Ericsson and China Mobile Test Drones for Handovers

Ericsson and China Mobile are testing a 5G-enabled drone prototype for handovers across multiple sites.

A field trial has been conducted using China Mobile's network in Wuxi, Jiangsu province between sites that were simultaneously in use by commercial mobile phone users.

Ericsson said potential use cases for this technology include mission-critical applications such as support for emergency services. The project aims is to optimize latency for mission-critical use cases, by dynamically deploying part of a network through distributed cloud close to the radio edge. The drone trial is therefore an important step toward 5G networks in which part of a network can be distributed and dynamically deployed at the cellular edge in order to reduce end-to-end latency, and to serve a range of 5G use cases at the same time.

“With commercial implementation expected from 2020, Ericsson’s 5G research is coming out of the labs and into live test networks. We see tremendous opportunities in 5G, and we are mobilizing the ecosystem and collaborating with industry leaders such as China Mobile to help make 5G a reality,” stated Chris Houghton, Head of Region Northeast Asia, Ericsson.

https://www.ericsson.com/news/160812-ericsson-and-china-mobile-worlds-first-5g-drone_244039854_c

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NVIDIA Posts Record Q2 Revenue of $1.43 Billion, up 24% YoY

NVIDIA posted record revenue of $1.43 billion for its Q2, ended 31-July-2016, up 24 percent from $1.15 billion a year earlier, and up 9 percent from $1.30 billion in the previous quarter. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.40, compared with $0.05 a year ago and up 21 percent from $0.33 in the previous quarter.

"Strong demand for our new Pascal-generation GPUs and surging interest in deep learning drove record results," said Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer, NVIDIA. "Our strategy to focus on creating the future where graphics, computer vision and artificial intelligence converge is fueling growth across our specialized platforms -- Gaming, Pro Visualization, Datacenter and Automotive." "We are more excited than ever about the impact of deep learning and AI, which will touch every industry and market. We have made significant investments over the past five years to evolve our entire GPU computing stack for deep learning. Now, we are well positioned to partner with researchers and developers all over the world to democratize this powerful technology and invent its future," he said.

http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-financial-results-for-second-quarter-fiscal-2017

NVIDIA Unveils GPU Accelerators for Deep Learning AI

Tuesday, April 05, 2016  AI, GPU, Nvidia, SuperComputing  1 Comment

NVIDIA unveiled its most advanced accelerator to date -- the Tesla P100 -- based on Pascal architecture and composed of an array of Graphics Processing Clusters (GPCs), Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), and memory controllers. The Tesla P100, which is implemented in 16nm FinFET on a massive 610mm2die, enables a new class of servers that can deliver the performance of hundreds of CPU server nodes. NVIDIA said its accelerator brings five breakthroughs: NVIDIA...

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China Telecom Picks Nokia for 4G Expansion in 19 Provinces

China Telecom signed an agreement with Nokia to expand its 4G coverage in 19 provinces in China.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

The contract covers expansion of the radio access network and lays the foundation for China Telecom's intended launch of Voice over LTE (VoLTE) services in 2017.

Specifically, Nokia is deploying its 4G Flexi MultiRadio 10 Base Stations in 19 provinces in China: Shanghai, Jiangsu, Shandong, Zhejiang, Hunan, Hubei, Guangxi, Fujian, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Heilongjiang, Hebei, Henan, Sichuan, Anhui, Liaoning, Guizhou, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.

As of the end of June, China Telecom had nearly 207 million mobile subscribers, with 90 million users of 4G devices, an increase of more than 31 million during the first six months of 2016. Last year the company saw 4G traffic increase by more than six times, and it is predicted to account for more than 90 percent of mobile data traffic on the network by 2017.

"This agreement with China Telecom builds on our long history of collaboration. Our deep-rooted knowledge of the Chinese market will enable China Telecom to meet the demands of an ever-growing and dynamic 4G subscriber base," stated Mike Wang, Head of Nokia Networks China and ASB joint management team.

http://www.nokia.com

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Nokia Delivers Database for Vodafone India's 200M Subs

Nokia completed the modernization of a Home Location Register (HLR) database for Vodafone India SuperNet. The company described the project as world's largest HLR upgrade, as its consolidated databases across 17 circles covering over 200 million entries. The number of database hosting nodes was also reduced from 46 to 12, improving efficiencies, enhancing performance and optimizing costs.

