AMD to acquire Pensando for its DPU + software stack

AMD agreed to acquire Pensando, a Silicon Valley start-up offering a software-defined edge services platform powered by a custom packet processor, for approximately $1.9 billion before working capital and other adjustments. 

Pensando ("thinking" in Spanish) is led by Cisco’s legendary “MPLS” team — Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero, Soni Jiandani and Randy Pond. Its platform is designed to accelerate networking, security, storage and other services for cloud, enterprise and edge applications. Its architecture leverages the programmable packet processor distributed throughout a network to efficiently accelerate multiple infrastructure services simultaneously, offloading workloads from the CPU and increasing overall system performance. The company says it can achieve between 8x and 13x greater performance compared to competitive solutions.

Pensando claims multiple deployments at scale across cloud and enterprise customers, including Goldman Sachs, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. 

“To build a leading-edge data center with the best performance, security, flexibility and lowest total cost of ownership requires a wide range of compute engines,” said Dr. Lisa Su, AMD chair and CEO. “All major cloud and OEM customers have adopted EPYC processors to power their data center offerings. Today, with our acquisition of Pensando, we add a leading distributed services platform to our high-performance CPU, GPU, FPGA and adaptive SoC portfolio. The Pensando team brings world-class expertise and a proven track record of innovation at the chip, software and platform level which expands our ability to offer leadership solutions for our cloud, enterprise and edge customers.”

“We are excited to join the AMD family. Our shared cultures of innovation, excellence and relentless focus on partners and customers make this an ideal combination. Together, we have the talent and tools to deliver on our customers’ vision for the future of computing,” said Pensando CEO Prem Jain. “In less than five years Pensando has assembled a best-in-class engineering team that are experts in building systems together with a rich, deep ecosystem of partners and customers who have currently deployed over 100,000 Pensando platforms into production. Joining together with AMD will help accelerate growth in our core business and enable us to pursue a much larger customer base across more markets.”

“Industry leadership is based on catching business model disruptions enabled by new technologies,” said John Chambers, chair of the board of Pensando. "Pensando is built upon strong customer relationships and a solution that is at least two years ahead in cloud, edge and enterprise. For example, the performance and scale of Pensando’s distributed services platform is 8x-13x of the largest cloud provider and uses less power. Pensando’s smart switching architecture has 100x the scale, 10x the performance at one-third the cost of ownership of any comparable products in the enterprise market.  Pensando’s leadership position in software-defined cloud, compute, networking, security and storage services as part of the much larger AMD portfolio is in my opinion a perfect fit to shape the data center computing landscape for the next decade.”

CEO Prem Jain and the Pensando team will join AMD as part of the Data Center Solutions Group, led by AMD Senior Vice President and General Manager Forrest Norrod. Pensando will remain focused on executing their product and technology roadmaps, now with additional scale to accelerate their business and address growing market opportunities across a broader number of customers.

http://pensando.io

Pensado emerges from stealth, led by "MPLS" team from Cisco

Wednesday, October 16, 2019  Edge, Start-Ups  

Pensando Systems, a start-up based in San Jose, California, emerged from stealth to unveil its first product -- a software-defined edge services platform that was developed in collaboration with the world’s largest cloud, enterprise, storage, and telecommunications companies.

Pensando ("thinking" in Spanish) is led by Cisco’s legendary “MPLS” team — Mario Mazzola, Prem Jain, Luca Cafiero, Soni Jiandani and Randy Pond. Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Lightspeed Venture Partners led a Series C round to raise up to $145 million in funding. This will bring the total amount raised to $278 million after an earlier founder-led series A round of $71 million, and a customer-led series B round of $62 million. Cited customers, investors, and partners including HPE, Goldman Sachs, NetApp, and Equinix.

The Pensando platform is a custom programmable processor optimized to execute a software stack delivering cloud, compute, networking, storage and security services wherever data is located, all managed via its Venice Centralized Policy and Services Controller. The platform delivers highly programmable software-defined cloud, compute, networking, storage, and security services wherever data is located.


The platform promises an improved security posture through distributed network protection and east-west security. It offloads networking and security functions at wire speed to dedicated accelerators, and it is designed to scale to > 1000 tenants per server and >1M routes.

