Edgecore builds a server/switch with Intel's Tofino and Xeon silicon

Edgecore Networks introduced a Server Switch with 32x 100G QSFP28 ports in 2U form factor and powered by dual Intel scalable Xeon processors and a P4 programmable Intel Tofino switch chip.

The CSP-7550 is a server-switch offers 4 open PCIe slots that can be used for various FPGA, Smart NIC, AI/ML etc PCIe cards for adding new types of functions and capabilities. 

The CSP-7550 includes eight DDR4 DIMM slots per CPU, with local storage options including two SATA III or PCIe. In addition, the CSP-7550 supports an optional FPGA card, which has a high-speed connection to the Tofino chipset. With the FPGA card, the CSP-7550 is able to support extra-large tables for hundreds of millions of session entries or provide tens of GBs of high-speed buffering for Hierarchical Quality of Service (HQoS).

Potential applications include high-performance network visibility monitoring, hardware-enhanced virtualized security, and mobile LTE/5G gateway applications. The CSP-7550 could also function as a Server Load balancer (SLB), Network Packet Broker (NPB), Broadband Network Gateway (BNG), or 5G User Plane Function (UPF). The new server-switch solution delivers high-performance and flexibility in cloud data centers and at the edge, enhancing computing, switching, and storage applications to meet the demands of modern network deployments.

Nanda Ravindran, Vice President of Product Management of Edgecore, said, “Network operators are starting to embrace open network solutions and requiring more powerful platforms for high-performance computing. CSP-7550 Server-switch with enhanced CPU capacity and performance enables value-added application development to address continuously expanding network requirements. Edgecore offers greater choice and flexibility for network operators to build modern networking infrastructures for the multi-cloud and mobile-centric world."

“As the industry is gearing towards programmable infrastructure, we are pleased to offer multi-terabit performance with Intel Tofino Expandable Architecture optimized for customers evolving edge-to-cloud requirements, such as load balancing, security, telco user plane functions and broadband gateways,” said Barry Davis, General Manager of Marketing and Software Planning at Intel. 

https://www.edge-core.com/productsList.php?cls=1&cls2=679

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Digital Bridge completes acquisition of Switch for $11 billion

DigitalBridge and IFM Investors completed their previously-announced acquisition of Switch, which operates a series of high-performance, SuperNAP co-location data centers.

All outstanding common shares of Switch (NYSE: SWCH) were acquired for $34.25 per share in cash, or approximately $11 billion, including the repayment of outstanding debt.

“We are excited to embark on the next chapter of Switch’s evolution in partnership with DigitalBridge and IFM Investors, two leading digital infrastructure investment firms,” said Rob Roy, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Switch. “With their strategic expertise and financial resources, Switch is ideally positioned to meet growing customer demand for the world’s most advanced and environmentally sustainable data center infrastructure.”

Jon Mauck, Senior Managing Director at DigitalBridge Investment Management, said, “We are delighted to partner with Rob and the Switch team as DigitalBridge continues to grow our portfolio of high-quality digital infrastructure assets globally. With a shared vision for the future of communications infrastructure, Switch, IFM Investors and DigitalBridge are ideal partners, and together we will scale Switch’s business domestically and internationally to meet the robust enterprise demand for mission-critical digital infrastructure.”

Kyle Mangini, Global Head of Infrastructure at IFM Investors, said, “IFM Investors is excited to join DigitalBridge to support Switch in its next phase of growth. Switch’s excellence in data center design and operations, along with its industry leadership in sustainability, makes the company an ideal fit for IFM Investors as we seek to deliver returns to our investors and maximize the retirement savings of the millions of working people they represent.”

http://www.digitalbridge.com

DigitalBridge to acquire Switch for $11 billion for its data centers

Wednesday, May 11, 2022  Data Centers, Digital Bridge  

DigitalBridge Group agreed to acquire Switch, a leading colocation data center operator, for $34.25 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $11 billion, including the assumption of debt.Switch, which was founded in 2000, operates SuperNAP data center campuses in Las Vegas, Reno, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The company touts its high-resiliecy and high-security designs for mission critical workloads in its "Class 5" data centers....

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Switch expands data center fleet to 16 with Data Foundry acquisition

Sunday, May 09, 2021  Data Centers, Mergers And Acquisitions, Switch  

Switch agreed to acquire Data Foundry, a carrier-neutral colocation provider with data centers in Austin and Houston, for $420 million in an all cash transaction. The acquisition is expected to close by mid-2021, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval. The purchase price of $420 million represents approximately 19x estimated 2021 Adjusted EBITDA, including $2 million of projected run-rate cost synergies. Data...

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Dell'Oro: Q2 surge in data center switch sales

Global data center switch sales grew in excess of 20 percent in 2Q 2022, reaching an all-time high for the quarter as well as for the first half of the year, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. The growth was broad-based across a number of vendors. However, only Arista and white box vendors were able to gain revenue share during the quarter.

