NTT develops optical concatenated loop topology

Researchers at NTT Corporation are developing concatenated loop network designs for improving optical access resiliency and performance.

The research, which helps advance NTT's IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network) vision, aims to bring new flexibility to optical fiber cable routes in the access network.

NTT says its new optical access topology consists of concatenated optical fiber cable loops which are characterized by optical path duplexing and flexible fiber reassigning. Optimum parameters, including loop size and number of reassignable fibers in concatenated loops, were derived from theoretical calculations. 

https://group.ntt/en/newsrelease/2021/06/18/210618a.html

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Intel splits Data Platform Group, Rivera promoted, McKeown joins, Shenoy departs

Intel announced a restructuring of its Data Platform Group (DPG) into two new business units.

• Sandra Rivera will take on a new role as executive vice president and general manager of Datacenter and AI. Rivera will lead this organization’s focus on developing leadership data center products for a cloud-based world, including Intel Xeon and field programmable gate array (FPGA) products. She will also drive the company’s overall artificial intelligence (AI) strategy. Rivera has a deep history in data center technology and a track record of integrating Intel’s silicon and software portfolios to drive customer value. Prior to her role serving as Intel’s chief people officer, she led Intel’s Network Platforms Group. 
• Nick McKeown will join Intel full-time on July 6 as senior vice president and general manager of a new Network and Edge Group. This brings Intel’s Network Platforms Group, Internet of Things Group and Connectivity Group into a single business unit chartered to drive technology and product leadership throughout the network to the intelligent edge. Renown in the networking technology industry and recipient of the 2021 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, McKeown was previously a part-time Intel Senior Fellow who joined the company with its 2019 acquisition of Barefoot Networks, which he co-founded. 

Intel will also create two new business units, one focused on software and one on high performance computing (HPC) and graphics. 

• Greg Lavender has joined Intel as chief technology officer (CTO) and senior vice president and general manager of the new Software and Advanced Technology Group. This group will drive Intel’s unified vision for software, ensuring it remains a powerful competitive differentiator for the company. As CTO, Lavender will also be responsible for driving Intel’s technical innovation and research programs, including Intel Labs. He brings more than 35 years of experience in software and hardware product engineering and advanced research and development to Intel, most recently serving as senior vice president and CTO of VMware. He has also held key leadership roles at Citigroup, Cisco and Sun Microsystems. 
• Raja Koduri, a well-known innovator in GPU computing technology, will lead the Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group, a newly formed business unit that will increase the company’s focus in the key growth areas of high performance computing and graphics. AXG is chartered with delivering HPC and graphics solutions for integrated and discrete segments across client, enterprise and data center. Koduri previously served as Intel’s general manager of Architecture, Graphics and Software. 

Rivera, McKeown, Lavender and Koduri will report directly to Pat Gelsinger. Navin Shenoy, who has been serving as executive vice president and general manager of the Data Platforms Group, will assist with the transition and leave Intel on July 6.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-makes-changes-strengthen-execution-innovation-critical-business-areas.html

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HPE bets big on its GreenLake Cloud Platform

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is rolling out a slew of enhancements to its GreenLake platform for cloud services in the data center, in a colocation center, and at the edge. Innovations span applications, security, silicon and software with automated, cloud-native capabilities that can be performed in just a few clicks and managed in a unified platform.

The company says its HPE GreenLake cloud platform now has over 1,200 customers representing $4.8 billion in total contract value. HPE also claims a 95% customer renewal rate.

“Organizations today know that to succeed in their industries, they must pursue a cloud everywhere mandate, which enables them to collect, analyze, and act on data, wherever it resides,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO at HPE. “The HPE GreenLake edge to cloud platform empowers organizations to harness the power of all their data, regardless of location, and today’s announcements further extend HPE’s leadership in this hybrid cloud market. From silicon, software, and security, to workloads that organizations rely on to run their businesses, HPE continues to extend the reach of the HPE GreenLake cloud platform, to help customers accelerate digital transformation and generate tremendous business outcomes.”

