangasamy, vice president, product management and services, CenturyLink Asia Pacific commented: "Expanding our physical network footprint in APAC while enabling performance improvements in hard to reach markets with our hybrid, peer-assisted CDN can provide CenturyLink customers a true competitive advantage. Our high-performing global CDN leverages consumer device telemetry, data science and disruptive edge delivery methodologies to help improve user experience during peak traffic hours and minimize the risk of inadequate or inaccurate planning for large events. We are also excited to share that CenturyLink is providing services for a prominent company that will broadcast a major sports event next year in Japan."

Pierre-Louis Theron, vice president of product management for CenturyLink and former CEO of Streamroot said: "APAC is demonstrating interest and early adoption of peer-assisted CDN streaming technology. Multi-CDN hybrid delivery solutions offer higher reliability by further decentralizing the distribution model to create more nodes in hard to reach locations. With this delivery technology, streaming providers do not have to overprovision bandwidth or make exclusive commitments to multiple CDN vendors to help ensure a seamless streaming experience."

Andes' RISC-V processor qualified for Amazon FreeRTOS

Andes Technology's Corvette-F1 N25 platform is one of the first RISC-V platforms qualified for Amazon FreeRTOS.

Amazon FreeRTOS is an open source operating system for microcontrollers from Amazon Web Services (AWS) designed for small, low-power edge devices.

“IoT, and AIoT, will be a big addressable market for RISC-V CPU,” said Dr. Charlie Su, CTO and Executive VP of Andes Technology. “By leveraging the advantages of Amazon FreeRTOS and Andes RISC-V platform, we can provide developers using Amazon FreeRTOS additional development platform choices and strengthen the Andes RISC-V IoT solutions for our customers.”

Andes' Corvette-F1 N25 platform is a FPGA-based Arduino-compatible evaluation platform. It comes with a 32-bit RISC-V AndesCore N25 running at 60MHz, 4MB Flash, 256KB instruction SRAM and 128KB data SRAM, and AndeShape AE250 Platform IP with rich peripherals such as GPIO, I2C, PWM, SPI, and UART. It also contains an on-board wireless module supporting IEEE 802.11 b/g/n.

http://www.andestech.com/en/products-solutions/andeshape-platforms/corvette-f1-n25/

EIB extends EUR 700m loan to Orange for broadband

The European Investment Bank (EIB) extended a EUR 700 million loan to finance part of the deployment of the Orange Group’s Very High Speed Broadband network in France in the "Appel à Manifestation d’Intentions d’Investissements" (AMII) areas.

AMII areas are defined as places where population density and digital coverage is moderate, such as city suburbs.

NBC Sports camera crew tests 5G for live coverage

An NBC Sports crew captured video of the Houston Texans vs New England Patriots football game at NRG Stadium on December 1st using Sony’s PXW-Z450 shoulder camcorder. The video was streamed through Sony’s prototype transmitter box and Xperia 5G mmWave device, via Verizon’s 5G network to a production room in the stadium.

Verizon said the test proved that 5G-connected cameras can be a reliable and beneficial option for future live sports broadcasts.

“Verizon’s 5G network is built to transform industries and we’re thrilled to demonstrate how it can change the way live sports broadcasts are captured and delivered,” said Nicki Palmer, chief product development officer at Verizon. ”5G’s high bandwidth and low latency can enable high definition video to be streamed essentially in real time and captured with no wires on the field.”

“We are extremely pleased to have completed a successful 5G collaboration with Verizon,” said Mikio Kita, Senior General Manager of Media Solution Business Division, Professional Products & Solutions Group, Sony Imaging Products and Solutions Inc. “Sony is uniquely positioned to offer an end-to-end solution for professional content creation and mobile communication technology, and our joint achievement on this proof of concept of live sports production will pave the way for wider 5G applications.”

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-sony-5g-sports-production

Cambium adopts Sequans’ LTE-Advanced chipset for CPE

Cambium Networks has adopted Sequans’ LTE-Advanced chipset platform, Cassiopeia, for two Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) designs for global markets. Both are high-performance integrated access devices with which Cambium Networks aims to meet the integrated data, voice, and internet access needs of its residential, business, and enterprise customers.

  • cnRanger 2 GHz Tyndall 101. An LTE Category 4 Subscriber Module with 14 dBi integrated panel antenna supporting TD-LTE Bands 38, 40 and 41. Available now.
  • cnRanger 3 GHz Tyndall 201. An LTE Category 6 Subscriber Module with 19 dBi integrated dish antenna supporting TD-LTE Bands 42, 43 and 48. Available mid-2020.

The LTE-Advanced chip inside the new Cambium Networks CPE devices is Sequans’ Cassiopeia LTE-Advanced chip platform, a member of Sequans’ StreamrichLTE family of products for broadband high-performance devices. Cassiopeia is compliant with 3GPP Release 10 specifications and supports highly flexible dual-carrier aggregation that allows the combination of any two carriers of any size up to 20 MHz each, contiguous or non-contiguous, inter-band or intra-band. Cassiopeia also supports other Release 10 enhancements such as new MIMO schemes, enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) schemes for heterogeneous networks (HetNets), and improvements to eMBMS (evolved multimedia broadcast multicast service) or LTE broadcast. Cassiopeia features Sequans’ advanced receiver technology for improved performance.