“We have been forecasting a double-digit growth in the market; driven by ongoing strong customer demand, balanced by supply challenges,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “However, vendors’ ability to work through these supply challenges and deliver the level of shipment witnessed during the quarter beat our expectations, although it came at higher logistics and component costs. We expect supply constraints to persist through the remainder of the year and to continue to shape the market as well as vendors’ performance,” added Boujelbene.

Additional highlights from the 2Q 2022 Ethernet Switch – Data Center Report:

• Double-digit growth was recorded across all major customer segments: Cloud Service Providers (SPs), Telco SPs as well as Large Enterprises. Each one of these segments reached a record revenue level for the quarter and the first half of the year.
• The robust growth was broad-based across all regions, including China which has experienced several weeks of lockdown in multiple cities during the quarter.
• 200 Gbps and 400 Gbps approached 2 M ports and comprised more than 10 percent of the shipments and nearly 20 percent of the revenues during the quarter. As anticipated, this growth was driven by an accelerated adoption from large Cloud SPs as well as some deferred revenues that got recognized during the quarter.

https://www.delloro.com/news/staggering-2q-data-center-switch-sales-drive-market-to-record-levels-for-the-quarter-and-first-half-of-the-year/

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NVIDIA unveils 51.2T Spectrum-4 switch ASIC

NVIDIA unveiled its next generation, 400 Gbps Spectrum-4 Ethernet switch with adaptive routing and enhanced congestion control mechanisms.

The NVIDIA Spectrum-4 uses a custom ASIC with a 51.2 terabits per second switching capacity, supporting up 128 ports of 400G or 64 ports of 800G, and based on 100 Gbps PAM4 SerDes technology. It integrates a 12.8 Tb/s crypto engine wtih support for MACsec and VXLANsec. It also support secure boot as default via hardware root of trust .

NVIDIA Spectrum-4 features a fully-shared and monolithic packet buffer that’s dynamically available to all ports. This provides  microburst absorption with true, port-to-port, cut-through latency. Spectrum-4 also supports programmability of the pipeline and packet modifier/parser without impact tolatency or packet rate, enabling flexibility without compromising performance.

NVIDIA also notes that its Spectrum-4 switch enables accelerated RoCE-based data transport and load balancing through adaptive routing (including adaptive routing notifications for dynamic flow rebalance), as well as high precision congestion control (HPCC) facilitated through in-band network telemetry.

The chip is based on a 4nm process and is expected to sample later this year.

"A new era of massive-scale cloud technologies, such as Omniverse, requires a transformation of data center architecture,” said Kevin Deierling, vice president of Networking at NVIDIA. “The Spectrum-4 platform’s extreme performance and robust security will equip data centers to power breakthrough discoveries that push the boundaries of what’s possible for the benefit of society.”

https://nvdam.widen.net/s/lxhqbqlbqh/ethernet-switches-product-brief-gtc22-spring-spectrum-4-2169045-r3

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Dell'Oro: Data center switch sales hit record levels

Global data center switch revenue posted double-digit growth for the second consecutive quarter, boosting sales to record levels in the fourth quarter and the full year 2021. 400 Gbps ports more than doubled in 2021, with sales comprising 10 percent of the market, according to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group.

“In line with our expectations, the data center switch market continues to record a remarkable performance despite a macro-economic environment that continues to be defined by limited supply and elevated logistic costs,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “What was also remarkable is that the robust performance was broad-based across all major market segments: Cloud Service Providers (SPs), Telco SPs, and Large Enterprises, all of which grew double-digits and reached an all-time high in sales for the full year 2021. 400 Gbps shipments were also a bright spot in the market, despite pending qualifications and deferred revenue payment at some large Cloud SPs,” added Boujelbene.

Additional highlights from the 4Q 2021 Ethernet Switch – Data Center Report:

• 400 Gbps deployments started to expand beyond just the hyperscalers, reaching smaller Cloud SPs and large enterprises.
• Supply challenges continue to impact various products and vendors at various degrees, resulting in some share shifts in the market.
• Arista, white-box vendors, and Star-Net Ruijie captured 90 percent of the revenue growth in 2021.

https://www.delloro.com/news/data-center-switch-sales-hit-record-levels-in-the-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2021/

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Marvell debuts 5nm Prestera switch and 5nm OCTEON 10 5nm DPU

Marvell announced the availability of its 5nm Prestera DX 7321 Ethernet switch, the industry’s first 5nm 50G PAM4 device for the carrier market.

The new Marvell Prestera switch is designed for 5G fronthaul and edge applications. With the addition of the 5nm Prestera device, Marvell's carrier-optimized switch portfolio now comprises four Ethernet switches that scale port speeds from 1Gbps to 400Gbps with aggregate bandwidths ranging from 200Gbps to 1.6Tbps. 

Marvell also announced sampling of its 5nm OCTEON 10 DPU family, which will include hardware accelerators to address workloads required by 5G, cloud, carrier and enterprise data center applications. OCTEON 10 offers a mix of compute, hardware acceleration, data path bandwidth, and I/O including PCIe 5.0 and DDR5. 