The company claims its capability means that cloud providers can now gain a technological advantage over the current market leader, Amazon Web Services Nitro, delivering 5-9x improvements in productivity, performance, and scale when compared to current architectures with no risk of lock-in.

The portfolio includes:

• Naples 100 and Naples 25 cards for installation in standard servers. The Naples Distributed Services Card (DSC) delivers high-performance cloud, compute, networking, storage and security functions. 
• Venice Centralized Policy and Services Controller - Centrally-managed enterprise-grade security and visibility at every level of the stack enables seamless distribution of all infrastructure services policies to active Naples nodes. In addition, Venice handles lifecycle management such as deploying in-service software upgrades to Naples nodes and delivers always-on telemetry, deep end-to-end observability, and operational simplicity across the environment. 

Pensando also announced that Mark Potter, chief technology officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and Barry Eggers, a partner of Lightspeed Venture Partners, joined the board of directors, with John Chambers, CEO of JC2 Ventures, leading as chairman.

http://pensando.io

Are next-gen SmartNICs gaining traction with top cloud providers?

Tuesday, September 21, 2021  Pensando, SmartNICs  

https://youtu.be/fEEFyIJYzXIIn this video, Prem Jain, co-founder and CEO of Pensando, discusses SmartNIC adoption trends by major cloud providers. Hot topics include bare-metal-as-a-service acceleration and virtualized storage. For more insights from industry thought leaders check out: https://nextgeninfra.io/VMware's Project Monterey for SmartNICs - Pensando's perspectiveWednesday, September 30, 2020  Pensando, SmartNICs  Pensando...

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VMware's Project Monterey for SmartNICs - Pensando's perspective

Wednesday, September 30, 2020  Pensando, SmartNICs  

Pensando Systems is working with VMware on Project Monterey to integrate the next generation of SmartNIC technology into fully virtualized enterprise networks.The project aims to rearchitect VMware Cloud Foundation to enable disaggregation of the server including extending support for bare metal servers, thereby allowing physical resources to be dynamically accessed by applications based on policy or via software API.In this video, Silvano Gai of...

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AMD completes acquisition of Xilinx

Monday, February 14, 2022  AMD, Silicon  

AMD completed its previously-announced  acquisition of Xilinx in an all-stock transaction. Xilinx stockholders received 1.7234 shares of AMD common stock and cash in lieu of any fractional shares of AMD common stock for each share of Xilinx common stock.AMD expects the acquisition to be accretive to non-GAAP margins, non-GAAP EPS and free cash flow generation in the first year.Former Xilinx CEO Victor Peng will join AMD as president of the newly...

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Xilinx looks beyond FPGAs with Adaptive Compute Acceleration Platform

Tuesday, October 02, 2018  Xilinx  

At its second annual Xilinx Developer Forum (XDF) in San Jose, Xilinx unveiled strategic moves beyond its mainstay field-programmable gate array (FPGAs) with the introduction of its own accelerator line cards and, more significantly, a new Adaptive Compute Acceleration Platform (ACAP). Xilinx, which got its start in 1984 and now sells a broad range of FPGAs and complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), is transforming itself into a higher-value...

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Xilinx to acquire Solarflare for SmartNIC solutions

Wednesday, April 24, 2019  Xilinx  

Xilinx agreed to acquire Solarflare Communications, a provider of high-performance, low latency networking solutions for customers spanning FinTech to cloud computing. Financial terms were not disclosed. Xilinx said the acquisition enables it to combine its FPGA, MPSoC and ACAP solutions with Solarflare's ultra-low latency network interface card (NIC) technology and Onload application acceleration software. The target is new converged SmartNIC solutions,...

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Synopsys and Juniper form joint venture for silicon photonics

Synopsys and Juniper Networks are establishing a joint venture company focused on open silicon photonics for applications such as telecom, datacom, LiDAR, healthcare, HPC, AI, and optical computing. 

The new company's open silicon photonics platform will include integrated lasers, optical amplifiers, and a full suite of photonic components to form a complete solution that will be accessible through a Process Design Kit (PDK). The platform promises the lowest power consumption for high-performance Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs). 

