HPE Aruba: What comes next?

At its atmosphere’23 conference in Las Vegas this week, HPE Aruba Networking unveiled a number of product innovations for enterprise IT and disclosed key strategic directions as it integrates with the HPE GreenLake

What’s next?  Major items include the next generation of HPE Aruba Networking Central, its cloud-native network management solution, Network-as-a-service (NaaS) capabilities for customers and channel partners to acquire, deploy, and manage on the HPE GreenLake platform with a monthly subscription, private 5G via its pending acquisition of Athonet, improved artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) to reduce manual tasks, and Zero Trust / SASE capabilities. 

“A modernized network is the backbone for powering next-generation digital experiences and enabling new business models,” said Phil Mottram, executive vice president and general manager, HPE Aruba Networking. “The evolution of our AIOps in HPE Aruba Networking Central and Agile NaaS represents the next step toward more effectively managing operational complexity, while connecting with ever-expanding workloads from edge to cloud for a seamless hybrid work experience.”

Some notes from the event:

• Over 4,300 attendees at the atmosphere’23 event
• Aruba has shipped over 27.6 million APs since 2006
• Over 23 million switch port shipped
• In the data center, the partnership with AMD Pensando is progressing and delivering significant performance, efficiency and functionality gains
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  The HPE Aruba Networking Central cloud network management platform has been re-designed to simplify operations and improve productivity. The interface offers “solar system” views to promote intuitive navigation and reduce cognitive loads; a “time-travel” feature for a contextually correlated ‘point-in-time’ view of the network that allows recovery in minutes to a specific point; multi-layer physical and logical “sunburst” topology views to transform visualization of large, complex networks; Intelligent assurance indicators for device health and client experience, enabling rapid first-level triage; and AI-powered full-stack insights for enhanced root cause analysis (RCA), impact assessment, and precise recommendations platform.

• A new Agile NaaS framework aims to make on-demand networking easier for partners to sell and end-user customers to consume. New service pack capabilities added to HPE GreenLake for Aruba networking enable partners to bundle their design and delivery services for their customers with a monthly NaaS technology subscription.
• New Service Pack enhancements on HPE GreenLake for Aruba networking adds a new standardized NaaS network policy offering to complement eight previously introduced wired, wireless, and SD-Branch NaaS service packs from 2022.
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  The recent acquisition of Axis Security, which occurred in March, adds SASE security capabilities. 
• The pending acquisition of Athonet, will bring private 5G capabilities. 
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Video: What's next for HPE Aruba Networking?

https://youtu.be/paKev1Xf3TY

At its atmosphere'23 event, HPE Aruba Networking highlighted investments in three new areas: data center networking, private 5G, and SASE.  Phil Mottram, EVP and General Manager, highlight key takeaways from this evolution.

Also, check out our New Middle Mile (#nmm2023) video showcase here: https://ngi.fyi/nmm23yt

Want to be in one of NextGenInfra.io videos? Contact us at info@nextgeninfra.io

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TSMC: 3nm now in volume production, 2nm coming in 2025

At its 2023 North America Technology Symposium in Santa Clara, California, TSMC introduced new variants on its 3nm process node while stating that 2nm technology remains on track.

Highlights

Broader 3nm Portfolio: N3P, N3X, and N3AE – With 3nm technology now in volume production with the N3 process and the enhanced N3E version on the way in 2023, TSMC is adding new variants to the roadmap to suit customers’ diverse needs.

• N3P, scheduled to enter production in the second half of 2024, offers an additional boost to N3E with 5% more speed at the same leakage, 5-10% power reduction at the same speed, and 1.04X more chip density.
• N3X, which prioritizes performance and maximum clock frequencies for HPC applications, provides 5% more speed versus N3P at drive voltage of 1.2V, with the same improved chip density as N3P, and will enter volume production in 2025.
• N3AE, or “Auto Early”, available in 2023, offers automotive process design kits (PDKs) based on N3E, and allows customers to launch designs on the 3nm node for automotive applications, leading to the fully automotive-qualified N3A process in 2025.