Marvell’s 5G network solutions also include Alaska Ethernet PHYs and a broad portfolio of optical solutions for edge, metro and long-haul applications. In addition, Marvell’s COLORZ II 400ZR/ZR+ coherent optical modules are enabling carriers with high-capacity, long-reach DWDM connectivity directly from Ethernet switches.

“Carriers are requiring optimized high-performance, low-power and secured next-generation 5G data infrastructure solutions that enable new high-value applications,” said Raghib Hussain, president, Products and Technologies at Marvell. “Our 5nm switch and DPU set a new bar for power, performance and footprint, providing the breakthrough technology needed to fulfill the potential of 5G.”

https://www.marvell.com/

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Switch expands data center fleet to 16 with Data Foundry acquisition

Switch agreed to acquire Data Foundry, a carrier-neutral colocation provider with data centers in Austin and Houston, for $420 million in an all cash transaction. The acquisition is expected to close by mid-2021, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval. The purchase price of $420 million represents approximately 19x estimated 2021 Adjusted EBITDA, including $2 million of projected run-rate cost synergies. 

Data Foundry’s Austin campus includes three current facilities with expansion capabilities up to 44 MW at full buildout. The Houston campus has one existing data center with the ability to support 18 MW of customer power at full buildout. Switch intends to commence development on new data centers in both Austin and Houston at the end of 2021, with the first sectors available for customer deployments in 2023.

The acquisition of Data Foundry expands the Switch portfolio to 16 operational data centers across six locations and will anchor the company’s Fifth Prime data center campus. The acquisition will also add over 400 customer logos, offering robust cross-selling opportunities and the potential for significant customer expansion.

“We are extremely pleased to reach an agreement with Data Foundry and to announce the launch of our Fifth Prime Data Center Campus in Texas,” said Switch Founder and CEO Rob Roy. “The Data Foundry acquisition extends Switch’s national reach and enhances our ability to serve Texas and the Central U.S. region with low latency connectivity, while also providing critical geographic and revenue diversification with robust expansion potential to accelerate long-term growth and value creation.”

“Data Foundry is proud to partner with Rob Roy and the Switch team in this transaction that we believe will carry forward our company’s rich history of innovation in Texas, and will result in tremendous long-term benefits to our customers and all stakeholders of the combined business,” said Carolyn and Ron Yokubaitis, Co-Founders of Data Foundry. “Both companies share a set of core values that emphasize technology leadership, operational excellence, community involvement, and a relentless focus on customer service that will enable a seamless transition of leadership and continued success for years to come,” added Jonah Yokubaitis, also a Co-Founder of Data Foundry.

Switch expands its Reno Data Centers

Sunday, November 22, 2020  Data Centers, Switch  

Switch signed a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract with an existing global e-commerce client to significantly grow its footprint at Switch's Citadel Campus in Northern Nevada. This transaction follows the previously announced multi-megawatt expansion from a leading developer of advanced semiconductor technologies. Switch says over 80% of its TAHOE RENO 1 facility is committed to clients, including space and power currently sold and future...

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Switch to deploy Tesla Megapack energy storage systems

Sunday, July 26, 2020  Data Centers  

Switch, which operates hyper-scale co-location data centers in Las Vegas, Reno, and Grand Rapids (Michigan), will use thousands of solar panels made by First Solar and energy storage systems made be Tesla as part of its Gigawatt Nevada solar energy and battery vision. The project is one of the largest solar footprint and battery storage projects in the technology industry. “With today’s announcement Rob Roy’s Gigawatt Nevada now has four solar with...

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Switch expands its Reno Data Centers

Switch signed a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract with an existing global e-commerce client to significantly grow its footprint at Switch's Citadel Campus in Northern Nevada. 

This transaction follows the previously announced multi-megawatt expansion from a leading developer of advanced semiconductor technologies. Switch says over 80% of its TAHOE RENO 1 facility is committed to clients, including space and power currently sold and future expansion options. The company will now commence construction on its TAHOE RENO 2 data center and begin site preparation work for the TAHOE RENO 3 data center.

"Accelerating development at our Citadel Campus reflects the strong customer demand for our strategically located, differentiated Tier 5® Platinum enterprise class exascale infrastructure," said Switch EVP of Strategy Adam Kramer. "This ongoing development means new job creation and economic investment for Nevada's economy."

At full build-out, the Citadel Campus footprint has the capacity to expand to more than 7 million square feet and over 600 MW of power capacity. The Citadel Campus is one of four exascale PRIME data center campus locations, a regional hub serving the Northwestern U.S., including San Francisco, Silicon Valley and the Pacific Northwest. The Switch PRIME data center campus locations serve North America's four primary latency zones.

The additional Switch PRIME campus locations are the Core Campus (Las Vegas, NV) which serves as a hub for the Southwestern U.S., including Los Angeles and Phoenix. The Pyramid Campus (Grand Rapids, MI) serves as a hub for the Northeastern U.S., including Chicago and New York. The Keep Campus (Atlanta, GA) serves as a hub for the Southeastern U.S., including Northern Virginia and Miami.

