05/24/22 ~ Converge! Network Digest

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

NTIA selects 5G Challenge vendors

Tuesday, May 24, 2022 NTIA

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS), in Boulder, Colo., in collaboration with the Department of Defense (DoD), announced 5G Challenge contestants selected from final white paper entries. This prize competition aims to accelerate the adoption of open interfaces, interoperable components, and multi-vendor solutions toward the development of an open 5G ecosystem.

Contestants selected from final white paper entries are:

Distributed Unit (DU)

Radisys Corp.
Signal System Management

Centralized Unit (CU)

Capgemini Engineering
Mavenir Systems, Inc.
Signal System Management

Radio Unit (RU)

Fujitsu Network Communications
Mavenir Systems, Inc.

In this 2022 first-year 5G Challenge Preliminary Event, ITS will award part of the total $3 million prize purse to contestants who submit winning hardware and/or software solutions for one or more of these 5G network subsystems: Distributed Unit (DU); Centralized Unit (CU); Radio Unit (RU).

https://www.ntia.doc.gov/press-release/2022/ntia-s-institute-telecommunication-sciences-and-department-defense-select-5g-0

NTIA: ORAN will reinforce 5G vendor diversity

Sunday, July 18, 2021

Limited competition in the telecommunications infrastructure market can reduce supply chain resilience and security and contribute to higher prices for operators and consumers in the long run, according to a paper released by NTIA on behalf of the executive branch of the U.S. government.The 26-page paper explores the potential benefits of Open RAN in expanding the vendor ecosystem."The Executive Branch fully supports industry’s development of Open...

Samsung and Red Hat collaborate on next-gen memory software

Tuesday, May 24, 2022 Red Hat, Samsung

Samsung Electronics and Red Hat are collaborating on software for next-generation memory solutions.

The newly announced partnership will focus on the development and validation of open source software for existing and emerging memory and storage products, including NVMe SSDs; CXL memory; computational memory/storage (HBM-PIM, Smart SSDs) and fabrics — in building an expansive ecosystem for closely integrated memory hardware and software.

"Samsung and Red Hat will make a concerted effort to define and standardize memory software solutions that embrace evolving server and memory hardware, while building a more robust memory ecosystem," said Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President and Head of the Memory Application Engineering Team at Samsung Electronics. "We will invite partners from across the IT industry to join us in expanding the software-hardware memory ecosystem to create greater customer value."

"In the upcoming data-centric era, the integration of memory-centric hardware and software architectures will become increasingly essential, and for this purpose, Red Hat is happy to participate in the joint undertaking with Samsung," added Marjet Andriesse, Senior Vice President and Head of Red Hat Asia Pacific.

https://news.samsung.com/global/

NTT inaugurates data center in Madrid

Tuesday, May 24, 2022 Data Centers, NTT, Spain

NTT Ltd. opened its first data center in Spain.

The high-availability, Tier 3-compliant colocation data center is located on NTT's Európolis Business and Technology Park site 20km northwest of Madrid. It provides hyperscalers as well as enterprise clients with 3,600m2 of IT space and a maximum IT capacity of 6.3MW when fully built out.

The cooling concept of the data center was adapted to the warm climate of central Spain: air-cooled chillers and higher cooling water temperatures reduce power consumption and ensure efficient operation of the facility. NTT’s first major client installation in the facility is powered entirely by renewable energy.

NTT's proprietary Global Data Center Interconnect (GDCI) offers private connections to internet nodes such as ESpanix, NetIX and DE-CIX, as well as cloud providers such as AWS, Google, Microsoft and others. Through Lyntia's fiber network, connections exist to 2,694 cities in Spain, to interconnects in France and Portugal, and to major submarine cables. In addition, fiber links exist to NTT's Global IP Network (GIN) as well as Colt IQ, euNetworks, GTT and other international and regional providers.

"The demand for data center capacity in Spain has grown strongly in recent years. Madrid is the largest data center hub in Spain and a European gateway to the world, and our investment in the region is another milestone on our global roadmap as we continue to expand our presence across the continent to meet the coverage, capacity and connectivity needs of our clients", said Florian Winkler, Chief Executive Officer of NTT Ltd.’s Global Data Centers division in EMEA.

https://services.global.ntt/en-us/newsroom/ntt-opens-its-first-data-center-in-spain

Nokia milestone: 1.5 millionth Quillion-powered PON port shipments

Tuesday, May 24, 2022 Nokia

Nokia has reached the 1.5 million port milestone for its Quillion chipset-based broadband solutions, potentially reaching 50 million subscribers.500K of the ports are 25G PON-ready.

The Quillion chipset now has more than160 operator customers around the world. Designed to offer multi-PON capabilities with GPON, XGS-PON and 25G PON all running on the same fiber, Quillion also reduces energy consumption, with 50% less power needed in fiber installations than previous generations which comfortably beats EU Codes of Conduct for Broadband Communication Equipment targets and helps operators to meet their emissions goals.

