Comcast carries 600G wavelength over 1600km with Ciena

Comcast carried a 600Gbps single wavelength with live commercial traffic across more than 800km between core peering locations in Newark, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Comcast also looped back the signal and verified successful operation of 600Gbps across 1,600-kilometers.

The trial used Ciena's WaveLogic 5 Extreme technology. The deployment marks the first in Ciena’s Waveserver 5 form factor.

Ciena said its WaveLogic 5 Extreme is designed to provide bandwidth tunability, from 200G to 800G, and adapt to constantly changing end-user demands with more capacity per wavelength and lower cost per bit.Waveserver 5 leverages WaveLogic 5 coherent technology to scale up to 12.8Tbps in a compact 2RU footprint. WL5e also facilitates the evolution to 400G-interface routers and universal 400GbE transport across any location in the Comcast National Backbone network without regeneration.

“As the largest fixed-broadband provider in the US, we know the way people consume media and data, in general, is changing and we’re committed to continue and support the increased customer demand with increased capacity across our network. This recent achievement allows us to benefit from Ciena's continued innovation in its coherent optical technology, optimizing both our network architecture as well as our overall cost per bit,” stated Noam Raffaelli, Senior Vice President, Network and Communications Engineering, Comcast.

https://www.ciena.com/about/newsroom/press-releases/comcast-and-ciena-achieve-600G-milestone-across-1600-kilometer-connection.html

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Marvell unveils 5th gen OCTEON with up to 36 Arm v8 cores

Marvell unveiled its OCTEON TX2 family of infrastructure processors targeting a wide variety of wired and wireless networking equipment including switches, routers, secure gateways, firewall, network monitoring, 5G base stations, and smart NICs.

The fifth-generation OCTEON TX2 family promises a 2.5x improvement over the previous generation and scaling up to 200Gbps of packet processing throughput. OCTEON TX2 combines up to 36 cores, based on the Arm v8-A architecture with configurable and programmable hardware accelerator blocks, connected by Marvell’s field-proven and highly scalable coherent interconnect.

The OCTEON platform is enabled by a mature and widely deployed SDK, supported by robust software ecosystems consisting of both open source and commercial offerings.  The platform includes firmware, Linux OS and multiple distributions, virtualization, containers, data plane development kit (DPDK), protocol stacks, infrastructure management and orchestration like OpenStack and Kubernetes, and virtual network functions (VNFs).  In addition, Marvell supports a full routing stack including TCP, SSL, and IPSEC support and DPDK support for L2/L3 forwarding and IPSEC.

“Today’s data infrastructure requires significantly faster network throughput and higher end-to-end security at all nodes of the network,” said John Sakamoto, vice president of Infrastructure Processor Business Unit at Marvell.  “Built on more than a decade of expertise, the OCTEON TX2 family extends Marvell’s performance leadership in supporting high-performance datapath and security applications with a 2.5x performance boost over previous generations.”

Marvell’s CN91xx, CN92xx, CN96xx, and CN98xx processor families include:

• 4 - 36 cores based on the Armv8-A architecture ranging up to 2.4 GHz frequency
• I/O with 25G SerDes-based I/O interfaces, e.g. 100GbE, 50GbE, 40GbE, 25GbE, 10GbE, 2.5GbE, 1GbE Ethernet ports and PCIe gen4 interfaces supporting root-complex and end-point configurations
• Enhanced NITROX V security co-processors which accelerate a comprehensive set of asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic operations
• Hardware accelerators support with comprehensive packet processing hardware offload, including packet receive, flexible packet parsing, flow classification, buffer management, QoS (quality of service), transmit processing and hierarchical traffic shaping and scheduling
• Load-balancing and work scheduling hardware which accounts for QoS, packet ordering and synchronization

In addition, Marvell is introducing a new generation family of OCTEON Fusion processors built on the OCTEON TX2 platform and optimized for cellular base station designs including baseband unit and smart radio unit applications.  The OCTEON Fusion family is ideally suited for layer 1 processing in traditional all-in-one base stations as well as Distributed Unit (DU) processing in 5G split architectures.  In addition, the highly scalable multi-core OCTEON Fusion architecture enables it to address a multitude of base station solutions from mid-capacity small cells to high-capacity modular macro cells.  In the Radio Unit (RU), the family offers processing solutions for smart radio heads requiring more compute power to support the complex beamforming algorithms associated with massive MIMO antenna arrays.