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IDC: Worldwide Ethernet Switch and Router markets decline in Q1

The Worldwide Ethernet switch market recorded $6.16 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2020 (1Q20), a decrease of 8.9% year over year, according to a new report from IDC, while the worldwide total enterprise and service provider (SP) router market revenues fell 16.4% year over year in 1Q20 to $2.99 billion.

"Weakness in the Ethernet switch and routing markets at the end of 2019 continued into the first quarter of 2020, which was exacerbated by the onset of the novel coronavirus and subsequent lockdown of economies around the globe as 1Q20 progressed," said Brad Casemore, research vice president, Datacenter and Multicloud Networks. "Meanwhile, diverging trends intensify in the Ethernet switch market as hyperscale and cloud providers invest in greater datacenter scale and higher bandwidths while enterprises continue to refresh campus networks with lower-speed switch ports."

Some highlights from IDC Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker and IDC Quarterly Router Tracker:

• Despite the Ethernet switch market growing 2.3% for the full year 2019, in the fourth quarter of 2019 the market fell 2.2%, indicating that the market's slow end to 2019 spilled into 1Q20. The first quarter of 2020 was also impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic that swept across the world throughout the quarter, specifically disrupting supply chains while weakening customer demand. IDC expects the negative impact of COVID-19 on both the Ethernet switch and router markets to continue in the second quarter of 2020.
• From a geographic perspective, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region declined 2.9%, with Saudi Arabia's market off 12.7% year over year. Across Europe, growth was uneven. The Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region grew 3.7% compared to a year earlier, with Russia up 23.2% year over year. The Western Europe market fell 12.9% with Germany losing 10.6% year over year and the United Kingdom off 18.4% from a year earlier.
• The Asia/Pacific region (excluding Japan and China) (APeJC) declined 7.0% year over year, with India off 11.3% and Australia declining 16.2% year over year. The People's Republic of China was down 14.6% year over year while Japan was relatively flat with a 0.1% increase compared to the first quarter of 2019. The Latin American market dropped 9.7% year over year, while the market in the United States declined 8.7% annually and Canada fell 7.2% year over year.
• Port shipments for 100Gb switches rose 52.1% year over year to $5.5 million. 100Gb revenues grew 9.9% year over year in 1Q20 to $1.28 billion, making up 20.8% of the market's revenue. 25Gb switches also saw impressive growth, with revenues increasing 58.9% to $482.9 million and port shipments growing 67.7% year over year. Lower-speed campus switches, a more mature part of the market, saw mixed results in port shipments and revenue, as average selling prices (ASPs) in this segment continue to decline. 10Gb port shipments rose 3.9% year over year, but revenue declined 21.4%. 10Gb switches make up 24.8% of the market's total revenue. 1Gb switches declined 3.8% year over year in port shipments and fell 11.9% in revenue.1Gb now accounts for 39.0% of the total Ethernet switch market's revenue.
• The worldwide enterprise and service provider router market decreased 16.4% on a year-over-year basis in 1Q20, with the major service provider segment, which accounts for 75.1% of revenues, decreasing 16.8% and the enterprise segment of the market declining 15.3%. From a regional perspective, the combined service provider and enterprise router market fell 29.4% in APeJC. Japan's total market grew 8.4% year over year and the People's Republic of China market was off 10.9%. Revenues in Western Europe declined 23.5% year over year, while the combined enterprise and service provider market in the CEE region declined 17.1%. The MEA region was down 5.2%. In the U.S., the enterprise segment was down 12.2%, while service provider revenues fell 19.6%, giving the combined markets a year-over-year drop of 17.5%. The Latin America market declined 15.9% on an annualized basis.
• Cisco finished 1Q20 with a 12.0% year-over-year decline in overall Ethernet switch revenues and market share of 51.9%. In the hotly contested 25Gb/100Gb segment, Cisco is the market leader with 39.8% of the market's revenue. Cisco's combined service provider and enterprise router revenue declined 28.1% year over year, with enterprise router revenue decreasing 18.7% and SP revenues falling 33.8%. Cisco's combined SP and enterprise router market share stands at 36.3%.
• Huawei's Ethernet switch revenue declined 14.0% on an annualized basis, giving the company a market share of 8.4%. The company's combined SP and enterprise router revenue declined 2.1% year over year, resulting in a market share of 28.8%.
• Arista Networks saw its Ethernet switch revenues decline 18.7% in 1Q20, bringing its share to 6.7% of the total market. 100Gb revenues account for 73.7% of the company's total revenue, reflecting the company's longstanding presence at hyperscalers and other cloud providers.
• HPE's Ethernet switch revenue increased 6.7% year over year, giving the company a market share of 6.2%, up from 5.3% market share the same quarter a year earlier.
• Juniper's Ethernet switch revenue rose 14.1% year over year in 1Q20, bringing its market share to 3.3%. Juniper saw a 16.0% decline in combined enterprise and SP router sales, bringing its market share in the router market to 10.5%.

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Dell'Oro: Anemic growth in data center switch market during 4Q19

The worldwide Data Center Switch market revenue grew only one percent year-over-year (Y/Y) in 4Q 2019, according to a recent report by Dell'Oro Group. This is the slowest growth recorded in six years. Revenue from North America and Europe was down but, surprisingly, China grew at a strong double-digit Y/Y rate during the quarter.