As part of the project, Nokia implemented its Subscriber Data Management (SDM) solution, which features Nokia's One-NDS (Network Directory Server), thereby consolidating network-related subscriber data into a single unified platform to be shared across multiple applications. Nokia's Systems Integration Services team seamlessly migrated the HLR database without disruption to Vodafone India's network and its 200 million subscribers, efficiently meeting a challenging deadline with the highest quality.

Nokia's SDM technology's geo-redundancy feature ensures that the subscriber database of one location is backed-up in the HLR of another in case of any incident like a network upgrade or natural disaster.

http://www.nokia.com

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Huawei Publishes Annual Sustainability Report

Huawei published its annual Sustainability Report covering its activities over the past year in bridging the digital divide, promoting environmental protection, and seeking win-win outcomes with business partners and employees.

Some highlights of the 108-page report:

• Deployed more than 50% of wireless base stations, over 70% of LTE networks, and at least 50,000 kilometers of optical fiber cable in Africa to provide better digital connectivity to the continent
• Collaborated with customers to build over 500 new base stations in Sri Lanka
• Provided network access for 50,000 Ethiopian students across 64 schools
• Responded to the 8.1 magnitude earthquake in Nepal, restoring key base stations at hospitals, government agencies, disaster relief centers and embassies within 24 hours, and ensuring vital communications services were available to emergency services and victims, particularly during peak network usage
• Developed lower powered chips and improved hardware design, software and dynamic energy management, which in turn helped to increase energy efficiency of core routers and wireless based stations by 25% and 20% respectively
• Six Huawei handsets obtained leading environmental certifications based on the UL110 standard, with five of them achieving platinum level. Huawei’s entire range of campus network switches were also certified with the Green Product Mark of TÜV Rheinland
• Saved 44.3 million kWh of electricity, reducing energy consumption per unit of sales revenue by 13.8% year-on-year
• Generated 20 million kWh of electricity through our in-house solar power stations, reducing CO2 emissions by approximately 18,000 tons
• Worked with suppliers to reduce over 72,000 tons of CO2 emissions
• Introduced clean energy programs through increased employee awareness, energy management, improved technology, refined product packaging and redesigned logistics and transportation systems to reduced Carbon emissions from manufacturing to save 9,639,800 kWh of electricity, equivalent to a reduction in CO2 emissions of 9,011 tons
• Expanded a global green recycling program to recycle used mobile phones in 23 countries, helping to maximize product value and ensure legal disposal

http://www.huawei.com/en/sustainability/sustainability-report

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AT&T's Dan Blemings on Ethernet-based, On-Demand Services

It's a very busy time at AT&T with the recent expansions of Network On Demand services and its global Ethernet footprint.

Dan Blemings, Director of Ethernet Product Management, AT&T, discusses some of the transformative steps underway to help accelerate the business benefits of Ethernet-driven services and create an ecosystem of agile, on-demand capabilities.

Recorded at the MEF Annual Members Meeting in Boston.

See video: https://youtu.be/gTP2h2MWQpQ

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China Mobile Hits 51% 4G Adoption - Data Traffic Explodes

As of mid-year 2016, China Mobile was serving 837 million customers (up 2.4% YoY), of whom 51% were on 4G LTE. Total handset data traffic for the first half of the year reached 2,327.9 PB, up 134%.

In its mid-year financial report, China Mobile cited steady progress in the 4G, data traffic, wireline broadband and digital services business lines.  Some highlights:

• Operating revenue of RMB370.4 billion, up by 7.1%, of which revenue from telecommunications services was RMB325.4 billion, up by 6.9%
• EBITDA was RMB134.4 billion, up by 2.9%
• Profit attributable to equity shareholders was RMB60.6 billion, up by 5.6%
• 1.32 million 4G base stations online
• Nearly 430 million 4G customers
• Wireless data traffic revenue has for the first time exceeded traditional business and is now the biggest revenue source
• Wireline broadband customers increased by 10.81 million and the total number of customers reaching 65.84 million
• Handset data traffic increased by 133.9% year-on-year, while wireless data traffic revenue increased by 39.7%