The new company, which has not yet been named, will be jointly owned, with Synopsys holding the majority share. It is being formed, in part, from the carve-out of integrated silicon photonics assets from Juniper, which includes more than 200 patents on photonic device design and process integration.

While part of Juniper, the new company has closely collaborated with Tower Semiconductor to develop and qualify Tower Semiconductor's PH18DA process technology to enable the industry's first "laser-on-a-chip" open silicon photonics platform. To demonstrate capabilities of this platform and accelerate customer adoption of the technology, the new company has created 400G and 800G photonics reference designs with integrated lasers and expects first samples to be available in summer 2022.

A key challenge for silicon photonics has been the cost of adding discrete lasers, which includes the manufacturing as well as the assembly and alignment of those lasers onto the photonic chip. This becomes more important as the number of laser channels and the overall bandwidth increases. By processing the Indium Phosphide (InP) materials directly onto the silicon photonics wafer, the PH18DA platform reduces the cost and time of adding lasers, enabling volume scalability and improved power efficiency. In addition, monolithically integrated lasers on silicon wafers improves overall reliability and simplifies packaging. This "Laser-on-a-Chip" open silicon photonics platform will bring integrated photonics to a host of new applications and markets that were previously not thought possible. The first Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) is scheduled to be taped out in Q2 2022.

"Silicon photonics is a rapidly growing market that is transforming many industries and creating exciting opportunities for new applications in the future," said Sassine Ghazi, president and chief operating officer at Synopsys. "The new company's open silicon photonics platform, combined with Synopsys' existing investment in a unified electronic photonic design automation solution consisting of OptoCompiler™, OptSim™, PrimeSim™, Photonic Device Compiler and IC Validator™ products, will help reshape the optical computing industry, enabling companies to cost-effectively shift to integrated lasers and significantly accelerate development of photonic IC designs."

"This revolutionary technology will change the economics of how people are going to build photonic systems," said Rami Rahim, CEO of Juniper Networks. "We have been strong supporters of integrated silicon photonics and we believe the new company will drive development of these systems by using an advanced open platform that will dramatically reduce costs and increase the performance and reliability of designs across multiple use cases. We are excited to continue to collaborate with the new company to enable a broad ecosystem to efficiently develop next-generation optical transceiver and co-packaged designs."

"We have had a long history of successful collaboration with Juniper Networks on integrated photonics. The new company formed by Synopsys and Juniper will strengthen and accelerate the adoption of the silicon photonics platform," said Russell Ellwanger, CEO of Tower Semiconductor. "Providing an open silicon photonics platform consisting of integrated lasers that has been qualified on Tower's process will enable customers to create innovative products with the potential to transform the industry."

https://www.synopsys.com

Juniper picks Synopsys for developing photonics-enabled chips

Thursday, December 23, 2021  Juniper, Silicon Photonics, Synopsys  

Synopsys is supplying its OptoCompiler platform, including the OptSim and PrimeSim HSPICE simulation solutions, to Juniper Networks to accelerate the development of photonic-enabled chips for the next generation of optical communications.Juniper plans to use Synopsys solutions to design and optimize its hybrid silicon and InP optical platform."Synopsys offers a unique, unified photonic and electronic design suite, which accelerates customer design...

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Tower Semi and Juniper develop silicon photonics process 

Tuesday, December 21, 2021  Israel, Juniper, Silicon Photonics, Tower Semiconductor  

Tower Semiconductor and Juniper Networks announced a silicon photonics (SiPho) foundry-ready process with integrated III-V lasers, amplifiers modulators and detectors. 

Potential applications include optical connectivity in datacenters and telecom networks, as well as AI, LiDAR and other sensors. 

The new platform co-integrates III-V lasers, semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA), electro-absorption modulators (EAM) and photodetectors with silicon photonics devices, all monolithically on a single chip. This enables smaller, higher-channel count and more power-efficient optical architectures and solutions. Foundry availability will enable a broad array of product developers to create highly integrated photonic integrated circuits (PICs) for diverse markets.   

