Fungible announces its DPU for scale-out data centers

Fungible, a start-up based in San Jose, California, unveiled its Fungible Data Processing Unit (Fungible DPU), a microprocessor optimized for data interchange and data-centric computation in scale-out architectures.

Fungible describes its DPU as the "third socket" in data centers, complementing the CPU and GPU, and delivering significant gains in performance, footprint and cost efficiencies for next-generation, scale-out networking, storage, security, and analytics platforms.  The company cites two core innovations that are tightly interwoven:

• A programmable data-path engine that executes data-centric computations at extremely high speeds, while providing flexibility comparable to general-purpose CPUs. The engine is programmed in C using industry-standard toolchains and is designed to execute many data-path computations concurrently. 
• A new network engine that implements the endpoint of a high-performance TrueFabric that provides deterministic low latency, full cross-section bandwidth, congestion and error control, and high security at any scale (from 100s to 100,000s of nodes). The TrueFabric protocol is fully standards-compliant and interoperable with TCP/IP over Ethernet, ensuring that the data center leaf-spine network can be built with standard Ethernet switches and standard electro-optics and fiber infrastructure.

Fungible is launching two versions of its DPU:

• Fungible F1 DPU – an 800Gbps processor designed specifically for high performance storage, analytics and security platforms.
• Fungible S1 DPU – a 200Gbps processor optimized for host-side use cases including bare metal virtualization, storage initiator, NFVi/VNF applications and distributed node security.

Fungible also provides a full suite of software that enables the Fungible DPU and the products it powers to be used "out of the box". This includes data-path stacks, host drivers and agents for x86, and a set of centralized cluster services that provides management, control and visibility of a large number of Fungible DPU-enabled products.

"The Fungible DPU is purpose built to address two of the biggest challenges in scale-out data centers – inefficient data interchange between nodes and inefficient execution of data-centric computations," said Pradeep Sindhu, CEO and Co-Founder of Fungible. "Data-centric computations are increasingly prevalent in data centers, with important examples being the computations performed in the network, storage, security and virtualization data-paths. Today, these computations are performed inefficiently by existing processor architectures. These inefficiencies cause overprovisioning and underutilization of resources, resulting in data centers that are significantly more expensive to build and operate. Eliminating these inefficiencies will also accelerate the proliferation of modern applications, such as AI and analytics."

https://www.fungible.com/

Fungible raises $200 million for Data Processing Units (DPUs)

Thursday, June 27, 2019    

Fungible, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, closed $200 million in Series C financing for its efforts to create an entirely new category of programmable processor.

The Fungible Data Processing Unit (DPU) aims to deliver an order of magnitude improvement in the execution of data-centric workloads. The company sees its DPU as a fundamental building block for next-generation data centers.

Fungible has not yet announced its first products. In previous blog posts, Fungible has talked about Composable Disaggregated Infrastructure (DCI), where compute and storage resources are stored in separate servers and interconnected by a very high bandwidth, reliable and low-latency IP over Ethernet (IPoE) network fabric.

Fungible was founded by Pradeep Sindhu and Bertrand Serlet. Sindhu previously founded Juniper Networks, held roles as CEO and CTO, and is now chief scientist. Serlet previously founded a storage startup and before that was senior vice president of software engineering at Apple.

The latest funding was led by the SoftBank Vision Fund with participation from Norwest Venture Partners and existing investors, including Battery Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Redline Capital and Walden Riverwood Ventures. Fungible has raised $300 million to date.

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Lumina shuts down - carrier SDN controller based on OpenDaylight

Lumina Networks, a start-up based in San Jose, California that developed open source carrier orchestration software, announced its exit from the market.

In a blog post, Andrew Coward, Lumina's CEO, states: "We set out as Lumina Networks in 2017, to bring open source SDN into large scale telco deployments – a mission we have in fact accomplished in more than half a dozen global-scale networks. In the process, most network vendors came to understand that selling their products into carriers would mean working with open source and adapted their products accordingly.

Unfortunately, while many in the telco community applauded our work, and planned deployments, revenue has not followed at the scale required for us to operate and manage a large open source project.

Essentially, revenue continued to flow to proprietary vendors. The switch to open source did not take place at a pace anywhere close to the speed that would enable us to operate and grow our business, despite commitments from many to the contrary. We have also found that COVID-19 has actually redirected funds away from automation projects and into building-out raw infrastructure, further delaying adoption."

https://www.luminanetworks.com/newsroom/lumina-networks-to-wind-down/

Lumina raises $10 million for its OpenDaylight-powered SDN controller

Thursday, May 24, 2018  Lumina, Start-Ups  

Lumina Networks, a start-up based offering an SDN controller powered by OpenDaylight, announced $10 million Series A financing, including $8 million in new funding led by Verizon Ventures. Other new investors included AT&T and Rahi Systems.