“In line with our expectations, the Top 4 U.S. Cloud Service Providers (SPs) posted mixed performance. Google and Amazon’s strong growth was partially offset by weakness from Facebook and Microsoft,” said Sameh Boujelbene, Senior Director at Dell’Oro Group. “Additionally, ongoing macroeconomic uncertainties in North America and Europe continued to weigh on network spending from Tier 2/3 Cloud SPs and large enterprises. However, what’s intriguing this quarter is the growth witnessed in China despite macroeconomic headwinds in the region. We believe part of this growth could reflect inventory buildup as well as some government projects to stimulate the economy,” added Boujelbene.

Additional highlights from the Ethernet Switch – Data Center Quarterly Report:

• Market softness is expected to persist through 1H 2020.
• Macroeconomic headwinds are expected to deteriorate due to the potential impact from Coronavirus (COVID-19) on demand as well as supply.
• Arista, Cisco, Juniper, and Dell initiated early 400 Gbps shipments.

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Mellanox ships its 12.8 Tbps Ethernet switch

Mellanox Technologies announced the first customer shipments of its new 12.8 Tbps Ethernet switch platform, which is optimized for Cloud, Ethernet Storage Fabric, and AI interconnect applications.

The Mellanox SN4000 family, which is powered by its Spectrum-3 ASIC, supports a combination of up to 32 ports of 400GbE, 64 ports of 200GbE and 128 ports of 100/50/25/10GbE. The SN4000 platforms complement the 200/400GbE SN3000 leaf switches to form an efficient and high bandwidth leaf/spine network.

Mellanox  said its Spectrum-3 boasts tunneling, and network virtualization capabilities with its advanced FlexFlow packet processing technology, and WJH (What Just Happened)™ based real-time telemetry.

Highlights

• Up to 128 ports of 100GbE, 64 ports of 200GbE or 32 ports of 400GbE
• Up to 200,000 NAT entries, and 1 Million on-chip routes
• Fully shared packet buffer to maximize burst absorption and deliver fair bandwidth sharing
• RoCE-Ready one-click configuration with hardware-accelerated, end-to-end congestion management to simplify networking for storage, AI, and big data workloads
• FlexFlow™ programmable pipeline which delivers rich network processing capabilities at an unprecedented scale
• WJH™ based granular telemetry to simplify network operations and dramatically reduce mean time to issue resolution
• Simultaneous NRZ and PAM4 port speeds allowing flexible configurations
• Dual stack IPV4 and IPV6 protocol operation
• Support for overlay protocols including EVPN, VXLAN-GPE, MPLS-over-GRE/UDP, NSH, NVGRE, MPLS/IPv6 based Segment routing and more
• Flowlet-based adaptive routing maximizes performance and network utilization for layer-3 fabrics with high cross-sectional bandwidth
• Support for customer-defined, on-switch, containerized microservices with complete SDK access to host management, orchestration, and telemetry applications.

“Mellanox Spectrum-3 offers better performance, more advanced features, and easier management than any other 12.8 terabit switch,” said Amit Katz, vice president of Ethernet switches at Mellanox. “Our VXLAN support features single-pass routing for more than 500,000 tunnels, making Mellanox Spectrum-3 the best switch not only for cloud data centers, but for any networking deployment supporting virtualization, containers, or microservices.”

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IDC: Ethernet Switch Market up 4.8% in 2Q19

The worldwide Ethernet switch market (Layer 2/3) recorded revenues of $7.07 billion in the second quarter of 2019 (2Q19), an increase of 4.8% year over year, according to IDC's newly updated Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker and Worldwide Quarterly Router Tracker. Worldwide total enterprise and service provider (SP) router market revenues grew 3.4% year over year in 2Q19 to $3.96 billion.

Ethernet Switch Market Highlights

• Port shipments for 100Gb switches rose 58.3% year over year to 4.4 million. 
• 100Gb revenues grew 42.9% year over year in 2Q19 to $1.28 billion, making up 18.1% of the market's revenue, compared to 13.2% of the market's revenue a year earlier. 
• 25Gb switches also saw impressive growth, increasing 84.8% to $364.1 million, with port shipments growing 74.5% year over year. 
• 10Gb port shipments rose 2.6% year over year, to make up 27.9% of the market's revenue. 
• 1Gb switches grew 6.6% year over year in port shipments, making up 40.0% of the market's total revenues.
• The Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region grew 10.8% year over year, with Russia – the region's largest market – growing 9.2% and Poland growing 29.6%. The Middle East and Africa (MEA) region also had strong growth at 10.2%; Qatar led the region's increase with 70.3% growth. Western Europe rose 1.1%, with the Netherlands growing 18.6% within the region.
• The USA market grew 10.7% while Canada's market grew 3.8%. The Latin America region was off 1.2% after Brazil fell 8.3%.
• The Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ) region fell 4.2% year over year. 
• China's market declined 4.7% year over year while Australia's market dropped 16.0%.

