Innovium pushes switching silicon to 25.6 Tbps with support for 112G PAM4

Innovium unveiled its TERALYNX 8 networking switch silicon featuring a massive 25.6 Tbps capacity and support for 112G PAM4 SerDes I/O. This next-generation TERALYNX 8 design features deep programmability, the largest on-chip buffers, and advanced telemetry capabilities.

Innovium's TERALYNX 8 switch, which is aimed at hyperscale data centers and which is expected to sample in the second half of 2020, could be used for highly compact, highest port-density single-chip switches for 100G to 800G configurations, including 1RU, 32 x 800G switch. The silicon will be delivered in a single 7nm die fabricated by TSMC.

Innovium confirmed that its current generation, 12.7 Tbps switching silicon is already being used by numerous commercial customers, including some of the biggest cloud provider networks.

Some TERALYNX 8 highlights

• 112G SerDes IO with best economics for next-generation switches
• Up to 256 long-reach (LR) 112G PAM4 SerDes to enable switch configurations such as 32 x 800G, 64 x 400G, 128 x 200 and 256 x 100G
• Enables industry’s most compact 32 x 800G (25.6 Tbps) switch in 1RU form factor
• Enables a range of connectivity options, including 10/25/50/100/200/400 GbE
• Range of pin-compatible SKU options, including 25.6 Tbps, 12.8 Tbps and 8Tbps
• Largest on-chip buffer of 170 MB for a data-center switch
• Highest radix with 256 ports to help flatten network tiers
• INNOFLEX programmable forwarding pipeline offers unmatched flexibility and feature-set
• Enhanced forwarding and ACL table scales
• Robust RoCE, PFC and rich QoS necessary for distributed storage, HPC and AI applications
• FLASHLIGHT™ v3 telemetry and analytics solves toughest troubleshooting problems
• Hardware driven in-band and streaming telemetry available at line-rate
• Additional innovations for deep analytics correlated to applications
• Unique predictive and actionable information versus reactive data overload seen in alternative switch providers
• Industry’s most scalable and fully compatible product line from 1 to 25.6T
• Full SW and architecture compatibility with TERALYNX 5 & TERALYNX 7

“We are excited to see several top cloud customers deploying our industry-leading TERALYNX 7 based switches. They are experiencing tremendous growth from workloads such as AI, HPC and dis-aggregated storage and looking for significantly higher networking performance,” said Rajiv Khemani, CEO and Co-Founder of Innovium Inc. “Leveraging our modern, ultra-efficient TERALYNX architecture, we are pleased to launch TERALYNX 8 that addresses critical requirements of performance, latency, analytics and quality for next generation data-center networks.”

Innovium is headquartered in San Jose, California, with design centers in Portland, Oregon, and Bengaluru, India.

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Airtel picks IBM and Red Hat for open hybrid cloud network

Bharti Airtel has selected IBM (nd Red Hat to build its new telco network cloud, which will be based on open standards and designed for new digital services.

The project uses Red Hat OpenStack Platform for all network workloads and Red Hat OpenShift for newer containerized workloads. It will also tap into Red Hat's ecosystem of network OEMs. In the future, Airtel's open hybrid cloud platform is expected to help enable new revenue streams with the on-boarding of third-party services including gaming, remote media production and enterprise services. By embracing IBM and Red Hat's hybrid cloud technology all the way to the network edge, Airtel aims to achieve improvement in time-to-market of services, reduction in operating expenses and reduced capital expenses.
 
"As part of our endeavor to build a 5G ready network for India's requirements, we are pleased to collaborate with IBM and Red Hat in our cloud journey," said Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel. Our goal with this powerful, seamless horizontal approach is to make our network future ready and enable Airtel to efficiently serve the massive surge in data consumption. The hybrid cloud architecture will resonate with our customer-obsession by providing improved flexibility, network stability and performance and bringing agility and automation in our network operations."

