Google and partners plan new subsea cables in South Pacific

Google, in partnership with In collaboration with a number of partners, including Fiji International Telecommunications, Office of Posts and Telecommunications of French Polynesia, APTelecom and Vocus Group, announced plans for two new subsea cables connecting Fiji and French Polynesia to both the United States and Australia.

• Honomoana, named after the Polynesian word for “link” (hono) and “ocean” (moana), will connect the United States and Australia to French Polynesia. 
• Tabua, named after a sacred Fijian whale’s tooth, will connect the United States and Australia to Fiji.

In addition, the South Pacific Connect initiative will construct physically diverse cable landing stations in Fiji and French Polynesia and connect them with an interlink cable. This will serve to connect transpacific routes, improve reliability, add capacity, and reduce latency for users in the Pacific Islands and around the world.

The South Pacific Connect initiative will create a ring between Australia, Fiji and French Polynesia. This ring will include pre-positioned branching units that will allow other countries and territories of Oceania to join. 

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/honomoana-and-tabua-subsea-cables-connect-south-pacific

• In September, Google announced plans for Nuvem, a cable to connect Portugal, Bermuda, and the United States. Named after the Portuguese word for “cloud,” is expected to be ready for service in 2026.

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AWS announces independent sovereign cloud in Europe

Amazon plans to launch the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, a new, independent cloud for Europe. The new service will use data centers within the EU that are separate and independent from the company's existing Regions.

Amazon says the AWS European Sovereign Cloud will be sovereign-by-design, and will be built on more than a decade of experience operating multiple independent clouds for the most critical and restricted workloads. It will also be built with separate, in-Region billing and usage metering systems.

The new AWS European Sovereign Cloud promises the same security, availability, and performance as existing Regions. To deliver enhanced operational resilience within the EU, only EU residents who are located in the EU will have control of the operations and support for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud 

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will launch its first AWS Region in Germany available to all European customers.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-digital-sovereignty-pledge-announcing-a-new-independent-sovereign-cloud-in-europe/

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ESnet activates 400G to four DOE National Lab

The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) activated 400G circuits to four of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) national laboratories and user facilities: Argonne National Laboratory, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. 

ESnet notes that most of the data-intensive national labs will be upgrading to 400G service in the coming months. This includes Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as well as CERN, the particle physics laboratory in Geneva whose Large Hadron Collider is one of ESnet’s largest data sources. 

The 400G circuit installations were made possible by the 2022 launch of ESnet6, the sixth iteration of ESnet’s critical data circulatory system for the DOE Office of Science research complex. ESnet6 was specifically designed to support multi-facility collaborations aligned with the DOE’s new Integrated Research Infrastructure (IRI) initiative, to help DOE researchers and their international collaborators effectively harness the barrage of data generated by artificial intelligence, high-resolution instrument imagery, complex long-term global studies, and more. ESnet’s traffic is increasing by a factor of 10 every 5.5 years; in 2022, the total exceeded 1.36 exabytes.

“It’s of vital importance that scientific researchers not be hindered by where they or their project’s instruments, computational resources, and data might be located,” said Inder Monga, executive director of ESnet. “Enabling 400G, which represents the networking industry’s current gold standard, will help facilitate that kind of seamless collaboration. We look forward to turning on 400G for more sites — and to upgrading to 800G as the technology begins to be available.”   

https://www.es.net/news-and-publications/esnet-news/2023/esnet-turns-on-400g-circuits-to-four-doe-national-labs/

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Cisco looks to NVIDIA AI to power Hybrid Workspaces

Cisco is working with NVIDIA to deliver AI-powered meetings for hybrid workers. 

Cisco is launching Room Kit EQX and expanding its Cinematic Meetings capabilities — both powered by NVIDIA’s AI engine — with the goal of enhancing collaboration experiences with audio and video intelligence and enabling more equitable hybrid meetings. 

The Room Kit EQX is a new, integrated collaboration solution that allows customers to deploy beautiful, future-of-meeting rooms simply and consistently across sites.  

Cisco’s Cinematic Meetings capabilities leverage an NVIDIA Jetson system-on-module to deliver collaboration experiences that reduce the impact of distance and make all meeting attendees feel like they’re in the room, even if they aren’t, a concept Cisco is calling Distance Zero.

"In order for people to want to come to the office, companies must fundamentally reimagine and reconfigure workspaces to provide seamless and immersive collaboration experience,” said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Security and Collaboration. "Our collaboration with NVIDIA helps make this possible as we expand our portfolio of AI-powered solutions that unlock the potential of hybrid workers.” 