Router Market Highlights

• The worldwide enterprise and service provider router market grew 3.4% on a year-over-year basis in 2Q19, with the major service provider segment, which accounts for 75.9% of revenues, increasing 2.0% and the enterprise segment of the market growing a healthy 8.0%. 
• The combined service provider and enterprise router market increased 2.7% in APeJ, with the service provider segment increasing 3.8%. 
• Japan's total market grew 7.0% year over year. 
• Revenues in Western Europe rose 5.2% year over year, while the CEE combined enterprise and service provider market grew 15.2% year over year. 
• The MEA region was up 7.4%. 
• In the USA, the enterprise segment was up 18.8%, but service provider revenues fell 6.4%, causing the total market to decline 0.8% year over year. Canada's market rose 9.2% year over year and the Latin American market grew 8.1%.

Vendor Highlights

• Cisco finished 2Q19 with an 6.8% year-over-year increase in overall Ethernet switch revenues and market share of 51.1%.  In the hotly contested 25Gb/100Gb segment, Cisco is the market leader with 38.8% of the market's revenue. Cisco's campus/branch Ethernet switch revenue increased 14.3% year over year. Meanwhile, Cisco's datacenter switching revenue declined 3.2% year over year in 2Q19. Cisco's combined service provider and enterprise router revenue rose 6.6% year over year, with enterprise router revenue increasing 16.2% and SP revenues growing 1.1%. Cisco's combined SP and enterprise router market share increased to 36.8%, up from 35.7% in 2Q18.
• Huawei's Ethernet switch revenue rose 18.9% on an annualized basis, giving the company market share of 9.7%. The company's combined SP and enterprise router revenue rose 1.5% year over year with a market share of 31.1%.
• Arista Networks saw Ethernet switch revenues increase 15.4% in 2Q19, bringing its share to 7.3% of the total market, up from 6.6% a year earlier. 100Gb revenues accounted for 65.4% of the company's total revenue, indicating the company's focus on hyperscale and cloud providers and select large enterprise segments.
• HPE's Ethernet switch revenue declined 6.3% year over year, giving the company a market share of 5.8%.
• Juniper's Ethernet switch revenue declined 19.6% in 2Q19, bringing its market share to 2.9%. Juniper saw a 15.0% decline in combined enterprise and SP router sales, bringing its market share in the router market to 10.5%.

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS45487019

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Broadcom ships 7nm Trident 4 programmable Ethernet switching silicon

Broadcom is now shipping its StrataXGS Trident 4 BCM56880 switch silicon with capacity scaling from 2.0 to 12.8 terabits per second (Tb/s). The new silicon, which boasts the industry’s highest Ethernet switching performance, also brings compiler-programmable packet processing and telemetry capabilities as well as compatibility with earlier generation Trident chips. This enables enterprises to utilize merchant silicon-based systems throughout their networks, from campus access and aggregation to data center top-of-rack and spine.

Trident 4 deliver 4x the bandwidth of Trident 3, which was introduced in June 2017. It also supports >5x the routes, >10x ACLs, and > 1 million counters.

Trident 4 also features runtime programmability, which allows numerous functions to be updated while the switch is in operation, without down time or dropped packets. For example, access control policy tables, size and type of telemetry metadata, packet trace, and packet drop can all be modified with no disturbance to packet flow.

Broadcom holds the dominant market share of the Ethernet switching silicon market.

“Trident 4 is delivering a 4x increase in bandwidth versus its predecessor Trident 3 in less than two years,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager of the Switch Products Division at Broadcom. “Consistent, industry-leading innovation and execution by Broadcom is disrupting the economics of how networks are built today. We are thankful for our engineering team and strong partner ecosystem for helping bring these products and solutions to the market at a price/performance that is a fraction of the current systems.”

Key attributes and benefits of the new StrataXGS Trident 4 series include:

•  Up to 128x100GbE or 32x400GbE switching and routing with a compiler-programmable architecture 
• Provides the flexibility to implement both standard Ethernet switch/routing and advanced network functionality such as DDoS protection, application load balancing, and large-scale NAT
• Enterprise-grade feature set with a high degree of feature concurrency 
• Industry-leading packet buffer and database sizes 
• Extensive programmable in-band telemetry including support for IFA 2.0 (In-band Flow Analyzer version 2)
• Four GHz-class processors on chip enabling powerful out-of-band (streaming) telemetry and a variety of Broadcom-provided embedded applications
• A wide variety of load balancing and congestion management features including Dynamic Load Balancing, Dynamic Group Multipathing, Resilient Hashing, LatencyBased ECN marking, and Elephant Flow detection and re-prioritization • Architecture scalability for bandwidth requirements throughout the enterprise network: SKUs available at 2.0T to 12.8T, all supported with the same NOS and hardware code base
• Broadview Gen 4 integrated network instrumentation feature set and software suite, providing full visibility to network operators into packet flow behavior, traffic management state, and switch internal performance
• Robust connectivity using up to 256 instances of the industry’s best performing, longest-reach 50G PAM-4 integrated SerDes core, enabling a wide variety of optical and direct attached copper (DAC) linksIndustry’s first switch chip implemented all in 7nm process technology

https://www.broadcom.com/products

Broadcom samples first 7nm 400G PAM-4 PHY

Thursday, November 01, 2018  400G, Broadcom  

Broadcom began sampling its 7nm 400G PAM-4 PHY device for hyperscale data center and cloud infrastructure.