The Marvell RAN portfolio includes:

• OCTEON Fusion: Complete 4G and 5G layer 1 baseband processing
• OCTEON TX2: Layer 2 and 3 transport and control plane processing
• Prestera: A line of Ethernet switching solutions for fronthaul, backhaul and intra-RAN connectivity
• Ethernet Connectivity: Marvell’s Ethernet adapter, controller, and PHY product lines provide a comprehensive set of connectivity options for RAN infrastructure
• Custom and semi-custom ASICS: OEM-differentiated solutions for baseband and radio unit designs

https://www.marvell.com/

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Dell'Oro: telecom equipment market grew 2% in 2019

The overall telecom equipment market – Broadband Access, Microwave & Optical Transport, Mobile Core & Radio Access Network, SP Router & CE Switch - advanced 2% during 2019, recording a second consecutive year of growth, according to preliminary figures from Dell'Oro Group.

Full-year 2019 revenue shares relative to 2018 revenue shares for the top five suppliers – the latter indicated here in parenthesis – show that Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson, ZTE, and Cisco comprised 28% (28%), 16% (17%), 14% (14%), 10% (8%), 7% (8%), respectively.

Additional key takeaways from the 4Q19 reporting period include:

• Following three years of declining revenues between 2014 and 2017, the overall telecom equipment market advanced for a second consecutive year in 2019, validating the message we have communicated for some time now, namely that there are reasons to be excited about the telecom market.
• Within the technology segments, mid-single digit growth in Optical Transport and RAN was more than enough to offset weaker demand for Microwave Transport and Broadband Access equipment. The two largest equipment markets in the year were Mobile RAN and Optical Transport, together accounting for about 55% of the overall telecom equipment market.
• The RAN market surprised on the upside and performed better than expected in 2019, propelled by 5G RAN growth that continued to accelerate throughout the year at a torrid pace.
• The worldwide Optical Transport market continued to expand for a fifth consecutive year, recording the highest growth rate in nearly a decade. Helping to drive this acceleration is robust growth for WDM.
• Stable demand for PON equipment was not enough to offset declining investments in Cable and DSL, pushing the overall Broadband Access Market to a fourth consecutive year of declining revenues.
• The efforts by the U.S. government to curb Huawei’s rise has so far had mixed results – we estimate Huawei’s overall telecom equipment share continued to improve in 2019, but the pace of the 2019 share growth was weaker than its average 2014-2019 share growth.
• ZTE’s revenue share improved by about 2 percentage points in 2019, reflecting a robust recovery since the U.S. ban during 1H18.

https://www.delloro.com/

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Equinix opens 4th data center in Melbourne

Equinix has inaugurated its fourth International Business Exchange data center in Melbourne, Australia.

The new ME2 facility is located in Melbourne's Fishermans Bend region, Australia's largest urban renewal project, which is forecast to be home to approximately 80,000 residents and provide employment for up to 80,000 people by 2050. ME2 includes more than 29,300 square feet (2,730 square meters) of colocation space. Once fully built out, the facility will include more than 88,000 square feet (8,190 square meters) of colocation space. Equinix invested US$77.5 million (approximately A$116 million) facility.

Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric at ME2 provides access to the largest collection of on-ramps to cloud service providers in Australia including Alibaba, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, SAP Cloud, Oracle, SoftLayer as well as many local providers, plus access to major network service providers including Telstra, Optus and Vocus.

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Rajeev Suri steps down as CEO of Nokia, Pekka Lundmar to take over

Rajeev Suri will step down as President and CEO of Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks.

Pekka Lundmark has been appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer of Nokia, and is expected to start in his new role on September 1, 2020. Lundmark is currently President and CEO of Fortum, a leading energy company based in Espoo, Finland,. Previously, he served as President and CEO of Konecranes, a global material-handling technology company, and from 1990-2000 held multiple executive positions at Nokia, including Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Nokia Networks. Lundmark holds a Master of Science degree from Helsinki University of Technology. He will be based in Espoo, Finland.

Suri has appointed CEO of Nokia in 2014.  Previously, he was appointed CEO of NSN in 2009. He joined the company in 1995.