Lumina was formed in August 2017 as a spin-off from Brocade.

"This investment by both Verizon and AT&T demonstrates the strategic importance of open source networking to the automation and digitization of their networks,” said Andrew Coward, Founder and CEO of Lumina Networks. “We understand the value of our mission to take open source networking out of the labs of our customers and into production deployment. This funding will enable us to reach a wider customer base and realize the industry vision of easily deployable open source software-defined networking (SDN)."

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SiFive and Innovium enter collaboration

SiFive and Innovium, announced a collaboration to drive faster innovation in switch silicon solutions.

SiFive specializes in RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions. Innovium is known for its networking switch silicon for cloud and edge data centers.

The companies are collaborating on new designs that incorporate SiFive E2-Series processor cores to extend Innovium’s programmable switch silicon.

Innovium’s TERALYNX offers customers a highly differentiated and comprehensive programmable switch silicon portfolio, from 1 to 25.6Tbps performance and an architecture scaling to 51.2Tbps+, with consistent features and software.

“As Innovium’s highly successful TERALYNX switches ramp in Cloud and Edge data centers, we continue to invest in an industry-leading roadmap for next-generation networks,” said Rajiv Khemani, CEO of Innovium, Inc. “We are pleased to use SiFive’s processor IP in our products for additional flexible and programmable capabilities in the areas of management and configuration.”

“SiFive’s winning processor portfolio is well suited to new designs for datacenter infrastructure thanks to the highly-efficient, silicon-proven, configurable cores we offer,” said Dr. Naveed Sherwani, Chairman, President & CEO of SiFive. “The data center market is searching for efficient and scalable networking solutions that, through collaborating with Innovium, we can help provide.”

SiFive raises $61 million for RISC-V

Tuesday, August 11, 2020  Funding, Korea, RISC-V, SiFive, Silicon, Silicon Valley, Start-Ups  

SiFive, a start-up specializing in RISC-V processor IP and silicon solutions,  raised $61 million in a Series E round.

SiFive, which is based in San Mateo, California, develops a range of processor cores, accelerators, and SoC IP to create domain-specific architecture that will enable efficient, high-performance computing solutions. Recently, SiFive announced the SiFive 20G1 update for SiFive Core IP, enabling significant enhancements for performance, power, area, and features, with pre-integrated SiFive Shield, for whole SoC security, and SiFive Insight advanced trace and debug capabilities.

The latest funding round was led by SK hynix, joined by new investor Prosperity7 Ventures, with additional funding from existing investors, Sutter Hill Ventures, Western Digital Capital, Qualcomm Ventures LLC, Intel Capital, Osage University Partners, and Spark Capital.

Innovium raises $170 million for its switching silicon

Tuesday, July 21, 2020  Innovium, Silicon, Switching  

Innovium, a start-up based in San Jose, California, raised $170 million for its switching silicon solutions cloud and edge data centers.

The new funding round included investments from Premji Invest, DFJ Growth, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, and multiple strategic investors, along with existing investors including Greylock, Capricorn, WRVI, Qualcomm Ventures, Redline, S-Cubed Capital and DAG

. Innovium said this latest funding makes it the first network silicon company to achieve billion-dollar valuation "unicorn" status.

Earlier this year, Innovium unveiled its TERALYNX 8 silicon boasting 25.6Tbps switch with 112G SerDes

In addition, Innovium noted the following milestones during 1H 2020:

• Continued volume production ramp of TERALYNX 7
• Ramping TERALYNX 5 shipments for ToR, Edge & 5G customer designs
• Revenue growth of over 5x in 1H 2020 vs 1H 2019
• Achieved over 20% market share in 50G WW SerDes shipments and emerged as the only credible silicon diversity option [1]
• Wins, deployments and trials at majority of top 25 Cloud customers in the world

“We are delighted at the strong adoption at leading OEM, Cloud and ODM customers for our TERALYNX® family, which resulted in over 20% market share for 50G SerDes switch silicon in our first year of shipments. This additional funding, achieved despite ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, validates our vision, execution and momentum in a multi-billion secular high-growth market,” said Rajiv Khemani, Co-founder and CEO of Innovium.

“Data centers are expected to see secular long-term expansion from Cloud, 5G, AI and remote-work applications. Innovative TERALYNX switch silicon products from Innovium have already been adopted by world’s leading hyperscale Cloud providers and leading OEMs including Cisco. We are excited to partner with Innovium for its roadmap innovation and help accelerate go-to-market ramp up,” said TK Kurien, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Premji Invest.

https://www.innovium.com/

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

Monday, May 11, 2020    

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.