At its HPE Discover virtual event, HPE made the following announcements concerning the HPE GreenLake cloud platform:

HPE GreenLake Lighthouse: Agile, cloud-native solution that addresses configuration complexity to rapidly deliver multiple cloud services on-demand. HPE GreenLake Lighthouse, which provides a seamless, intelligent operational experience to easily run and manage different workload-optimized solutions. HPE Greenlake Lighthouse is built with HPE Ezmeral software to autonomously optimize different cloud services and workloads by composing resources to deliver the best performance, lowest cost or a balance of both, depending on business priorities.

Project Aurora: a foundation for HPE GreenLake’s zero-trust framework for HPE’s edge-to-cloud architecture. Project Aurora will embed within the HPE GreenLake cloud platform building blocks to automatically and continuously verify the integrity of the hardware, firmware, operating systems, platforms, and workloads, including security workloads. In addition, Project Aurora’s continuous attestation capabilities can be used to automatically detect advanced threats from silicon to cloud, in seconds compared to today’s average of 28 days. These capabilities help enterprises potentially minimize data loss, unauthorized encryption, and valuable data and intellectual property corruption. Project Aurora also complements existing security investments to reduce downtime and protect productivity and revenue. The new initiative builds upon HPE’s silicon root of trust technology. 

Silicon on-Demand: gaining processor core capacity in just a few clicks. The new pay-per-use, consumption-based pricing model  will optimize at the silicon level to offer a more granular cloud experience with better metering, reduced buffering time and faster deployment. Available first via the HPE GreenLake cloud platform, HPE will offer flexible consumption capabilities with Silicon on-Demand, a first-of-its-kind feature, developed in partnership with Intel, to add new capacity at a processor core and persistent memory level using Intel Optane technology. HPE is removing the need to order or install new processors by allowing customers to instantly activate and pay for more capacity with just a click.

Compute Cloud Console: delivering intuitive automatic management for unified compute operations as a service.  The Compute Cloud Console simplifies the infrastructure management experience with a seamless as-a-service experience no matter where workloads are running, from edge to cloud. Additionally, it automates manual tasks such as provisioning and lifecycle management, speeding up time-to-market and eliminating inconsistencies due to human error.

https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/

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Aruba expands its flagship CX Switching portfolio

Aruba announced a new set of capabilities and solutions for Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform) as well as an expansion of its flagship CX Switching portfolio to include two new series of switches.

Updates include new AIOps, IoT and security features for Aruba Central – the cloud-native, AI-powered network management and analytics platform that sits at the heart of Aruba ESP – as well as additions to the Aruba CX Switching portfolio that are purpose-built for the Intelligent Edge. 

The switching expansion includes: 

• The Aruba CX 4100i , a family of ruggedized switches designed to withstand extreme temperatures and harsh environments, well-suited for industrial IoT applications that require always-on PoE and high-performance wired connectivity
• The Aruba CX 6000, a cost-effective, layer 2 solution purpose-built for remote offices and the SMB market.

“The developments of the past year have shown us that the distributed enterprise is here to stay, especially as organizations seek ways to maximize flexibility and build resiliency into their businesses in order to adapt quickly to whatever challenges may arise,” said Bob Laliberte, senior analyst and practice director at Enterprise Strategy Group. “Our research has shown that enterprises are accelerating their digital transformation initiatives and prioritizing projects that enhance productivity, security and collaboration, however, these highly distributed environments create more IT complexity. Therefore, there’s a real appetite in the market for technologies and solutions that leverage data and automation to increase agility and streamline operations.”

https://news.arubanetworks.com/

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Ericsson to deliver Multi-Operator RAN radios to KDDI and SoftBank

Ericsson has been selected by KDDI and SoftBank Corp. (as one of the vendors to help deploy Japan’s first Multi-Operator Radio Access Network (MORAN).  Ericsson’s network sharing solution powers both communications service providers while keeping both companies’operations and management capabilities separate.   

Ericsson equipment supports network sharing on both TDD (Time Division Duplex) and FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) as well as 4G/LTE and 5G New Radio (NR).  The solution consists of Ericsson Radio System  products such as RAN Compute (base band), radio and transport - with the powerful system on a chip, Ericsson Silicon, bringing innovative various solutions such as Ericsson Spectrum Sharing and Ericsson Uplink Booster.

Ericsson’s network sharing solution can also be applied to industrial or campus sites, where the radio access network may be shared between the onsite network and the public network, opening up more possibilities to support industry digitalization.