“I am honored to have the opportunity to lead Nokia, an extraordinary company that has so much potential and so many talented people,” said Lundmark. “Together we can create shareholder value by delivering on Nokia’s mission to create the technology to connect the world. I am confident that the company is well-positioned for the 5G era and it is my goal to ensure that we meet our commitments to our customers, employees, shareholders and other stakeholders. Strong values, leading innovation and unflinching commitment to our customers have always been core to Nokia and I want to put this even more at our center as we move forward.”

“After 25 years at Nokia, I have wanted to do something different,” said Suri. “Nokia will always be part of me, and I want to thank everyone that I have worked with over the years for helping make Nokia a better place and me a better leader. I leave the company with a belief that a return to better performance is on the horizon and with pride for what we have accomplished over time. Pekka is an excellent choice for Nokia. I look forward to working with him on a smooth transition and wish him the best success in his new role.”

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Pluribus integrates with Dell EMC Virtual Edge Platform 4600

Pluribus Networks has integrated its UNUM unified management platform onto the Dell EMC Virtual Edge Platform 4600 (VEP4600), a purpose-built open modular platform designed to host VNFs (virtual networking functions).

Pluribus UNUM is an agile, multi-functional web management portal for a distributed and controllerless Adaptive Cloud Fabric solution. UNUM has two key modules - UNUM Fabric Manager and UNUM Insight Analytics - both contained within the UNUM management platform. UNUM Fabric Manager provides comprehensive GUI-based management including topology visualization, zero touch provisioning, automated fabric creation and fabric wide configuration management. UNUM Insight Analytics is a powerful analytics module that provides proactive insight via rich graphical dashboards and robust search functionality into the network and applications data of every flow through the fabric to assure peak operating performance to meet user experience expectations.

The latest UNUM release can be integrated into Dell Virtual Edge Platform 4600, which can handle up to 30 days of flow data and up to 500 million stored flows and also includes two Virtual Netvisor ONE machines to help manage larger, busier fabrics. In addition, all changes to the fabric now tracked and displayed via notifications dashboard for a robust audit trail of network changes.

“In today’s marketplace, it has become a business imperative to simplify network complexity, while increasing agility and speed to service for our customers,” said Alley Hasan, director of Open Networking, Dell EMC. “In utilizing UNUM on Dell EMC VEP4600, we are providing customers with another option to streamline SDN automation of single- and multi-site data center fabrics.”

“Pluribus and Dell EMC are committed to open networking and enabling service providers and enterprises to build out their data center infrastructure, including smaller and more compact single site and multi-site environments. More than ever, the need to apply SDN automation and achieve pervasive visibility across the entire data center infrastructure is critical. That’s exactly what Pluribus can deliver on top of the high-performance open networking hardware from Dell EMC,” said Kumar Srikantan, Chief Executive Officer of Pluribus Networks.

https://www.pluribusnetworks.com/

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Lockheed Martin Ventures invests in Ayar Labs

Lockheed Martin Ventures has made a strategic investment in Ayar Labs, a start-up that is developing  monolithic in-package optical I/O (MIPO) solution for applications that require high bandwidth, low latency and power efficient short reach interconnects. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Ayar Labs publicly demonstrated its monolithic electronic photonic TeraPHY chiplet at the Supercomputing 2019 conference and is now working with select semiconductor manufacturers, OEM systems builders, and end users on sampling and co-design partnerships in 2020. The company is based in Santa Clara, California.

“We are excited to welcome Lockheed Martin Ventures as a strategic investor,” said Charles Wuischpard, CEO of Ayar Labs. “Working with key system integrators like Lockheed Martin, who really understand the value of our solution and how to design it into future complex systems, is incredibly important. In that sense, we view this relationship as more than funding alone, but as an important long-term working relationship as well.”

Ayar Labs selected for Intel’s DARPA PIPES Project

Thursday, November 21, 2019  Ayar, DARPA  

Ayar Labs has been selected as Intel’s optical I/O solution partner for their recently awarded DARPA PIPES (Photonics in Package for Extreme Scalability) project.