2nm Technology Making Solid Progress – Development of TSMC’s 2nm technology employing nanosheet transistors is making solid progress in both yield and device performance, and is on track for production in 2025. It will provide up to 15% speed improvement over N3E at the same power, and up to 30% power reduction at the same speed, and greater than 1.15X chip density.

Pushing the Limits of CMOS RF Technology with N4PRF – Beyond the N6RF technology announced in 2021, TSMC is developing N4PRF, the industry’s most advanced CMOS radio frequency technology for digital-intensive RF applications such as WiFi 7 RF system-on-chip. N4PRF will support 1.77X greater logic density and 45% less logic power at the same speed compared with N6RF.

TSMC 3DFabric Advanced Packaging and Silicon Stacking – major new developments in TSMC’s 3DFabric system integration technologies include:

• Advanced Packaging – To support the demands of HPC applications to fit more processors and memory in a single package, TSMC is developing Chip on Wafer on Substrate (CoWoS) solution with up to 6 times reticle-size (~5,000mm2) RDL interposer, capable of accommodating 12 stacks of HBM memory.
• 3D Chip Stacking – TSMC announced SoIC-P, microbump versions of its System on Integrated Chips (SoIC) solutions providing a cost-effective way for 3D chip stacking. SoIC-P complements TSMC’s existing bumpless solutions for high-performance computing (HPC) applications, which are now known as SoIC-X.
• Design Support – TSMC introdued 3Dblox™ 1.5, the newest version of its open standard design language to lower the barriers to 3D IC design. 3Dblox™ 1.5 adds automated bump synthesis, helping designers deal with the complexities of large dies with thousands of bumps and potentially reducing design times by months.

“Our customers never stop finding new ways to harness the power of silicon to create innovations that shall amaze the world for a better future,” said Dr. C.C. Wei, CEO of TSMC. “In the same spirit, TSMC never stands still, and we keep enhancing and advancing our process technologies with more performance, power efficiency, and functionality so their pipeline of innovation can continue flowing for many years to come.”

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Orange Group revenues increased 1.3% in Q1

Citing growth in retail services and fueled in particular by repricing in Europe and by the growth driver Africa and Middle East, Orange Group reported Q1 revenue of 10.619 billion euros, up 1.3% compared to a year earlier.

Africa & Middle East was the main contributor to this growth with a sharp 9.1% increase in revenues (+141 million euros), followed by Europe with 3.8% growth (+102 million euros), driven by Poland (+7.1%) and Spain, which has confirmed its return to growth (+2.8%) for the third consecutive quarter.

Revenues in France were 1.8% lower (-78 million euros) as a result of the downward trend in wholesale.

The slight 0.7% decrease in Enterprise revenues (-14 million euros) continued to be driven by the sharp decline in fixed voice revenues (-11.6%), partially offset by growth in IT & Integration services revenues (+5.3%). 

Additional highlights

• Mobile services had 243.4 million accesses (+5.0%), including 95.8 million contracts (+8.5%). 
• Fixed services totaled 45.0 million accesses (down 2.7%), including 14.7 million very high-speed broadband accesses, that continued to grow strongly (+14.7%). 
• Fixed narrowband accesses continued to decline (-14.2%).
• The number of households connectable to FTTH reached 66.6 million (+13.8%) and the FTTH customer base increased to 14.2 million (+15.1%).

Christel Heydemann, Chief Executive Officer of the Orange group, said: “The continued increase in revenues and EBITDAaL, as well as the decrease in eCapex compared to Q1 2022, are in line with our objectives for 2023 and reinforce our ambition for the years to come. We have started to execute our "Lead the Future" strategic plan with an even more value-oriented commercial strategy thanks to the quality of our networks and services which, combined with our cost controls, allow us to partially offset inflation. Our performance is once again driven by the remarkable growth in Africa and the Middle East and our strong value-driven growth in Europe. This quarter our retail services returned to growth in Spain, a country that has now seen growth for three consecutive quarters, and we’ve had double-digit revenue growth in our Orange Money business in Africa. Both demonstrate the strength of the Group and our ability to respond to increased competitive pressure. In France, retail services continue to grow and this should further accelerate in the second half of the year due to the recent price increases. Finally, in the Enterprise segment, we are executing our transformation plan.”