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MediaTek intros 5G chip supporting dual SIM

MediaTek introduced its Dimensity 800U 5G SoC, designed for multi-core high performance and leading 5G+5G Dual Sim Dual Standby (DSDS) technology.

The 7nm SoC has an octa-core CPU with a dual cluster consisting of two Arm Cortex-A76 processors with a clock speed of 2.4GHz and six Arm Cortex-A55 processors with a clock speed of 2.0GHZ. Dimensity 800U integrates an Arm Mali-G57 GPU, an independent AI processing unit (APU) and LPDDR4x RAM.

In addition, the integrated 5G modem in MediaTek's Dimensity 800U not only supports sub-6Ghz SA and NSA networks, but also supports 5G+5G dual SIM dual standby (DSDS), dual Voice over New Radio (VoNR), and 5G two carrier aggregation (2CC 5G-CA).

"MediaTek has always focused on enhancing the user experience with our leading semiconductor technology, whether consumers are streaming, gaming or taking photos," said Dr. Yenchi Lee, Deputy General Manager of MediaTek's Wireless Communications Business Unit. "MediaTek's Dimensity 800U brings cutting-edge, next-gen technology to the Dimensity SoC series, bringing MediaTek's advanced 5G, imaging and multimedia technologies to high-performance 5G smartphones that deliver incredible 5G experiences."

Key features

• Support for 120Hz FHD+ displays with high refresh rates for faster and smoother gaming and media streaming.
• Support for the HDR10+ standard for enhanced visual quality, plus the integrated MediaTek MiraVision PQ engine with HDR optimization for various types of videos.
• Support for flexible camera placement with up to 64MP cameras and quad camera capabilities.
• Integrated APU and ISP to provide a series of AI camera-enhancing functions.
• Support for voice on wakeup (VoW) and dual-mic noise reduction technology, lowering the standby power consumption of a voice assistant, and enabling it to hear clear sound regardless of external noise interruptions.

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Pluribus broadens support for Broadcom-based switches

Pluribus Networks announced release 6.0 (R6.0) of its Linux Netvisor ONE® network operating system (OS) and release 6.0 of the Pluribus UNUM management and Insight Analytics platform for high-performance, highly scalable data center fabrics.

Pluribus Netvisor ONE 6.0 OS now supports multiple new spine and leaf/edge switches based on Broadcom’s Tomahawk 2 and Trident 3 switch series. Netvisor ONE R6.0 also features multiple fabric service innovations built on top of the open-source Linux FRRouting (FRR) suite version 7.2.

Highlights of the Netvisor ONE R6.0 include:

• Support for New Broadcom-based Spine Switches: Netvisor ONE continues its leadership in open networking by supporting a trio of new white box switches based on the Broadcom Tomahawk 2 ASIC. The new platforms support 64 x 100G in 2RU including the Dell Z9264F-ON, the Edgecore AS7816-64X and the Freedom Series F9664-C. As these fixed form-factor scale-out spine switches continue to increase in port density, the need for expensive and complex chassis-based switches diminishes. R6.0 also adds support for the Dell S5232-ON, a compact 32 x 100G Trident 3-based spine switch.
• Support for New Broadcom-based Leaf/Edge Switches: R6.0 also delivers new high performance switches based on the programmable and feature rich Broadcom Trident 3 switch series. This includes the Dell S5224-ON with 24 x 25GbE and 4 x 100 GbE along with the S5248-ON featuring 48 x 25GbE and 6 x 100GbE supporting large scale network virtualization, network segmentation/slicing and wirespeed per-flow visibility. These switches can be deployed at the top of rack in standard data centers and also are ideally suited to building fabrics across multiple edge data centers supporting distributed cloud, edge compute and 5G services.
• Expanded Network Overlay Services – The key impact of the Adaptive Cloud Fabric, powered by the Netvisor ONE OS, is that services and policies can be implemented with one-touch fabric-wide provisioning across a single or multiple geo-distributed data center sites, simplifying operations and reducing the risk of security vulnerabilities due to mis-configuration. With R6.0 Pluribus has introduced a long list of new services that illustrates how the Adaptive Cloud Fabric provides a robust foundation for innovation and feature velocity for traditional and distributed cloud data centers. A few highlights from this list include:
• Carrier Ethernet and layer 2 services: R6.0 introduces E-Tree service, with use cases in IoT Video Security and Metro Ethernet access/aggregation, complementing existing E-Line and E-LAN services.
• Virtual Services Group (vSG): distributed multi-VRF and VRF leaking implementation designed to radically simplify service chaining. These new features enable increased multi-tenant scale and fine-grained microsegmentation, while also enabling service chaining through policy-based inter-VRF routing.
• Integrated DC Gateway Router: R6.0 adds multi-VRF capability to the DC gateway router integrated into the leaf/edge switch, improving multi-tenant scale while minimizing space, power and cost in smaller edge data centers.
• Network Packet Broker services: Pluribus has extended the industry’s only network packet broker solution implemented as a fully virtualized overlay service and capable of being deployed either as a stand-alone packet broker fabric or as an integrated service on a production switching network – an industry first.

