AMD's decision to acquire Pensando has given the market 1.9 billion reasons to believe that data processing units (DPUs) and the SmartNICs they enable are indeed a really HOT networking idea.
Join us as we explore solutions from the leading players in our upcoming 2022 Infrastructure Acceleration showcase and report.
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Marvell has more than doubled its growth year-over-year (YOY) in cloud data center Ethernet switch port shipments, based on 650 Group's quarterly switch report for Q4'21 released last month.
The company said its share of the overall data center switch market grew from 6% to 10% YOY and specifically within the 50G SerDes segment of switches, deployed by the fast-growing cloud infrastructure market, the company attained a record high of 31% share in Q4'21.
Notably, Marvell confirmed that it has shipped more than 3 million 400G switch ports to date.
"The continued, and growing, traction of Marvell's Teralynx switch family in tier-1 cloud data centers demonstrates its compelling value proposition for customers requiring the best possible application performance," said Guy Azrad, senior vice president and general manager, Switch Business Unit at Marvell. "Our Teralynx switches are built upon a highly efficient and scalable architecture which delivers the power efficiency and roadmap for 51.2 Tbps and beyond. Further, the Teralynx family is uniquely positioned for integration with Marvell's high-speed electro-optics offerings to bring a complete and better-together, end-to-end cloud solution."
"The Ethernet switch market reached a new all-time high in 4Q'21, exceeding a $9 billion per quarter run-rate for the first time, driven by cloud data centers," said Alan Weckel, founding analyst for 650 Group. "This past quarter, our research found that Marvell's market share reached 31% for 50G SerDes shipments, achieving the highest to date, with growth YoY at 104%."
"Our leading cloud data center customers have been ramping their volume deployments with Marvell's Teralynx switches and our optical modules to optimize their infrastructure," said Osa Mok, chief marketing officer at Innolight Technology. "Marvell brings a comprehensive switch and PAM4 electro-optics platform solution that complements our module capabilities to help our customers meet the bandwidth-intensive requirements of 400G connectivity."
"The surge in cloud infrastructure build-out is driving the demand for low-latency and high-performance networking solutions that can meet the exacting requirements for 400G and beyond connectivity," said Supriyo Dey, VP of Business Development at Eoptolink. "Marvell's cloud-optimized Teralynx switches along with our optical transceivers are addressing the increasing ramp from cloud data customers as they scale to volume deployments."
Interface Masters Technologies introduced a network switch based on the Intel Tofino 2 P4-programmable switch fabric (12.8Tb) and a Dual AMD EPYC 2 Milan 64-core offload processors.
“Interface Masters is an OEM hardware solutions provider. Our new Tahoe 2664-ZR1 is entirely designed and manufactured in the USA – our hardware is never compromised and always secure,” says Interface Masters VP Product, Brian Shannon. “AMD’s EPYC 2 Milan CPU is a powerhouse and the Intel Tofino 2 switch supports an incredible out-of-the-box software suite. The switch is manufactured, tested and shipped from San Jose, California – and ready for our customer’s software load.”
Software configurations include white box with ONIE SDK and a complete hardware specific SDK tool set for custom development. Intel Deep Insight, Intel P4 Studio SDE, development tools and software partner solutions are available. Interface Masters also currently offers SONiC, DENT and Stratum support for Intel Tofino 2.
POLYN Technology, a start-up based in Caesarea, Israel unveiled its first Neuromorphic Analog Signal Processor (NASP) chip.
The company says its device embodies the Tiny AI concept.
POLYN anticipates the chip will be available to customers in the first quarter of 2023 as its first wearables product, with a fusion of PPG and IMU sensors for the most accurate heart rate measurement along with recognition and tracking of human activity.
“Our first chip is created from trained neural networks by NASP Compiler and synthesis tools that generated Netlist and the silicon engineering files from the software math model simulation. We will continue to refine our technology for creation of new generation chips,” said Yaakov Milstain, COO of POLYN.