The PIPES project aims to develop integrated optical I/O solutions co-packaged with next generation FPGA/CPU/GPU and accelerators in Multi-Chip Packages (MCP) to provide extreme data rates (input/output) at ultra-low power over much longer distances than supported by current technology. In the first phase of the project, the Ayar Labs TeraPHY chiplet will be co-packaged with an Intel FPGA using the AIB (Advanced Interconnect Bus) interface and Intel’s EMIB silicon-bridge packaging. “We’re seeing an explosion of Datacenter workloads that have an insatiable demand for bandwidth and the need to connect devices at rack-scale distances,” said Vince Hu, VP of Strategy and Innovation for Intel’s FPGA products. “The best way to do that is with optical interconnect and by using an Ayar Labs chiplet(s), we can achieve very high bandwidth at low latency and low power consumption.”

“Bringing optical connectivity all the way into the CPU/SOC package has long been one of the ‘Holy Grail’ projects in High Performance and Hyperscale Computing, as it unleashes the performance of ever more powerful computing and network processors and removes a major bottleneck and set of constraints in systems architecture and design,” said Charles Wuischpard, CEO of Ayar Labs, “Moreover, the energy consumed in moving data through a system is now very significant and growing, and the best way to manage that is to move the data optically from end to end. We are pleased to be selected by Intel as the optical solution for their DARPA PIPES project and look forward to a multi-year collaboration.”

The TeraPHY chiplet is manufactured on GLOBALFOUNDRIES' 45nm platform, which enabled Ayar Labs to build a monolithic, single-die solution that integrates both electrical and optical photonic circuits and devices on a single chip.

“We have worked in close collaboration with Ayar Labs to deliver a new class of integrated electronic, photonics solutions,” said Anthony Yu, vice president of Computing and Wired Infrastructure at GF. “Going forward, we’re excited to work with the pioneers at Ayar Labs to continue disrupting the market by combining our next generation 45nm platform, targeted to future CMOS-based photonics solutions, with their differentiated technology that will push the limits of chip communication bandwidth for high-performance computing, cloud and AI applications.”

Ayar Labs also announced customer sampling of its fully integrated TeraPHY chiplet starting in early Q1 2020.

http://www.ayarlabs.com

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Withdrawal notices from OFC: ADVA, InnoLight, Inphi, Source Photonics

ADVA confirmed that it’s withdrawing from this year’s OFC event owing to concerns about COVID-19. "ADVA appreciates the significant efforts of the OFC team to try and safeguard participants and attendees but believes that the risk is still too high. ADVA looks forward to returning to the event in 2021."

InnoLight Technology announced its withdrawal from OFC. Osa Mok, chief marketing officer of Xu Chuang Technology, said: "It is a difficult decision for Xu Chuang, and we have been looking forward to participating in OFC and showing our industry-leading 800G and 400G coherent optical modules. However, our highest priority It is also the health and safety of employees, customers, and business partners. We believe that the cancellation is a better decision at the moment."


Inphi announced that the company will not be attending OFC due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. “Due to the global concerns and continued spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, we made the difficult decision to cancel our participation at OFC,” said Ford Tamer, President and CEO of Inphi. “Although we are disappointed that we are unable to attend the upcoming show, the health and safety of our employees is a top priority. We believe this is the right decision for our team.”

Source Photonics, a market leader of optical transceivers used in telecommunication systems and data communication networks and a long time exhibitor at OFC, announced today the cancellation of its participation at the show on March 10-12, in San Diego. "We regret to pull out from exhibiting at OFC since we have been a loyal exhibitor for more than 20 years but at this time, we need to be cautious and to not take any risks in exposing our employees, customers, and partners to the widely spreading COVID-19 coronavirus,” said John Wang, Chief Business Officer at Source Photonics.

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Keysight and Qualcomm partner on small cell 5G vRAN

Keysight Technologies and Qualcomm Technologies are collaborating to accelerate small cell deployment supported by 5G virtualized radio access network (vRAN) architecture.

Specifically, Keysight’s 5G Multi-Band Vector Transceiver and Qualcomm Technologies’ 5G RAN solutions speed development of radio units (RU) critical to addressing a wide range of 5G use cases. Keysight’s 5G Multi-Band Vector Transceiver is a PXI-based compact solution that enables automated testing of the transmitter and receiver characteristics of a 5G new radio (NR) base station, according to the 3GPP specifications. The solution accelerates verification of small cell RUs using the 5G NR capability of Qualcomm® FSM™100xx to support a smooth transition from product design to manufacturing test.

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