Highlights of the UNUM Management Platform R6.0 include:

• High Availability UNUM Cluster: UNUM can now be deployed with a pair of resilient servers as well as a pair of resilient seed switches in the fabric.
• IP VirtualWire™ Dashboards: Powerful new graphical dashboards for VirtualWire lab automation use cases, improving visibility of connected devices under test and simplifying creation of connections across a single or multiple geo-distributed labs.
• UNUM Archiver for Insight Analytics: Enables the storage of 10s of billions of per-flow metadata and switch analytics in a separate NFS repository for historical analysis and compliance purposes.

“Our collaboration with Pluribus has been unwavering for more than 10 years,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Core Switching Group, Broadcom. “It is fantastic to see Pluribus leveraging our high performance Tomahawk 2 and Trident 3 across multiple white box switches. We are pleased to continue the collaboration on our Trident 4 ASIC featuring NPL programmability and a high density of 100GbE and 400GbE interfaces.”

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Colovore adds 3.5MW high-density colocation in Silicon Valley

Colovore now has 3.5 MW of high-density data center colocation capacity currently available in supply-constrained Silicon Valley.

Colovore said Silicon Valley data center vacancy rates remain at historic lows near 5%. A lack of suitable land is constraining future development. Colovore's expansion adds much needed high-quality colocation capacity to the marketplace.

Colovore offers 50 kW cabinet capacities cooled by its traditional rear-door heat exchangers, and also supports direct liquid cooling (liquid to the platform or to the chip) for the highest-density server deployments. Its minimum customer power commitment per cabinet is only 8 kW, supporting a wide range of IT requirements.

"We are seeing a major change in colocation requirements, driven by incredible advances at the chip and component layers in modern servers," stated Sean Holzknecht, President and Co-Founder of Colovore. "GPUs, dual CPUs, and flash storage architectures supporting the explosion in A.I., Big Data, and HPC applications and services require data center environments with 10-20x the amount of power and cooling per cabinet compared to only a few years ago--1 kW of draw per modern server rack unit is now common. We are proud of our high-density, liquid-cooled colocation facility which allows our customers to fully-pack their server cabinets and optimize their IT footprints while significantly lowering TCO."

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Zayo boosts its IP transit capacity in key metro markets

Citing increased demand to 100G ports, Zayo announced a significant boost to its IP Transit capacity in key metro markets across the United States.

Zayo recently completed upgrades to support 100G IP Transit in Phoenix, San Jose and Denver. These three metro areas join Atlanta, Boston, New York, Miami, San Francisco and Seattle in benefiting from Zayo’s 100G enabled services.

“We're also meeting requests from higher bandwidth consumers as they work to support the major increase in traffic on their own platforms. In many cases, the requests are for significant increases in bandwidth, even doubling capacity.”

http://www.zayo.com

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Australia's NEXTDC implements Ciena for DCI

Australia's NEXTDC Limited, a leading data center colocation provider, will deploy Ciena's Data Center Interconnect (DCI) platform.

NEXTDC operates data centers in Brisbane, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. The facilities support more than 600 clouds, carrier networks and ICT service providers.

To support this deployment, IT solutions provider Over The Wire will simplify management and integration of Ciena into NEXTDC. Ciena Professional Services will provide end-to-end network design and a customised delivery model to ensure rapid deployment while adhering to pandemic guidelines.

“NEXTDC plays a critical role in today’s climate where data centers support Australia’s economy by accelerating digital-first strategies. Ciena’s DCI platform will enable us to provide the agile foundation our customers need to thrive in a competitive marketplace and COVID-19 environment,”­ Sean Rinas, Head of Network Operations, NEXTDC Limited.

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SpaceX launches its 11th Starlink mission

SpaceX successfully completed its 11th Starlink mission, adding a further 58 satellites to its growing broadband constellation.  Starlink now has over 600 satellites in orbit.

The launch was also notable because it used a Falcon 9 first-stage booster for the sixth time. The booster was recovered on the remote drone ship. The rocket fairing was also successfully recovered.

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