"Through its collaboration with IBM and Red Hat, Airtel will be building a modern, innovative and more responsive network infused with automation and AI, that will provide the consistency and agility needed for today's rapidly changing marketplace," said Steve Canepa, Global Managing Director, Communications Sector and Worldwide Head of Telecommunications, Media & Entertainment Industry, IBM. "IBM is a valued collaborator to many of the world's largest and most innovative communications service providers like Airtel as they transform their networks into open and secure hybrid multicloud platforms and prepare for the 5G and edge computing era."

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Telia Carrier deploys Ciena’s 6500 for C&L-band expansion

Telia Carrier is deploying Ciena’s 6500 Reconfigurable Line System (RLS) – which integrates both C&L-Band functions in a compact footprint and delivers more bandwidth to enable seamless on-demand growth for Telia Carrier customers.

Ciena said this network upgrade will double the usable signal spectrum to support increasing end-user demands and deliver reliable connectivity to U.S. web-scale and enterprise customers. The RLS platform's open software architecture will address Telia Carrier’s need for automation and programmability. Telia Carrier will also leverage Ciena’s Waveserver transponders, powered by WaveLogic Ai and WaveLogic 5 Extreme as well as Ciena’s Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller.

“Everything starts and ends with our customers, who need to be connected to everything, everywhere, without interruption. This new expansion of our network is a demonstration of our commitment to delivering exceptional network infrastructure and services, while creating a connectivity experience for our customers that is so seamless that they don’t even know we’re here,” states Andy Haynes, Chief Operating Officer at Telia Carrier.

“The digital economy continues to achieve incredible growth as the reliance on connectivity in our personal and professional lives reaches unprecedented levels. As Telia Carrier expands its’ geographical footprint and service offerings, our highly scalable and transformative network technologies will strengthen their competitive advantage and help them to stay ahead of the curve,” said Jamie Jefferies, Vice President and General Manager of EMEA at Ciena.

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CoreSite connects its Los Angeles campus to Oracle Cloud

CoreSite Realty announced the immediate availability of new fiber interconnection to Oracle Cloud through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect at its Los Angeles Campus.

CoreSite’s cloud-enabled data center campuses now offering fiber interconnection in Los Angeles as well as previously implemented at its Northern Virginia campus, provide customers low-latency fiber connectivity to each of the U.S. Oracle Cloud regions located in Ashburn, VA and Phoenix, AZ. Oracle customers can harness the power of scalable, low-latency, hybrid architectures at CoreSite to unlock innovation and drive business growth.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure FastConnect provides dedicated connectivity to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and other Oracle Cloud services. FastConnect provides an easy, elastic, and economical way to create a dedicated and private connection with higher bandwidth options, and a more reliable and consistent networking experience versus public internet-based connections.

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Napatech reports a record Q1 as revenue rises 27% YoY

Napatech reported Q1 2020 revenue of DKK 48.5 million, up by 27% compared to the first quarter of 2019, delivering solid underlying growth, positive cash flow from operations and improved earnings. During 2019, revenue grew 61% year-over-year, and the company improved product margins to nearly 75%.

 Ray Smets, CEO, Napatech said: “Our growth in 2019 was built on the strategic mindset of optimistic realism and our ability to find the right opportunities to win during a time of change. In the first quarter of 2020, we created opportunities to grow our revenue by inserting our solutions where our FPGA software expertise can be engaged to accelerate applications and virtualized network functions in rapidly growing next generation networks. Napatech is optimistic about the future. We see a growing need for technology and solutions we are focused on as there is a huge increase in software applications running on servers.”

http://www.napatech.com

Napatech accelerates virtualization with FPGA-based SmartNICs

Wednesday, April 01, 2020  Napatech, SmartNICs  

Napatech released new Link-Virtualization software that delivers high-performance virtual switching capabilities for its family of FPGA-based SmartNICs. The solution delivers a massive increase in network performance and simultaneous reduction in server CPU utilization, allowing data center operators to fulfill their vision for SDN and NFV.

The company said its Link-Virtualization software and FPGA-SmartNIC solution delivers the high throughput and virtual switching programmability needed for use cases such as VM demultiplexing, full and partial vSwitch offload for application acceleration, VM-to-VM network and application performance monitoring, network telemetry, and custom workload integration.