Process design kits (PDK) are expected to be available by year end and the first open multi-project wafer (MPW) run are expected to be offered early next year. First samples of full 400Gb/s and 800Gb/s PICs reference designs with integrated laser are expected to be available in the second quarter of 2022. 

“Our mutual development work with Tower has been extraordinarily successful in qualifying this innovative silicon photonics technology in a high-volume manufacturing facility,” said Rami Rahim, CEO of Juniper Networks. “By offering this capability to the entire industry, Juniper offers the potential to radically reduce the cost of optics while lowering the barrier to entry for customers”. 

“Our partnership with Juniper on silicon photonics is bringing a paradigm shift for product development across our industry,” said Russell Ellwanger, CEO of Tower Semiconductor. “It is now possible to mix the advantages of III-V semiconductors with high-volume silicon photonics manufacturing. Being the singular open market, integrated laser silicon photonics platform, and having a multi-year advantage over any potential foundry competitor, we are jointly creating breakthrough products with truly unique value for our industry and for society as a whole”. 

https://towersemi.com/2021/12/21/12212021/

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Keysight intros 120 Giga Baud Bit Error Ratio Test (BERT)

Keysight Technologies introduced a new 120 Giga Baud (GBd) High-Performance Bit Error Ratio Test (BERT) solution (M8050A) for validating next generation chip deployments of up to 120 GBd for 1.6 Tbps designs.

Keysight said its solution addresses the higher loss and distortions when moving from 112 Gbps per lane to 224 Gbps per lane by enabling more test margin.

Keysight’s new M8050A BERT benefits:

• A deep level of integration simplifies setup and delivers reliable verification of designs at all speed grades with the combination of 120 GBd Pattern Generator, coupled with high signal integrity​.
• Saves time and investment by providing flexibility with license upgradeable hardware when test requirements change. Software extensions within the M8070B BERT system software open the application space to support upcoming technologies with full connection to automation software.​
• Keysight’s Infiniium 80 GHz UXR oscilloscope as an acquisition-based Error-Analyzer in combination with M8050A, provides a comprehensive bit error ratio tester up to 120 GBd that supports non return to zero (NRZ) and pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) 4, as well as PAM 6/8, which is likely required in 1.6T environment.
• Keysight’s industry experts, coupled with a proven automation framework, deliver test consulting for the latest and emerging markets with close connection to standards bodies.​

“From fully automated dark factories, closed loop digital twins to the metaverse, today’s applications and services generate vast amounts of artificial intelligence workloads. New electrical and optical designs are required to handle these workloads and make progress towards sustainability, achieving climate goals,” said Dr. Joachim Peerlings, vice president and general manager of Keysight’s Network and Data Center business. “We are pleased with Keysight’s continuous efforts to deliver first-to-market solutions that support our customers in achieving these goals.”

https://www.keysight.com/us/en/product/M8050A/120-gbd-high-performance-bert.html

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HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 brings edge to ISS

The HPE Spaceborne Computer-2 (SBC-2), which is deployed on the International Space Station (ISS), has successfully completed 24 research experiments requiring real-time data processing. These experiments spanned uses cases supporting healthcare, image processing, natural disaster recovery, 3D printing, 5G, and solutions enabled by artificial intelligence.

HPE launched Spaceborne Computer-2, in collaboration with the ISS National Laboratory, to space in February 2021 and was installed on the ISS in May 2021. The solution is comprised of HPE’s edge computing solutions, the HPE Edgeline Converged EL4000 Edge system, which provides a rugged and compact system designed to perform in harsher edge environments, such as space, and the HPE ProLiant DL360 server, an industry-standard server, for additional high-performing capabilities to target a range of workloads, including edge, HPC, AI, etc.

The edge computing capabilities delivered through SBC-2 also have the potential to enable astronauts and space explorers to send data to Earth, whether to be further analyzed or used in another way, at a radically compressed size and faster speed. Previously, 1.8 GB of raw DNA sequence data took an average time of 12.2 hours just to download to Earth for initial processing. With SBC-2, researchers onboard the space station processed that same data in six minutes to gather meaningful insights, compressed it to 92 KB and sent it to Earth in just two seconds, representing a 20,000X speed-up.