The BCM87400 device, which leverages Broadcom’s 7nm Centenario 112G PAM-4 DSP platform, provides 400G 8:4 gearbox performance.

Broadcom says its 7nm 400G PHY solution delivers significant power savings compared to existing 16nm PHYs, thereby enabling sub-8W optical modules, compared to 12W power dissipation current generations 16nm PHYs.

7nm Centenario PAM-4 DSP Highlights

• Industry leading DSP performance and power efficiency enabling DR4/FR4 optical modules to meet IEEE standards and MSA specifications
• DSP platform supporting DR/FR optical modules for legacy switch applications
• Client-side interface compliance to CEI-28G/56G LR specification supporting long reach (LR) channels
• IEEE 802.3bs standard-compliant KP4 and end-to-end FEC bypass operation
• Proven PAM-4 architecture supporting multiple optics front ends including EML, DML and silicon photonics
• Optimized design with proven interoperability with Broadcom switch ASICs and ASSPs using 28Gbaud PAM-4 and NRZ SerDes architecture

Broadcom confirms mass production of 12.8 Tbps Tomahawk 3 Switch

Sunday, October 28, 2018  Broadcom  

Broadcom's StrataXGS Tomahawk 3 switch series is now in mass production.

The Tomahawk 3 series supports high-density, line-rate 400GbE, 200GbE, 100GbE, and 50GbE interconnect for massive scale-out of software-defined cloud data centers. The Tomahawk 3 switch series features multiple devices at 12.8Tbps, 8.0 Tbps, and 6.4 Tbps based on the industry’s most performant 50G PAM4 / 25G NRZ SerDes technology. All devices in the series have completed extensive functional, performance, and reliability testing and have been qualified for volume production.

“We are delighted and humbled by the widespread adoption of Tomahawk 3 based switching solutions in cloud infrastructure,” said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Switch Products at Broadcom. “Our engineering team has executed to the demands of the largest cloud operators globally, including the most rigorous system and network-level qualification requirements – both in our labs and in customer testbeds. Network operators are able to immediately deploy Tomahawk 3 based fabrics, at scale, and with confidence.”

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PacketFabric provides connectivity to Switch data centers

PacketFabric has expanded its network to Switch, the hyperscale data center company.

PacketFabric customers are now able to access the data center from any location on the PacketFabric network, with other Switch facilities to follow shortly thereafter. PacketFabric provides highly scalable, private network connectivity on demand, at speeds from 1Gbps to multi-100Gbps, reducing the sourcing and provisioning times of network services to minutes, through an intuitive web portal and API.

“PacketFabric is proud to be a strategic part of the growing services and solution provider ecosystem within Switch’s premier Tier 5® Platinum data centers,” adds Chad Milam, President and Chief Operating Officer, PacketFabric. “The expansion to Switch brings our network-as-a-service platform to additional markets and gives our customers greater flexibility in connecting to our platform.”

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Switch posts $102 million in revenue

Switch, the Las Vegas based company that develops and operates the SUPERNAP data centers, reported record quarterly revenue of $102.2 million, compared to $92.1 million for the same quarter in 2017, an increase of 11%. Operating income of $15.8 million, compared to $23.5 million for the same quarter last year, a decrease of 33%. Operating income in the second quarter of 2018 includes the impact of $8.2 million in equity-based compensation expense compared with $1.3 million in the same quarter of 2017. A significant portion of this equity-based compensation expense in the second quarter of 2018 relates to the continued vesting of Common Unit awards granted in connection with Switch's initial public offering.

Adjusted EBITDA was $50.3 million, compared to $46.8 million for the same quarter in 2017. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 49.2%, compared to 50.8% for the same quarter in 2017, a decrease of 160 basis points.
Capital expenditures of $99.4 million, compared to $112.9 million for the same quarter in 2017, a decrease of 12%.

"The logistics and timing required for customer implementation of our holistic cloud solution impacted our expectations for the year," said Thomas Morton, president of Switch. "We firmly believe in the long-term growth prospects of our business, and that the unique and market-defining solutions available only at the Switch PRIME campus ecosystems will establish our organization as the recognized pillar of enterprise hybrid cloud."

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Klas Telecom launches VoyagerSW26G 26-port GbE switch based on Cisco ESS 3300

Klas Telecom, a Cisco Solution Technology Integrator (STI), announced enhancements to its VoyagerSW26G rugged 26-port switch, which is based on Cisco’s new Embedded Services Switch (ESS) 3300.  The added features are designed for tactical users in the public safety, government and military markets, where low size, weight and power (SWaP) are required. The switch is packaged in a chassis that meets military standard for ruggedization. The switch provides two 10 Gbps uplink SFP+ ports and twenty-four 1 GbE ports, eight of which are PoE enabled.