Mr. Shang Bing, Chairman of China Mobile, stated: “Our current strategy has the dual aspects of consolidation and future growth. For consolidation, we will be further building on our 4G advantages and increasing our 4G customers proportion. Our high-end approach with regards to wireline broadband will be maintained. We will challenge ourselves to obtain a one-third market share in the ICT business through expansion of our corporate customer base. In terms of future growth, we will take a longer-term perspective, looking towards our digital services segment and increasing the revenue by understanding the important role that this business line will play for the Company in the future. As we have always done, we will take a level-headed approach to market competition. Our ultimate goal is to strike a balance between the interests of our customers, our shareholders and the public, as well as regulatory requirements when we are striving to meet our short-term goals and formulating long-term plans."

http://www.chinamobileltd.com/en/ir/webcasts/pre160811.pdf

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Alibaba Rack Up 156% Revenue Growth for AliCloud

Alibaba cited 156% YoY revenue for Aliyun, its cloud division, where the segment adjusted EBITA narrowed to $(24) million.  The figure puts Aliyun on a faster growth trajectory than AWS or Azure, which also reported strong growth numbers during the first half of 2016. However, Aliyun remains much smaller, with Q2 revenue of US$187 million.

Cloud computing paying customers increased 119% YoY to 577k.  Aliyun launched 319 new products and features during the quarter.

The company said Aliyun's adjusted EBITA margin significantly improved YoY due to robust revenue growth and economies of scale.

http://www.alibabagroup.com/en/ir/presentations/pre160811.pdf

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Acacia Posts Revenue of $116.2M, up 101% YoY

In its first financial report as a public company, Acacia Communications posted Q2 revenue of $116.2 million, up 101% year-over-year. GAAP gross margin came in at 46.4% of revenue and GAAP net income was $17.6 million.

“Our record second quarter results exceeded our expectations across the board and reflect the success of our disruptive technology in transforming cloud, content and communications networks.  These results are a testament to our strategy and demonstrate our leadership position in the high-growth 100G plus optical networking market,” said Raj Shanmugaraj, President and CEO of Acacia Communications, “We continue to see strong global demand for our products, driven by metro and inter-data center network infrastructure buildouts.”

Acacia, which was founded in 2009, develops  high-speed coherent optical interconnect products, including a series of low-power coherent DSP ASICs and silicon PICs.  The company has integrated into families of optical interconnect modules with transmission speeds ranging from 40 to 400 Gbps for use in long-haul, metro and inter-data center markets. Acacia’s coherent DSP ASICs and silicon PICs are manufactured using CMOS and CMOS-compatible processes. The company completed its IPO during Q2.

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Ixia Adds High-density, Inline Bypass Switch

Ixia introduced a modular, high-density, inline bypass switch designed to help ensure that security tools have continuous visibility into network traffic.

The new iBypass VHD switch joins the company’s expanding portfolio of bypass switches.

Ixia said its iBypass VHD is the first bypass switch to support both active-standby and active-active network/security architectures. Active-standby offers improved security resilience with a primary and secondary tool that helps ensure ongoing network monitoring. Active–active enables a diverse deployment of security tools to maximize existing and new IT investments.

It supports up to twelve 10G bypass switches in one unit, three times more than previous versions. iBypass VHD is currently available via authorized Ixia channel partners at a starting US List price of $21,000.

Ixia iBypass VHD offers centralized and simplified management, leveraging Indigo Pro -- a central management tool for bypass switches that simplifies and speeds configuration and management of tens to hundreds of devices.

http://www.ixiacom.com

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Rackspace's OpenStack Milestone: 6 Years, One Billion Server Hours

Rackspace announced a huge milestone: reaching one billion server hours operating production-ready OpenStack clouds for many of the world's largest and most recognized companies.

Rackspace collaborated with NASA to develop OpenStack in 2010.

"Over the past six years, Rackspace has gained more experience building, operating and improving OpenStack clouds than any other company," said Scott Crenshaw, senior vice president of strategy and product at Rackspace. "The one billion managed server hour milestone is an exciting accomplishment and further validates that we are ahead of competition in OpenStack leadership and expertise."

Rackspace also announced early access for a managed security service for Microsoft Azure. 

http://www.rackspace.com

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IDC: Worldwide Public Cloud Services to Hit $195 Billion by 2020

Worldwide revenues from public cloud services reaching more than $195 billion in 2020 -- more than double the $96.5 billion in revenues forecast for 2016, according to an updated Worldwide Semiannual Public Cloud Services Spending Guide from International Data Corporation (IDC).  This represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.4% over the 2015-2020 forecast period. The study quantifies public cloud computing purchases by cloud type for 20 industries across eight regions and 54 countries.