“This achievement validates the intensive work of our multinational team,” said Aleksandr Timofeev, CEO and founder of POLYN Technology. “Our chip represents the most advanced technology bridging analog computations and the digital core. It is designed with neuroscience in mind, replicating pre-processing the primary cortical area of the human brain does at the periphery before learning at the center.”
Intel pledged to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in its global operations by 2040, to increase the energy efficiency and lower the carbon footprint of Intel products and platforms with specific goals, and to work with customers and industry partners to create solutions that lower the greenhouse gas footprint of the entire technology ecosystem.
To realize this ambitious goal, Intel has set the following interim milestones for 2030:
“The impact of climate change is an urgent global threat. Protecting our planet demands immediate action and fresh thinking about how the world operates. As one of the world's leading semiconductor design and manufacturing companies, Intel is in a unique position to make a difference not only in our own operations, but in a way that makes it easier for customers, partners and our whole value chain to take meaningful action too,” states Pat Gelsinger, Intel chief executive officer.
Windstream Wholesale is undertaking a new brand identity to capitalize on its “fast and flexible” approach to technology leadership and service delivery.
“Windstream Wholesale is leading the industry in so many ways that it’s time our brand fully incorporate our commitment to challenging the status quo and relentlessly pursuing excellence in the service of our customers,” said Buddy Bayer, president of Windstream Enterprise and Wholesale. “Whether it’s delivering Terabits of long-haul wave capacity to a customer in less than five business days, taking the lead in ultra-fast optical transmission, or rapidly expanding our connections to in-demand data centers, Windstream Wholesale has positioned itself to capitalize on the market’s burgeoning demand for bandwidth and cloud services for years to come.”
https://www.windstreamenterprise.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/national-network-map.pdf
Virgin Media O2 has completed the deployment of Samsung gear at multiple live 4G and 5G sites in the U.K. The companies also completed the first 5G data call on Virgin Media O2's commercial 5G network, using the sites.
Field trials were jointly carried out on the sites—located in Tamworth and the Peak District, England since the start of this year. They followed successful lab tests conducted in October 2021, validating the capability and performance of Samsung’s 4G and 5G solutions on Virgin Media O2’s commercial network.
Virgin Media O2 also validated use of Samsung’s Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) capabilities, should they be required.
Samsung provided its latest network solutions for trials—including 4G radios, 5G Massive MIMO radios and baseband units. The solutions cover a wide range of Virgin Media O2’s spectrum holdings, from low- to mid-band (800MHz, 2.1GHz and 3.5GHz). Specifically, Samsung delivered its 5G 64T64R Massive MIMO radios for the 3.5GHz spectrum, a major 5G spectrum band for the operator’s network.
"Samsung is excited to extend our network collaboration with Virgin Media O2 in the U.K., advancing from lab trials to now delivering 4G and 5G in commercial networks out in the field,” said Francis BJ Chun, President and CEO, Samsung Electronics U.K. “We look forward to playing a major part of the diversification of the network equipment supply chain in the U.K. market.”
Semtech has added multi-band capabilities to its LoRa Edge device-to-Cloud geolocation platform to allow for direct satellite-connected Internet of Things (IoT) applications in supply chain management and logistics with seamless low power geolocation on a global scale.
Key features of LoRa Edge LR1120:
“Semtech’s LoRa is targeting track and trace challenges faced by the logistics industry today with a geolocation IoT platform adapted to global transportation and mass-scale asset management,” said Marc Pégulu, vice president of IoT product marketing for Semtech’s Wireless and Sensing Products Group.
“With the launch of multi-band LoRa support, coupled with LoRa Cloud services, it has never been easier to expand ubiquitous IoT connectivity and geolocation globally.”
https://www.semtech.com/products/wireless-rf/lora-edge/lr1120
Tech Mahindra has selected Keysight Open Radio Architect (KORA) solutions to certify 5G equipment of open radio access network (O-RAN) in a 5G O-RAN test lab facility located in New Jersey, USA.