Sandy Motley, President, Fixed Networks Division at Nokia, said “I am delighted we have reached this milestone. Quillion’s multi-PON design and low power requirements have been instrumental in our ability to accelerate XGS-PON, especially with customers looking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and future proof their networks.”

https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2022/05/24/nokia-announces-shipment-of-15-millionth-quillion-powered-pon-port-for-broadband-fiber-nodes/

Frontier tests Nokia’s 25G PON

Tuesday, December 14, 2021 25G PON, Nokia

Frontier Communications completed the U.S.’ first trial of Nokia’s 25G PON. The two companies will continue trials on Frontier’s network while planning for commercial deployment in the second half of 2022.Veronica Bloodworth, Frontier’s Chief Network Officer, said, “Successfully completing the first U.S. trial of the country’s fastest fiber broadband is a critical step in offering a competitive advantage for Frontier and our customers. We already...

Nokia builds mini-OLT with its Quillion chipset

Sunday, November 07, 2021

Nokia introduced what it is calling the world's smallest Optical Line Terminal (OLT) based on its Quillion chipset. The Lightspan DF-16GM OLT, which can simultaneously provide services from 1 to 25 Gbps, is designed for deployment in street cabinets in low-density areas.The mini-OLT supports GPON, XGS-PON and 25G PON. These enables the unit to cover all service types (residential, business and anyhaul) from a single solution. Nokia says the...

Ribbon supplies optical transport for Blueline Madagascar

Tuesday, May 24, 2022 Optical, Ribbon

Blueline, a provider of internet, voice and television services throughout Madagascar, has selected Ribbon's Apollo Optical Networking solution to upgrade the bandwidth capacity of its communications network.

The Apollo 9600 Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) and Optical Transport solution provides Blueline multi-service transport capabilities on an energy-efficient multi-wavelength 100 Gigabit (100G) backbone that can be seamlessly upgraded to 200G as capacity needs increase.

"We are pleased to deliver a state-of-the-art end-to-end Optical solution to Blueline, enabling them to offer their customers highly desired high-speed broadband and connectivity communications services," said Lior Tourgeman, Ribbon's VP Sales, Africa. "Our Apollo solution provides Blueline with up to multi-terabit capacity in a very small form-factor, while offering carrier-grade reliability. We are also extremely proud of the fact that we could design a special solution that enables Blueline to protect its network equipment."

https://ribboncommunications.com

Colt teams with Nour Global for Middle East coverage

Tuesday, May 24, 2022 Colt, Nour Global

Colt Technology Services is working with Nour Global to provide global MPLS and Internet services across the Middle East.

The partnership expands Colt’s presence in key markets like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt with the option to grow with seamless access to the rest of the GCC and North Africa. Nour Global'sGMPLS solution includes Layer-2 last mile and Layer-3 for full any-to-any connectivity that can be tailored to fit a variety of enterprise demands.

“We are proud to being working with Colt and enabling more of its European enterprise customers to land and expand across the Middle East. Nour Global provides a secure and trusted foundation for growing in the region and we look forward to supporting Colt’s success across the Middle East,” said Ghaith Al Khalaileh, Country Manager at Nour Global. “Nour Global combines local knowledge, world-class partners, simple processes, and powerful solutions to enable customers to win and serve customers across the MENA region. Our partnership with Colt is a great milestone for our business as we help more players grow across MENA.”

Nour Global’s services offer global delivery via provider edge routers in three continents as well as globally trusted peering relationships.

https://nourglobal.com

Renesas demos Arm Cortex-M85 processor prototype

Tuesday, May 24, 2022 ARM, IOT, Renesas, Silicon

Renesas Electronics will demonstrated a microcontroller (MCU) based on the recently announced Arm Cortex-M85 processor at the Embedded World 2022 Exhibition and Conference in Nuremburg Germany from June 21-24.

Renesas introduced the RA (Renesas Advanced) Family of Arm Cortex-M based MCUs in October of 2019, entering the general-purpose Arm-Cortex-M market with a robust and feature rich family of flash-based MCUs. In roughly 30 months, Renesas has introduced 17 MCU groups encompassing well over 200 individual parts. In addition, Renesas has developed a robust ecosystem of partners providing customers with comprehensive solutions for IoT, AI/ML, industrial automation, medical, building automation, home appliance and multiple other applications.

The Arm Cortex-M85 processor features Helium technology, Arm’s M-Profile Vector Extension that enables advanced DSP/ML capabilities and helps accelerate compute intensive applications such as endpoint AI. Delivering over 6 CoreMark/MHz, Cortex-M85 enables demanding IoT use cases that require the highest compute performance and DSP or ML capability, realized on a single, simple-to-program, Cortex-M processor.

"As a lead partner with Arm, we are proud to be the first to demonstrate an MCU based on the high-performance Cortex-M85 processor, a clear example of the momentum that we have built in the Arm ecosystem,” said Roger Wendelken, Senior Vice President in Renesas’ IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit. “The RA family has enjoyed tremendous success in a very short time, demonstrating the core strengths that make Renesas an MCU powerhouse, including design expertise, legendary quality, and close collaboration with customers and partners in all markets and all geographies.”

“To continue to scale and grow, the next generation of IoT solutions demand ever-improving levels of performance, security and simplified development, and we have delivered this with the new Arm Cortex-M85,” said Dipti Vachani, senior vice president and general manager, Automotive and IoT Line of Business at Arm. “This demonstration of the first silicon based on our most secure and highest performance Cortex-M processor will showcase the new and exciting applications it will enable and further cements our ongoing close collaboration with Renesas.”