Cloud software – the service enablement of products in all three primary software markets: applications as a service, system infrastructure software (SIS) as a service (which combine to form SaaS), and application development and deployment (AD&D) or platform as a service (PaaS) – was responsible for 83.7% of all public cloud revenue in 2015, with the remaining 16.3% belonging to infrastructure as a service (IaaS). However, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) revenues are forecast to grow at a faster rate than SaaS, expanding their share of overall revenues in the process.

The United States will be the largest market for public cloud services, generating nearly two thirds of total worldwide revenues throughout the forecast, followed by Western Europe and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan)(APeJ). Latin America and APeJ will experience the greatest revenue growth over the forecast period, while all eight regions are forecast to see revenue growth greater than 100% over the next five years.

"Cloud software will significantly outpace traditional software product delivery over the next five years, growing nearly three times faster than the software market as a whole and becoming the significant growth driver to all functional software markets," said Benjamin McGrath, senior research analyst, SaaS and Business Models. "By 2020, about half of all new business software purchases will be of service-enabled software, and cloud software will constitute more than a quarter of all software sold."

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P33214

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Samsung Intros 4th Gen, 64-layer Triple-Level-Cell Flash Technology

Samsung introduced its 4th generation, 64-layer triple-level-cell V-NAND flash memory at this week's Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California.

By stacking 64 layers of cell-arrays, Samsung said it is now able to increase its single-die density to 512Gb and its IO speed to 800Mbps.

This makes possible 1 TB Flash in a device weighing less than 1g, weighing less than half of a U.S. dime. The Samsung 1TB BGA SSD will use an extremely compact, ball grid array (BGA) package design that contains all essential SSD components including triple-level-cell V-NAND flash chips, LPDDR4 mobile DRAM and a state-of-the-art Samsung controller.  It will deliver unprecedented performance, reading sequentially at 1,500MB/s and writing sequentially at 900MB/s.

Samsung's 4th generation V-NAND debut continues its trend of yearly performance bumps. Starting in August 2013, Samsung has previously introduced three generations of “industry-first” V-NAND products with 24, 32 and 48-layer vertical cell-array stacking technologies. Commercial production is expected in Q4.

Samsung also announced its latest Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) SSD -- 32 TB -- the world largest single drive introduced to date.  This is also based on 512-gigabit (Gb) V-NAND chips. A total of 512 V-NAND chips are stacked in 16 layers to form a 1-terabyte (TB) package and the 32-terabyte (TB) SSD contains 32 of those packages.

https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-showcases-industry-leading-flash-technologies-to-address-growing-requirements-of-storage-systems

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Seagate Demos 60TB SSD

Seagate demonstrated a 60 terabyte (TB) Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) solid-state-drive (SSD) — the largest SSD to date — at this week's Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California.

The 60TB SAS SSD uses the standard 3.5 inch storage form factor, eliminating the added step of separating out different types of data for near-term availability versus long-term storage. Seagate said it anticipates increasing the capacity to 100TB or more in the near future in this same form factor.

Seagate also announced its 8TB Nytro XP7200 NVMe SSD aimed at the hyperscale needs of today’s data centers. It features a single PCIe interface for high-speed data transfers and four separate controllers, providing processing power up to four times faster than comparable drives, but without the higher cost, power levels and latency required from a PCIe switch or bridge. Applications can process more transactions faster using the industry’s highest bandwidth through one PCIe slot.

Future availability of the 60TB SAS SSD, currently a demonstration technology, is anticipated for some time in 2017.

“Given the demands on today’s data centers, optimal technologies are those that can accommodate an immense amount of data as needed—and without taking up too much space. As such, we are constantly seeking new ways to provide the highest density possible in our all-flash data center configurations,” said Mike Vildibill, vice president, Advanced Technologies and Big Data, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “Seagate’s new 60TB SAS SSD offers an exciting possibility for customers to achieve higher server storage performance and capacity configurations never seen before.”

http://www.seagate.com

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Nimble Offers Aggressive Pricing for Predictive, All-Flash Array

Nimble Storage introduced a full-featured, all-flash array that can scale non-disruptively up to 8PB. The company also introduced a new generation of Adaptive Flash arrays with significantly improved price-performance and price-capacity benefits across the portfolio.