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Prosimo adds Cloud-Native Networking Suite

Prosimo, which offers an Application eXperience Infrastructure (AXI) platform for secure application delivery in multi-cloud environments, introduced a Cloud-Native Networking Suite to help enterprises securely interconnect applications and services across regions and clouds.

Key capabilities:

• Visual Transit Builder - provides a drag & drop approach that simplifies the process for cloud network architects to onboard networks, applications, and services across any cloud using the same visual builder, saving resources and shortening deployment times.
• Cloud Tracer - a tool that helps enterprises track network topology and flow tracing across different regions and data centers.  It reduces MTTR by identifying and anticipating real-time issues across networking, security, and applications.
• Adaptive Service Insertion - simplifies compliance in the cloud by allowing fine-grained policy definition and real-time visibility to insert stateful services such as firewalls in the path for networks and apps.  This reduces the risk of human error, simplifies ongoing maintenance, and helps right-size the services to save costs.
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"The distributed and digital enterprise requires an app-centric multi-cloud network architecture.  This architecture must ensure cloud networking teams can build connectivity to any cloud region in minutes versus weeks or days, enabling the application teams to move fast and self-onboard their services while staying compliant with all the governance policies," said Head of Product Mani Ganesan, Prosimo. "The Prosimo Full Stack Cloud Transit was built for enterprises to connect networks, applications, PaaS, and users into a single unified fabric.  With the launch of the Cloud-Native Networking Suite, we're introducing a transformative set of tools for enterprises to rapidly adopt native services from cloud service providers and elevate them to meet the scale, operational flexibility and compliance needs."

https://prosimo.io/

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Bosch to acquire US-based TSI Semiconductors

 Bosch announced plans to acquire TSI Semiconductor, which operates an ASIC foundry in Roseville, California. Financial terms were not disclosed.

TSI mainly develops and produces large volumes of chips on 200-millimeter silicon wafers for applications in the mobility, telecommunications, energy, and life sciences industries. 

Bosch said it intends to invest more than US$1.5 billion in the Roseville site and convert the TSI Semiconductors manufacturing facilities to state-of-the-art processes. Starting in 2026, the first chips will be produced on 200-millimeter wafers based on the innovative material silicon carbide (SiC). SiC chips are especially significant for electric cars.

“With the acquisition of TSI Semiconductors, we are establishing manufacturing capacity for SiC chips in an important sales market while also increasing our semiconductor manufacturing, globally. The existing clean-room facilities and expert personnel in Roseville will allow us to manufacture SiC chips for electromobility on an even larger scale,” says Dr. Stefan Hartung, the chairman of the Bosch board of management. “The location in Roseville has existed since 1984.

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Edgecore debuts PoE switch with TIP OpenLAN support

Edgecore Networks introduced an enterprise PoE network switch that supports the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) OpenLAN Switching (OLS). 

The ECS4125-10P switch can support all TIP OpenWiFi devices, providing an open network solution that spans both wired and wireless environments.

The OLS project, initiated by TIP’s Open Converged Wireless Project Group in 2022, seeks to address the next major network upgrade demands for high power, high throughput, and low latency. The project aims to provide diverse and competitive alternatives for PoE switches and accelerate innovation, enabling an ecosystem that provides end-to-end solutions. 

Edgecore said it plans to release further switch models that support TIP OLS in 2023. The Edgecore OLS series will include PoE switches ranging from 8 to 48 ports and from 1G to multi-G speed.

"We are excited to be participating in the OLS project and collaborating with TIP OpenWiFi and other partners to expand end-to-end solutions under the OpenWiFi architecture that addresses the next major network upgrade," said Tengtai Hsu, VP of Edgecore Networks. 

"This product launch demonstrates the strong momentum we have seen for OpenWiFi around the globe. With commercial deployments expanding and new Managed Service Providers launching OpenWiFi deployments, this is another example of how OpenWiFi accelerates innovation in the industry and provides customers with more choice and flexibility," said Jack Raynor, Co-Chair TIP OpenWiFi. 

https://www.edge-core.com/

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NETGEAR Q1 revenue down 14.1%, cites inventory

 NETGEAR reported Q1 2023 net revenue of $180.9 million, a decrease of 14.1% from the comparable period a year ago. First quarter 2023 GAAP operating loss was $12.0 million, or (6.6)% of net revenue, as compared to operating loss of $58.5 million, or (27.8)% of net revenue, in the comparable prior-year quarter. First quarter 2023 non-GAAP operating loss was $7.1 million, or (3.9)% of net revenue, as compared to operating loss of $9.3 million, or (4.4)% of net revenue, in the comparable prior-year quarter.