“By introducing edge computing and AI capabilities to the International Space Station with Spaceborne Computer-2, we have helped foster a growing, collaborative research community that shares a common goal to make scientific and engineering breakthroughs that benefit humankind, on space and here on Earth,” said Dr. Mark Fernandez, principal investigator, Spaceborne Computer-2, at HPE. “We are proud of this ongoing work, which has already resulted in 24 completed experiments, from various organizations, demonstrating new possibilities for space exploration and milestones for humanity.”

https://www.hpe.com/us/en/compute/hpc/supercomputing/spaceborne.html

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Private investment firm acquires LightRiver

Grain Management, a leading private investment firm, has acquired LightRiver’s Technologies & Software entities from CVF Capital Partners and Plexus Capital. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Since its establishment in 1998, LightRiver has delivered over $1 billion in carrier-grade transport network solutions, including certified design, professional staging services, deployment services, and network automation products to over 150 clients in North America and Europe. The business offers full lifecycle hardware, software, services, and support solutions in multi-technology networking. It specializes in the design, procurement, delivery, and ongoing technical support of heterogenous transport networks and the open software tools to discover, monitor, provision and control multi-vendor packet optical networks.

“Grain’s focus on connectivity makes them an ideal partner. Their support positions LightRiver to build on our market and technology leadership while enhancing the commitment to our customers and partners, and enabling teammates in those key markets,” states Glenn Johansen, LightRiver Founder and CEO. “We look forward to leveraging Grain’s market, management, and financial strengths to grow our platform and expand our solution portfolio and customer base.”

“We’ve been deeply impressed by the strong technical capabilities and compelling offerings the LightRiver team brings to a fast-growing segment,” said Michael McKenzie, Managing Director at Grain. “We look forward to partnering with this deep and talented team to advance their services and software platform.” 

http://www.graingp.com

http://www.lightriver.com 

What's hot at OFC22? Lightriver on IPoDWDM

Monday, March 14, 2022  #OFC22, Lightriver  

Hot trends at OFC22 include IPoDWDM, 400ZR, disaggregated networking, pluggable, next gen optical line systems, etc., says Travis Ewert, Chief Operating Officer, LightRiver Software.What's not hot are all of the silos of disaggregated technology. LightRiver steps in with tools for bringing it all together. Lightriver supplies multi-vendor, Factory Built Networks and netFLEX vendor neutral, Optical Domain Control Software solutions. https://...

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Vodafone Portugal selects Mavenir's Converged Packet Core

Vodafone Portugal has selected Mavenir as its strategic 5G Converged Core supplier and will be deploying its fully containerised Converged Packet Core network solution.

The MAVcore family includes Mavenir’s Converged Packet Core and Policy Control solution delivering a next-generation modernised data network. 

The 5G Converged Packet Core solution is designed with cloud-native containerised techniques providing a fully scalable and virtualised network architecture. The solution uses software running on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware that provides cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and agility. 

Stefano Cantarelli, Chief Marketing Officer, Mavenir, said; “Mavenir has been working with Vodafone Group across various projects and we are delighted to now be part of their next-generation Converged Packet Core network under the Spring 3 Cosmos programme – we look forward to transforming Vodafone Portugal’s existing network into a dynamic, agile, fully automated for simplified operation and cloud-native based platform.”

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Fujitsu Network Communications announces new CEO

Fujitsu Network Communications named Shingo Mizuno as its new president and CEO, replacing Doug Moore, who has been appointed CEO of Fujitsu North America.

Mizuno is currently Global Head of the Fujitsu Network Business and has been with Fujitsu for 33 years. He currently serves on the board of directors for the IOWN Global Forum, and contributes to industry committees for the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), Association of Radio Industries and Business (ARIB), Photonics Electronics Technology Research Association (PETRA) and the ITU-Association of Japan. Mizuno holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from Tokyo University of Science.

“Communications service providers are facing a radically different business environment, largely created by a convergence of technical and socioeconomic pressures,” said Mizuno. “To help our customers achieve greater business value, Fujitsu is paving the way to improved digital transformation technologies and open ecosystems.”

https://www.fujitsu.com/us/products/network/

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