The starting point for an AF1000 has up to 20TB effective capacity and is expandable up to 165TB effective capacity in 4U. It can also scale-up and scale-out non-disruptively to achieve over 1.2M IOPS and 8PB of all-flash capacity.  Nimble said pricing starts at under $40K.

The new portfolio consists of the CS1000, CS3000, CS5000 and CS7000 and delivers up to 2X performance improvement and 40% lower cost of capacity over the previous generation of Adaptive Flash arrays. The new high-end CS7000 array achieves up to 230K IOPS and scales to over 2.4 PB of effective capacity. 

Nimble arrays include InfoSight Predictive Analytics to predict and prevent storage and non-storage issues across the infrastructure stack.

http://www.nimblestorage.com

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Level 3 Deploys Cisco Network Service Orchestrator

Level 3 Communications is using Cisco’s Network Services Orchestrator (NSO), enabled by Tail-f, to deliver on-demand Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) solutions.

Level 3 developed a programmable wide area network (WAN) that enables it to automate a range of data services and multivendor devices in its markets around the world. The company can also orchestrate the entire service lifecycle—including activation, testing and ongoing service-level assurance—through a single data model.

Level 3’s Adaptive Network Control Solutions suite, leverages network automation and SDN, which provides its customers with:

• Agile Hybrid Cloud Connectivity: Customers can order Ethernet services such as E-Line, E-Access and E-Lynk, Level 3’s public cloud connection service, with flexible bandwidth options.
• Level 3’s Dynamic Capacity: When customers order Level 3 Adaptive Network Control Solutions with Dynamic Capacity, the system can scale bandwidth up to 300 percent on demand, scheduled in advance or automatically based on configurable network threshold triggers.
• Optimized Data Backup and Recovery: Customers can schedule Dynamic Capacity for regular or ad-hoc events such as data replication. Level 3’s system can schedule additional capacity in advance on an hourly basis to ensure that the workload happens within the required time window.
• Accelerated time-to-market for new applications: With cloud connectivity between public and private infrastructure domains, Level 3 customers can quickly move applications from development to production.
• End-to-end visibility through Level 3’s Enhanced Management: Level 3 administrators and their customers can view granular real-time information about the performance and utilization of networks and services.

Level 3 noted that it now manages more than 75,000 different network devices around the world, and that it now supports the same automated services, with the same scalability, high availability and redundancy across geographies, regardless of the underlying infrastructure.

"The power of agility in today’s competitive marketplace is not overstated,” said Travis Ewert, senior vice president of network software development at Level 3. “Global businesses need network resources that are flexible enough to be leveraged as a service, with the reliability and security they can rely on to deliver critical business applications. With Cisco NSO, Level 3 is making the once-distant dream of full lifecycle service automation a reality for enterprises around the world."

“Network resources on-demand represents a huge opportunity for service providers like Level 3 to remain innovative for their customers and competitive in the market,” said Yvette Kanouff, senior vice president, general manager, service provider business, Cisco. “This transition to network automation using NSO, is a significant step for offering new opportunities and entering new markets.”

http://www.cisco.com
http://www.netrounds.com

• Netrounds provides software-based network performance and service assurance solutions that help telecom operators to enhance the end-user experience of IP-based services such as Internet, TV, voice and other quality-demanding business services.  The company is based in Lulea, Sweden.
  
• In May, Netrounds announced that its Netrounds Control Center and active Test Agents have successfully achieved Cisco compatibility certification with Network Services Orchestrator (NSO 4.1) and Elastic Services Controller (ESC 2.0).

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Zayo Picked for 100G Wavelengths between Paris and Marseille

Zayo has been selected by a large global carrier for 100G wavelength services between Paris and Marseille. The upgrade leverages the Viatel network, which Zayo acquired in 2015, and will provide backhaul capabilities for subsea cables AAE-1 and SEA-ME-WE-5.

“This new 100G capable route will provide backhaul capabilities for the subsea cables landing in Marseille this year, providing customers with seamless service across Europe, North America and around the globe,” said Alastair Kane, managing director of Northern Europe at Zayo. “Zayo can connect customers from Marseille to Milan, London, Dublin, New York, Toronto, Los Angeles and back around the world. With the upgrade, we are well-positioned to capture global traffic growth.”

http://www.zayo.com

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Open vSwitch (OVS) Moves to Linux Foundation

Open vSwitch (OVS), which is an open source virtual switch designed to enable network automation while supporting standard management interfaces and protocols, is now a Linux Foundation Project.