Patrick Lo, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of NETGEAR, commented, “Due to unprecedented inventory reduction by our largest Service Provider partner, as well as a similar reduction in SMB inventory by our largest e-commerce partner, our first quarter revenue and operating margin came in below our expectations. As a result of the uncertain macroeconomic environment and concerns over their own operations, our channel partners continue to materially reduce their inventory to historically low levels, greatly impacting our top line and resulting in lost operating leverage. However, propelled by ProAV, SMB end user sales grew by double digits year over year, and our premium CHP products again vastly outperformed the broader market, growing sequentially despite normal seasonal patterns. Buoyed by the shift to our higher-margin, premium products, and improved transportation costs, NETGEAR delivered an impressive non-GAAP gross margin of 33.6% for an improvement of 540 basis points year over year.”

Bryan Murray, Chief Financial Officer of NETGEAR, added, “We expect to continue to experience strong underlying demand in the SMB business and the premium portion of our CHP product portfolio, even in the face of ongoing broad-based inflationary pressures and an uncertain macroeconomic environment. We will continue to work with our channel partners across both businesses to optimize their inventory carrying levels, and expect a revenue impact from these efforts to be at a similar level as experienced in the first quarter. Accordingly, we expect our second quarter net revenue to be in the range of $150 million to $165 million.”

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MaxLinear posts Q1 revenue of $248M, down 15%

MaxLinear posted net revenue was $248.4 million, down 15% sequentially and down 6% year-over-year. GAAP gross margin was 56.5%, compared to 56.2% in the prior quarter, and 58.6% in the year-ago quarter.

In the first quarter, we delivered $248.4 million in revenues, improved our gross margins, and generated strong cash flow from operations of approximately $42 million. Our infrastructure category was strongly up 46% sequentially and 40% year over year, primarily driven by the expanding roll-out of multi-band millimeter wave and microwave 5G wireless backhaul platform solutions. We also continue to work towards the antitrust approval of our pending acquisition of Silicon Motion, and are excited by the future growth prospects of our comprehensive combined product portfolio.

“Even as we navigate a challenging demand environment with fiscal discipline and operational efficiency, our solid execution and innovative product offerings are enabling us to maximize strategic business opportunities across all our end markets. In 2023, we continue to lay important groundwork in Wi-Fi, fiber broadband access gateways, and wireless and optical datacenter network infrastructure, which will be the foundation for our growth later this year and throughout 2024,” commented Kishore Seendripu, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO.

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Ribbon posts 7% rise in Q1 revenue citing strong IP/Optical sales

Ribbon Communications reported Q1 GAAP revenue of $186 million, up 7% compared to $173 million for the first quarter of 2022. There was a GAAP net loss of $38 million.

"I'm pleased to report that we generated 7% revenue growth year over year, with Cloud & Edge sales up 4% on the strength of 62% higher sales to Enterprises, coupled with IP Optical Networks sales up 13%. This is our third quarter in a row of double-digit year-over-year revenue growth in our IP Optical Networks segment. Bookings in the quarter for this segment were 1.6x led by robust demand in India and EMEA," stated Bruce McClelland, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ribbon Communications. McClelland continued, "Based on the solid start to the year and bookings strength, and the implementation of previously announced spending reductions, we are maintaining our positive outlook and guidance for 2023."

"In the first quarter of 2023, we made progress on two of our key financial objectives. First, we enhanced our capital structure with an $80 million debt repayment funded by $25 million of cash on hand and the proceeds from a $55 million private placement of preferred stock and warrants. Second, we continued to execute on our plan to improve efficiency with operating expenses 4% lower year over year, and we believe we are on track to meet or exceed our targeted expense reductions for 2023," said Mick Lopez, Chief Financial Officer of Ribbon Communications.

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