“Edge AI is playing a vital role in bringing autonomy and improving productivity across many industries,” said Deepu Talla, Vice President of Embedded and Edge Computing, NVIDIA. “Cisco and NVIDIA have been pioneering the use of AI to enhance collaboration in the workplace, and the new line of products will bring transformative technology to this space.” 

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Cisco makes an investment in Aliro Quantum

Aliro Quantum, a start-up based in Boston, announced that Cisco Investments participated in its recently announced round of funding, joining Accenture Ventures and lead investor Flybridge Leaders Fund.

Aliro Quantum is developing foundational technologies needed for quantum networks and has filed ten patents that include 124 claims. The company has launched AliroNet, a non-QKD multipurpose entanglement-based secure network solution. Aliro is also providing the quantum network configuration, control and orchestration for the EPB Quantum Network powered by Qubitekk, America’s first industry-led, commercially available quantum network. The company was founded in 2019 by Dr. Prineha Narang, an Assistant Professor at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. 

“Quantum networking is key to the future of secure networking,” said Bill Gartner, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Optical Systems and Optics. “Through this investment, we are excited to support Aliro in advancing its research and development in this next stage of its growth."

https://www.aliroquantum.com/

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Rambus unveils 9.6 Gbps HBM3 Memory Controller IP

Rambus announced that its HBM3 Memory Controller IP is now capable of up to 9.6 Gbps performance. This represents a 50% increase over the HBM3 Gen1 data rate of 6.4 Gbps. 

The Rambus HBM3 Memory Controller can enable a total memory throughput of over 1.2 Terabytes per second (TB/s) for training of recommender systems, generative AI and other demanding data center workloads.

“HBM3 is the memory of choice for AI/ML training, with large language models requiring the constant advancement of high-performance memory technologies,” said Neeraj Paliwal, general manager of Silicon IP at Rambus. “Thanks to Rambus innovation and engineering excellence, we’re delivering the industry’s leading-edge performance of 9.6 Gbps in our HBM3 Memory Controller IP.”

“HBM is a crucial memory technology for faster, more efficient processing of large AI training and inferencing sets, such as those used for generative AI,” said Soo-Kyoum Kim, vice president, memory semiconductors at IDC. “It is critical that HBM IP providers like Rambus continually advance performance to enable leading-edge AI accelerators that meet the demanding requirements of the market.”

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MaxLinear posts Q3 sales of $135.5M, down 53% yoy

MaxLinear reported Q3 net revenue og $135.5 million, down 26% sequentially and down 53% year-over-year. Non-GAAP gross margin was 60.8%. This compares to 61.0% in the prior quarter, and 62.0% in the year-ago quarter. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share was $0.02, compared to $0.34 in the prior quarter, and $1.05 in the year-ago quarter.

“In the third quarter, we delivered $135.5 million in revenues. Our infrastructure category was up 1% 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.

“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, ethernet, fiber broadband access gateways, and wireless and optical datacenter network infrastructure, which will be the foundation for potential future growth,” commented Kishore Seendripu, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO.

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Arelion appoints Daniel Kurgan as CEO

Arelion announced the appointment of Daniel Kurgan as President and CEO of Arelion, replacing Staffan Göjeryd who is stepping down after seven years at the helm.

Daniel Kurgan, Board Executive of Arelion since January 2022, has more than 25 years of experience from the industry and several leading positions, including 14 years as CEO of BICS, Chairman of TeleSign, Chairman of Intercloud and Senior Advisor at Drake Star. 

“Arelion enters a new chapter as an independent company after the completed spin-off from Telia, and it is the Board’s assessment that the company’s long-term development will benefit from a new leadership. We are therefore pleased to appoint Daniel Kurgan as CEO for Arelion,” said Eva Elmstedt, Chairman of the Board. “With a proven track-record from leading positions in the industry, Daniel brings with him the experience and qualifications required to lead Arelion on this new journey. Having been on the Board for two years, he is also well familiar with the company and its culture.”

“I am honored to be appointed as CEO of Arelion. As a provider of the world’s best-connected IP backbone, our mission is to enable our customers’ growth, and to grow with them, and I am excited to build on that position in an operative role”, said Daniel Kurgan. “Having had the opportunity to be part of Arelion’s transformative journey, I know the immense potential of the company and now, as an independent company, we are in the position to realize it. I’m looking forward to working closely with the Board on the implementation of our growth strategy and to working together with all our talented people to keep the world connected.”

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