Keysight will equip Tech Mahindra’s O-RAN lab with several KORA solutions, including RuSIM, DuSIM, CuSIM and CoreSIM. These solutions allow Tech Mahindra to validate the performance of 5G standalone O-RAN systems consisting of O-RAN radio units (O-RUs), centralized units (O-CUs) and distributed units (O-DUs). Keysight offers a wide range of O-RAN test, emulation and optimization solutions that enable vendors of small cells, macro cells and cloud RAN as well as mobile operators, test labs and hyperscale data centers to verify functionality and compliance to standards and system performance prior to live network deployment.
“Keysight is pleased to provide Tech Mahindra with integrated test solutions for rigorous interoperability, performance and security validation under real-world conditions,” said Cao Peng, vice president and general manager of Keysight’s wireless business. “As a result, Tech Mahindra can cost-effectively support a global ecosystem of vendors, enterprises and service providers with a comprehensive range of O-RAN test services.”
LF Networking cited progress with its 5G Super Blueprint, a community-driven integration/illustration of multiple open source initiatives, projects, and vendors coming together to show use cases.
The 5G Super Blueprint is now integrated across additional projects––including Magma (1.6), EMCO, and Anuket––building open source components applicable to a variety of industry use cases. Preliminary scoping for future integrations with the O-RAN Software Community have begun, setting the stage for end-to-end open source interoperability from the core through the RAN and future compliance activities.
Meanwhile, the L3AF project has been inducted into the LF Networking umbrella. L3AF is an open source project, developed by Walmart, housing solutions in the realm of eBPF (a revolutionary technology that allows us to run sandboxed programs in an operating system kernel) that provides complete life-cycle management of eBPF programs with the help of an advanced control plane that has been written in Golang. The control plane orchestrates and composes independent eBPF programs across the network infrastructure to solve crucial business problems. L3AF's eBPF programs include load-balancing, rate limiting, traffic mirroring, flow exporter, packet manipulation, performance tuning, and many more. L3AF joined the Linux Foundation in fall of 2021 and has now been inducted into the LF Networking project umbrella.
LFN also added the following new silver members: ATOS, include: ATOS, GenXComm, Keysight Technologies, and Telaverge Communications.
"As the LF Networking community rolls into its fourth year as an umbrella project organization, we are pleased to see robust efforts focused on securing 5G across multiple project & foundations as we welcome even more industry-leading organizations to the project," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation. "It's the robust and diverse set of member companies that enable LFN's collaborative innovation into the future of 5G and networking."
The U.S. market for Carrier Managed SD-WAN Services is projected to surge to $7.8 billion by 2026, according to latest research from Vertical Systems Group.
SD-WAN is one of the three Carrier Managed VPN Services tracked by Vertical, along with MPLS and Site-to-Site VPNs. Migration from MPLS has been a significant growth driver for Carrier Managed SD-WANs, with customers converting to either hybrid MPLS/SD-WAN configurations or full replacements. Despite this ongoing technology migration, U.S. revenue and customer connections for MPLS plus Site-to-Site services still eclipse Carrier Managed SD-WAN.
https://www.verticalsystems.com/2022/04/12/statflash-us-sdwan-rev-2026/
TOYO Corporation has deployed ADVA's Oscilloquartz optical cesium atomic clock solution to enable R&D institutions to achieve new levels of accuracy in network synchronization.
ADVA says that by utilizing cesium atoms in a much more efficient way than legacy magnetic cesium clocks, the technology provides better performance and optimum stability for over 10 years.
“TOYO Corporation’s selection of our industry-first optical cesium atomic clock highlights the difference that this device is about to make in a wide range of fields. From metrology to industrial control and positioning, critical applications need extremely high levels of accuracy and availability. No solution on the market comes close to our optical cesium atomic clock in terms of precision, stability, long lifetime and robust design,” commented Erik Lindberg, VP of sales, APAC at ADVA. “We’re delighted that our solution is being used to support cutting-edge research in Japan. It proves how the timing accuracy requirements of tomorrow are achievable today.”