Tatsuo Sato, Vice President & Managing Officer, Technology Planning, KDDI says: “We are pleased to work closely with SoftBank and Ericsson to accelerate 5G network deployment. With the MORAN solution, we will be among the first to offer excellent 5G experiences to our customers.”

Tomohiro Sekiwa, Senior Vice President and CNO, SoftBank, says: “To provide 5G coverage to our customers across Japan with extraordinary speed, we are proactively working with KDDI and Ericsson.  The MORAN solution is key to this success and we have high expectations for this effort.”

Chris Houghton, Senior Vice President, Head of Market Area North East Asia, Ericsson, says: “We are thrilled to contribute to the efforts of our two important customers, KDDI and SoftBank, to build Multi-Operator RAN for the first time in Japan. We look forward to further supporting this imperative mission to build the country’s significant network infrastructure.”

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SiFive launches two high performance RISC-V cores

SiFive launched two new RISC-V processor cores: the P270, SiFive’s first Linux capable processor with full support for the RISC-V vector extension v1.0 rc, and the SiFive Performance P550 core, SiFive’s highest performance processor -- boasting a SPECInt 2006 score of 8.65/GHz, making it the highest performance RISC-V processor available today, and comparable to existing proprietary solutions in the application processor space.

“SiFive Performance is a significant milestone in our commitment to deliver a complete, scalable portfolio of RISC-V cores to customers in all markets who are at the vanguard of SOC design and are dissatisfied with the status quo,” said Dr. Yunsup Lee, Co-Founder and CTO of SiFive. “These two new products cover new performance points and a wide range of application areas, from efficient vector processors that easily displace yesterday’s SIMD architectures, to the bleeding edge that the P550 represents. SiFive is proud to set the standard for RISC-V processing and is ready to deliver these products to customers today.”

“We are pleased to be a lead development partner with SiFive to showcase to mutual customers the impressive performance of their P550 on our 7nm Horse Creek platform," said Amber Huffman, Intel Fellow and CTO of IP engineering group at Intel. "By combining Intel's leading-edge interface IP such as DDR and PCIe with SiFive's highest performance processor, Horse Creek will provide a valuable and expandable development vehicle for cutting-edge RISC-V applications."

https://www.sifive.com/blog/the-heart-of-sifive-is-performance-intelligence-

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Ericsson adds 5G mid-band support

Ericsson has extended its Cloud RAN (Radio Access Network) offering to include support for 5G mid-band and Massive MIMO deployments. 

Ericsson says a high-performing mid-band 5G deployment requires 150 times more compute power than 4G, in half the time. The company is adding hardware accelerators to deliver part of this needed compute power. Ericsson notes that cloud infrastructure becomes a feasible option for mid-band deployments. 

Fredrik Jejdling, Executive Vice President and Head of Business Area Networks, Ericsson, says: “We aim to constantly develop the best technologies by working closely with our customers. We continue investing in technology to stay ahead and deliver a high-performing and cost-effective portfolio, as evidenced by our latest releases. Now we are bringing this high performance to Cloud RAN with the vision that our customers can deploy cloud-native networks, virtually everywhere, on any cloud, and server platform.“

https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/2021/6/ericsson-strengthens-cloud-ran-portfolio-with-5g-mid-band-support

 

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Nutanix elects Virginia Gambale as Chair of the Board

Nutanix announced the election of Virginia Gambale as Chair of the Nutanix Board, effective June 16, 2021. Ms. Gambale joined the Board in June 2020 and became Lead Independent Director in December 2020. Gambale succeeds Dheeraj Pandey, who served as Chair until his departure in December 2020.

“Virginia’s insights, dedication, commitment and advice have contributed meaningfully to Nutanix, and we are eager to benefit from her continued leadership in this expanded role,” said Rajiv Ramaswami, President and CEO of Nutanix. “In addition to bringing a deep knowledge of our business, market landscape and technology from her experience as a prior CIO, Virginia has extensive board experience advising technology companies, and her thoughtful and structured approach to governance will help advance our leadership in hybrid multicloud, as well as help drive growth, profitability and value creation for our shareholders.”

Gambale has served on public company boards for more than 20 years across a variety of industries. She is currently Managing Partner of Azimuth Partners LLC, a strategic advisory firm focused on the use of disruptive technologies to assist mid-market and large corporations in their growth. 

https://www.nutanix.com/

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