State of NFV: Top Five Trends in NFV 2020

State of NFV Resource Site and Report: https://ngi.how/nfv-20

We are finally beyond the perennial question of “is NFV real?” Amar Kapadia, Co-founder of Aarna Networks, shares five NFV trends we can expect to see in 2020.

https://youtu.be/zj9ttAwJvmY

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Google Cloud hits $10 billion annual run rate

Google Cloud is now on a $10 billion per annum run rate while YouTube is at $15 billion in annual ad revenue.

In Q4 2019, Google Cloud generated $2.614 billion in revenue, up from $1.709 billion a year earlier.

“Our investments in deep computer science, including artificial intelligence, ambient computing and cloud computing, provide a strong base for continued growth and new opportunities across Alphabet,” said Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer of Alphabet and Google. “I’m really pleased with our continued progress in Search and in building two of our newer growth areas — YouTube, already at $15 billion in annual ad revenue, and Cloud, which is now on a $10 billion revenue run rate."

“In 2019 we again delivered strong revenue growth, with revenues of $162 billion, up 18% year over year and up 20% on a constant currency basis,” said Ruth Porat, Chief Financial Officer of Alphabet and Google. “To provide further insight into our business and the opportunities ahead, we’re now disclosing our revenue on a more granular basis, including for Search, YouTube ads and Cloud.”

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NeoPhotonics samples high power semiconductor optical amplifiers

NeoPhotonics is now sampling high power Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers (SOAs) and Narrow Linewidth (NLW) Distributed Feedback Lasers (DFB) lasers for long range automotive Lidar applications.

NeoPhotonics SOAs and NLW lasers operate in eye-safe wavelength regions, and these offerings feature 1550nm wavelength SOAs with >24 dBm (>250mW) output power along with 1550nm NLW-DFB lasers that enable automotive Lidar systems to “see” considerably farther than 200 meters, thereby significantly enhancing safety.

NeoPhotonics said next generation lidar systems will use coherent technology to greatly increase the range and sensitivity by measuring the phase of the reflected light. Coherent Lidar systems are fabricated using chip-scale manufacturing to reduce costs and enable high volume.

“Our laser components are key elements for chip-scale Lidar systems that can be manufactured in high volumes,” said Tim Jenks, Chairman and CEO of NeoPhotonics. “Lidar architectures based on coherent technologies have the advantage of leveraging high volume, chip-scale technologies developed by NeoPhotonics for telecommunications and data center interconnect applications. Laser components are manufactured in our internal fabs and utilize our advanced hybrid photonic integration technology for high performance and high reliability, allowing system integrators to quickly leverage coherent technology and its established manufacturing supply-chain for Lidar applications,” continued Mr. Jenks.

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HPE acquires Scytale for cloud security

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has acquired Scytale, a start-up founded in 2017 that focuses on service authentication across cloud, container, and on-premises infrastructures. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The Scytale team is recognized as the founding contributors of the SPIFFE (the Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone) and SPIRE (the SPIFFE Runtime Environment) open source projects to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

HPE said it is fully committed to continuing Scytale’s stewardship and contributions to SPIFFE and SPIRE. The acquisition also represents HPE’s ongoing transformation, part of which is to embrace and contribute to open source projects in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and elsewhere.

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Panasonic develops world's highest brightness blue laser

Panasonic has demonstrated the highest brightness blue laser to date -- with an intensity that could be two orders of magnitude higher than conventional blue laser systems.

The achievement leverages wavelength beam combining (WBC) technology on a direct diode laser (DDL) to produce a high quality output beam. The output power optimization of the high-beam-quality blue laser (wavelength band = 400 – 450nm) was realized by combining more than 100 emitters from multiple diode bars with WBC technology.

Panasonic said this technology will contribute to the emerging microfabrication processes, whose demand is expected to grow in industrial applications, such as in the automotive industry.

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USVP closes $340M Eearly-stage venture capital fund

U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm, announced the closing of USVP XII, a $340M fund.

USVP said its strategy is to be the lead Series A investor in companies based in the U.S. or Israel in four core sectors: cybersecurity, enterprise software, consumer and healthcare—including the emerging digital health sector.

USVP XII follows USVP XI, a successful $300M fund that is now fully invested.

“With USVP XII, we are pleased to continue building on our extensive track record of successful early-stage VC investing,” said Rick Lewis, General Partner. “In addition to a multi-decade track record of success, USVP has demonstrated exceptionally strong performance in recent years. In the last three years, USVP portfolio company exits have generated $933M in proceeds to USVP funds. Over the past decade, USVP has distributed over $2B to our investors. And 2019 was the eighth consecutive year that USVP distributions to limited partners exceeded called capital.”

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Maxar selected for Intelsat 40 geostationary satellite

Maxar Technologies has been selected to manufacture Intelsat 40e, a next-generation geostationary communications satellite scheduled to launch in 2022.

Intelsat 40e will be based on Maxar’s 1300-class satellite platform and Intelsat Epic. It will deliver high-throughput, “coast-to-coast” coverage for North America. It will also integrate NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) payload.

“When it’s launched, Intelsat 40e will be the newest addition to our next-generation Intelsat Epic platform, which is already providing our global customers with flexible, high-performance connectivity they can count on today – and in the future,” said Intelsat CEO Stephen Spengler. “Intelsat continuously invests in innovative new satellite and hybrid technologies that make it easy and affordable for our customers to connect people, devices and networks, even in the most remote locations. We look forward to partnering with Maxar on this next build.”

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SCHOTT and WaveOptics partner on AR waveguides

WaveOptics, a leading designer and manufacturer of waveguides for AR wearables, will base its next-generation waveguide technology initially with its Katana design, exclusively on SCHOTT's RealView product line of high-index glass wafers with 1.8 RI.

“In this partnership, we are enhancing WaveOptics’ superior device properties by the outstanding performance of our SCHOTT RealView wafers,” said Dr. Ruediger Sprengard, Head of Augmented Reality at SCHOTT. “We’re proud to contribute to pave the way towards AR for customers.”

https://www.us.schott.com/english/news/press.html?NID=com5737

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Samsung launches 3rd gen High Bandwidth Memory 2E

Samsung Electronics launched its 'Flashbolt' third-generation High Bandwidth Memory 2E (HBM2E). The new 16-gigabyte (GB) HBM2E is targeted at high performance computing (HPC) systems and help system manufacturers to advance their supercomputers, AI-driven data analytics and state-of-the-art graphics systems in a timely manner.

The 16GB capacity is achieved by vertically stacking eight layers of 10nm-class (1y) 16-gigabit (Gb) DRAM dies on top of a buffer chip. This HBM2E package is then interconnected in a precise arrangement of more than 40,000 ‘through silicon via’ (TSV) microbumps, with each 16Gb die containing over 5,600 of these microscopic holes.

The data transfer speed is 3.2 Gbps by leveraging a proprietary optimized circuit design for signal transmission, while offering a memory bandwidth of 410GB/s per stack. Samsung’s HBM2E can also attain a transfer speed of 4.2Gbps, the maximum tested data rate to date, enabling up to a 538GB/s bandwidth per stack in certain future applications. This would represent a 1.75x enhancement over Aquabolt's 307GB/s.

"With the introduction of the highest performing DRAM available today, we are taking a critical step to enhance our role as the leading innovator in the fast-growing premium memory market," said Cheol Choi, executive vice president of Memory Sales & Marketing at Samsung Electronics. "Samsung will continue to deliver on its commitment to bring truly differentiated solutions as we reinforce our edge in the global memory marketplace."

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