“The VoyagerSW26G provides next generation IE switch features such as PTP, MACsec and L2/L3 support,” said Klas Telecom Chief Technology Officer Frank Murray. “Our customers can utilize the VoyagerSW26G as an access switch for use with other Voyager products, like the Voyager Tactical Data Center (TDC), to unlock the full potential of our systems. Our collaboration with Cisco has been seamless from an engineering perspective and we greatly value the support the Cisco team has provided in realizing Cisco ESS 3300 as VoyagerSW26G.”

http://www.klastelecom.com

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Switch hits revenue of $98 million, up 10% yoy

Las Vegas-based, colocation provider Switch Inc, reported Q1 2018 revenue of $97.7 million, compared to $89.2 million for the same quarter in 2017, an increase of 10%. Net income was $4.0 million, compared to $20.3 million for the same quarter in 2017.  Net income in the first quarter of 2018 includes $12.4 million in equity-based compensation expense compared with $2.3 million in equity-based compensation expense in the same quarter of 2017.

"We are pleased with our progress in growing our ecosystem and positioning Switch as a partner of choice for global enterprises," said Thomas Morton, president and general counsel of Switch.  "Our highly differentiated and strategically located campus ecosystems continue to attract primary deployments, while our unique telecom capabilities enable hybrid cloud environments and hyperscale cloud deployments with AWS Direct Connect, Microsoft Express Route, and Google Cloud Interconnect."

Switch completed its IPO in October 2017.

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Marvell integrates its Automotive Ethernet Switch into NVIDIA DRIVE

Marvell confirmed that its 88Q5050 secure automotive Ethernet switch is integrated into the NVIDIA DRIVE Pegasus platform for autonomous vehicles.

Marvell said its secure switch can handle multi-gigabit applications for OEM car manufacturers to deliver an in-car network that supports sensor fusion, cameras, safety and diagnostics. Its switch design employs a deep packet inspection (DPI) engine and trusted boot functionality to ensure a robust level of security. The switch also supports both blacklisting and whitelisting addresses on all its Ethernet ports to further enhance its security especially against denial of service attacks.

The NVIDIA DRIVE Pegasus computing platform has been designed to handle Level 5 driverless vehicles and compute over 320 trillion operations per second. The platform combines deep learning, sensor fusion, and surround vision to understand what’s happening around the vehicle in real-time. The Marvell 88Q5050 layer 2 managed secure IP switch enables the fast and safe transmission of this data for next generation connected vehicles.

“The 88Q5050 is Marvell’s latest addition to the automotive portfolio of wired and wireless network solutions and is designed to prevent malicious attacks or compromises to data streamed in and out of the vehicle. Marvell has over 20 years of Ethernet IP experience and this partnership with NVIDIA demonstrates our continued commitment to innovating and leading in automotive technology. Marvell is excited about the future of automotive and will utilize its extensive portfolio to accelerate the adoption of automotive Ethernet,” said Thomas Lagatta, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at Marvell.

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Switch backs Gigawatt Nevada -- largest solar project in U.S.

Plans were unveiled for Gigawatt Nevada, an initiative to build the single largest solar project portfolio in the United States, by Switch and Capital Dynamics.

Switch is a leading co-location data center operator with massive facilities in Nevada including its flagship campus in Las Vegas and a new campus in Reno. The company also has a marquee data center in Grand Rapids, Michigan and is building another regional data center in Atlanta.

The Gigawatt 1 assets will be owned and developed by Capital Dynamics, the second largest owner of solar projects in the country.  Gigawatt 1 anchor tenants will include Switch and several of its Switch CORE client. The project is negotiating with multiple private and public sector access customers within Nevada and outside the state.

Gigawatt 1 is projecting energy costs substantially less than the renewable energy from NV Energy (Nevada Power).


“The foundation of Gigawatt Nevada is that Nevada should harness the sun the same way Alaska harnesses its oil to significantly benefit all Nevadans,” Rob Roy said.  “Nevada enjoys the best solar window in the nation and so we Nevadans should not only be using solar for ourselves, but exporting it throughout the Western U.S. to create new jobs, tax revenue, economic diversification, and raise energy independence.”

“Climate scientists have repeatedly warned that we must move to renewable energy as rapidly as possible, but many monopoly utilities continue to hold us back from making this transition,” said Gary Cook, Senior IT Sector Analyst and Energy Campaigner at Greenpeace.  “Gigawatt 1 shows that when Switch and other leading companies don’t take ‘no’ for an answer, they can work together and kick open the door to large-scale sources of renewable energy that are better for the planet, and better for the economy in Nevada.”

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Hulu moves to Switch data center for 100% green power

Hulu is moving from its existing data centers to a new colocation facility in Las Vegas operated by Switch, one of the largest renewable energy-powered data center providers.

The new, 100 percent renewable energy facility spans 2.4 million square feet across 12 buildings. A posting on Hulu's tech blog said the new facility provides better reliance to natural disasters and ensures a greener and more sustainable system for streaming content to its millions of viewers.

The company also noted that its Live TV service operates on the Amazon Web Services platform. The Switch data center also provides a stable, direct connection into AWS.

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