Highlights:

• Network Performance: More than 60X gain compared to basic NICs with line-rate forwarding up to 100Gbps switching and 60 million packets per second to virtual machines, for millions of simultaneous flows, with sub-10 uS latency.
• Server Scalability: More than 90% reduction in server utilization, removing burdensome network and security processing from valuable and expensive CPU cores, returning them to the applications, services and tenants for which they were intended.
• Feature Velocity: Reconfigurable and programmable processing to retain hardware performance and the speed of software innovation, to keep pace with the rapid evolution in networking standards and increasing threat landscape in cybersecurity.
• Data Center Sustainability: The combination of performance and programmability provides up to 5X lifetime cost savings by requiring fewer servers, rack space, power and cooling, while also reducing costly upgrade cycles when basic NICs fall behind in functionality.
• Rich Functionality: Napatech’s Link-Virtualization is supported on Napatech’s family of FPGA-based SmartNICs that include 10, 25, 40 and 100 gigabit Ethernet. It is fully compliant with industry standards including DPDK, OVS, and PCIe, and features the industry’s most programmable application interface for sophisticated match-action policies, VirtIO with live migration support, QoS, load balancing, overlay encapsulations, and much more.

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Aruba integrates its policy manager with Microsoft endpoint protection

Aruba has integrated its ClearPass Policy Manager with Microsoft Endpoint Manager, a unified management platform that includes Configuration Manager and Microsoft Intune. ClearPass Policy Manager has also been integrated with Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), a unified endpoint security platform designed to help enterprises prevent, detect, investigate and respond to advanced threats.

This integration allows ClearPass to control access to critical network resources based on endpoint security intelligence provided by Microsoft, reducing the risk posed by compromised network connections.

“Protecting enterprises against attacks requires a holistic approach to security based on an open approach to device and application protection,” said Michael Tennefoss, vice president of Strategic Partnerships at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “Aruba’s ClearPass provides policy management on network infrastructure from any vendor, while Microsoft Endpoint Manager provides secure, integrated management of devices and applications from any source. Operating in concert, ClearPass and Microsoft Endpoint Manager address endpoint security for a very broad range of IT, IoT, BYOD and operational technology (OT) devices and applications used in different vertical markets.”

https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/pso/PSO_MicrosoftSecurity.pdf

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Keysight delivers Electrical-Optical-Electrical workflow with VPI Optical Link

Keysight Technologies announced a new simulation workflow capability that seamlessly connects PathWave Advanced Design System (ADS) with VPI Design Suite from VPIphotonics, enabling designers to predict the signal integrity of Electrical-Optical-Electrical data links.

Keysight’s new VPI Optical Link solution in PathWave ADS simulates and optimizes design parameters concurrently in electrical and optical domains eliminating key barriers to developing high performance hardware products. It can predict the data link BER (Bit Error Rate) and understand how electrical design choices will interplay with optical design choices to deliver a reliable system design.

Keysights said the defining technology advancement in this new solution is the electro-optical workflow which can process millions of bits in minutes for accurate BER prediction. As a result of this rapid simulation, system architects can investigate link performance characteristics with varied fiber lengths, effects of distortion/dispersion, optical drive level, electrical transmitter and receiver equalization settings, as well as electrical channel design including trace routing and the design of PCB vias.

“We’re excited to partner with VPIphotonics to provide an industry-leading solution to the market. It seamlessly combines both of our companies’ simulation domain expertise to provide a powerful and comprehensive solution to a real customer challenge,” said Tom Lillig, general manager of the PathWave Software and Solution team at Keysight Technologies.

“Engineers have a wide variety of constraints when developing optical interconnect solutions for intra and inter datacenter applications,” stated André Richter, general manager of VPIphotonics. “With this new seamless design flow linking simulations of the electronic circuits at the transceivers with simulations of the optical fiber link, we are proud to jointly deliver a unique solution that offers the investigation and optimization of overall system performance.”

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