OVS was developed to address the rapidly growing needs of SDN and virtual networking use cases. It has been ported to multiple virtualization platforms, switching chipsets, and networking hardware accelerators. OVS works on a wide variety of systems, including Linux, DPDK, Hyper-V, and FreeBSD. It is used in a variety of SDN applications, including NFV and network virtualization; it is the most widely used networking back-end in OpenStack.

“OVS is a great example of how open source software has enabled the networking industry to match the pace of cloud computing and help advance virtualized technologies,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director, The Linux Foundation. “Hosting OVS as a Linux Foundation Project will serve to further collaboration across users and vendors and aid in open technology development throughout the networking stack.”

Contributions to OVS span more than 300 individuals across companies including Cisco, Ericsson, Huawei, HP, IBM, Intel, Red Hat and VMware. The governance is managed by a group of the top committers to the project with a variety of backgrounds and affiliations.

As a project hosted at The Linux Foundation, Open vSwitch will continue its operations under an open governance model and continue accepting contributions from all interested companies and developers.

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/announcements/open-vswitch-joins-linux-foundation-open-networking-ecosystem

http://openvswitch.org/

Momentum Builds for Central Office Re-architected as a Data Center Project (CORD)

Tuesday, July 26, 2016  #Cloud, CORD, Linux Foundation, ON.Lab, Open, SDN  No Comments

The Central Office Re-architected as a Data Center (CORD) initiative, which was initially developed by ON.Lab as a use case for the ONOS open source SDN operating system, will now be managed as an independent open source project under The Linux Foundation. CORD aims to utilize merchant silicon and  the elasticity of commodity clouds to enable data center economics and cloud agility in the central office environment. Google, Radisys and Samsung...

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Facebook Pursues Hierarchical Flash Storage Strategy

Building data center infrastructure at Facebook is all about understanding engagement, said Vijay Rao, Director Technology, Strategy Facebook, speaking at Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California.

Facebook's growth metrics are well known - whether in posts, comments, likes, photos, messages, videos -- the curve moves strongly in the upward and to the right direction.

Designing infrastructure for this type of runaway engagement means planning for spikes, such as Mother's Day.  In terms of raw power, Rao estimated Facebook's overall compute power at about 7.5 quadrillion instructions per second. Facebook engineers now have seven types of servers to choose from depending on the application they are supporting.


On the storage side, Facebook is pursuing a hierarchical storage model -- various technologies are employed depending on the "temperature" of the data.  Hot data resides in DRAM or NVM-based DIMMs while warm data is stored in PCIe NVM Flash. User content grows colder over time, so archival photos and posts eventually will move to cold storage systems.

Facebook's overall strategy is to pursue a "disaggregated rack" architecture with designs contributed to the Open Compute Project.

Earlier this year at Open Compute Project Summit, Facebook introduced its "Lightning"- a flexible, NVMe JBOF (just a bunch of flash) box. It is designed to provide a PCIe gen 3 connection from end to end (CPU to SSD). It leverages the existing Open Vault (Knox) SAS JBOD infrastructure to provide a faster time to market, maintain a common look and feel, enable modularity in PCIe switch solutions, and enable flexibility in SSD form factors.

Rao highlighted three other solid storage innovations.

Next gen Non-Volatile Memory (NVM), which promise significant boosts in performance and scalability using 3D technologies and other breakthroughs.

Facebook's own AVA card, which puts four M.2 modules on a card.

WORM, which promises very large capacities (>100TB) with low endurance (150 write cycles) for low-cost, long-term storage.

http://www.flashmemorysummit.com/English/Conference/Keynotes.html

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Intel to Acquire Nervana for AI

Intel agreed to acquire Nervana Systems, a start-up based in San Diego, California, for their work in machine learning. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Nervana, which was founded in 2014, developed a software and hardware stack for deep learning.

Intel said the Nervana technology would help optimize the Intel Math Kernel Library and its integration into industry standard frameworks, advancing the deep learning performance and TCO of the Intel Xeon and Intel Xeon Phi processors.

http://www.intel.com

Nervana is headed by Naveen Rao.

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