“As a company that leads the world in advanced test and measurement systems, we appreciate the impact that ADVA’s Oscilloquartz optical cesium atomic clock can make. By providing ultra-stable and precise frequency information, we’re enabling major research institutes to achieve unprecedented levels of timing accuracy,” said Hiroaki Tokumichi, division manager of TOYO Corporation. “Highly precise synchronization is essential in many different fields such as 5G and automated driving. The accuracy that ADVA’s technology brings could impact social infrastructure applications in power and transport and be key to the future of disaster prevention. Along with its compact design, that’s what made it the most suitable solution available.”
team.blue Denmark has selected Ciena’s Waveserver Ai platform to serve as the foundation for its WAN-ring, providing point-to-point metro data center interconnect (DCI) network service between sites.
Ciena’s Waveserver Ai platform delivers high capacity – up to 2.4 Tb/s in a single rack unit.
“We needed a solution to extend the capabilities of our current dark fiber infrastructure. It needed to be powerful, easy to use, and extremely stable while also being ultra-efficient in terms of power and size,” said Michael Munk Lassen, Principal Systems Architect & Head of Technology, Infrastructure, team.blue.
“Ciena’s Waveserver Ai platform meets this need and enables us to create a simple point-to-point network between sites currently providing up to 8x100G on a single dark fiber which can be scaled further if needed.”
“Cloud and content providers across the globe are investing in their DCI capabilities to increase network efficiency, reduce energy consumption and enable highly resilient connectivity at the edge of their network,” said Jean David Fabre, Director, Datacenter Connectivity Solutions, Ciena. “Rolling out Ciena’s Waverserver Ai platform allows team.blue Denmark to provide cutting-edge services.”
Ekinops reported Q1 2022 consolidated revenue of €27.8m, up 20% vs. Q1 2021 (+19% at constant scope). At constant scope and exchange rates, revenue rose 16%, in line with the 2022 annual target for organic growth at least equal to that of 2021 (+12%).
The company reported growth in all of its businesses, with software and services up +64%. Profiting from the strength of its Services activity, its SDN (Software Defined Networks) solutions, the network function virtualization solutions, and the contribution of SixSq's activities, revenue generated by software and services rose by +64% over the quarter.
The share of software and services continued to increase, and now accounts for 17% of the Group's quarterly revenue, versus 12% one year prior, and 14% for full year 2021.
Optical Transport activity showed a strong increase over Q1 2022, thanks to the success of the 200 Gb/s and 400 Gb/s WDM systems.
In North America, which totals 18% of Group's sales, Ekinops achieved vigorous quarterly growth of +54% in Q1 2022 (+42% in US dollars). This performance is the result of an extremely solid increase in the activity of both Optical Transport and Access solutions.
EMEA (Europe - excl. France - Middle East & Africa) region, which represents 42% of the Group's activity, achieved growth of +21% for the quarter, underpinned largely by Optical Transport solutions, particularly in Germany.
https://www.ekinops.com/news/corporate/q1-2022-strong-demand-and-20-revenue-growth
Zayo launched a suite of connectivity, security and networking services for enterprises.
“With Zayo Enterprise Solutions, we are taking the expertise we’ve built serving the large hyperscalers, major carriers and 70% of the top U.S. financial services firms and extending that same level of speed, security and service to enterprises of all sizes,” said Dan Stoll, Managing Director of Regional Network Services at Zayo. “Too many businesses are stuck with multiple connectivity vendors and outdated networks, leading to a clunky, overpriced experience. Our goal is to deliver an alternative that is more affordable, more efficient and well-positioned to help enterprises grow.”
Highlights of Zayo Enterprise Solutions:
Zayo has established dedicated teams in Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Indianapolis, Phoenix, Seattle and Toronto to provide local support.
KKR, a leading global investment firm, agreed to Barracuda Networks from Thoma Bravo, a leading software investment firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.
“We believe that with the support of KKR, we will continue to invest in growth and foster a culture that gives our team the resources and inspiration to continue to create and deliver the next generation of leading cybersecurity solutions for our customers and partners,” said Hatem Naguib, CEO of Barracuda. “We are very appreciative of Thoma Bravo’s support and very excited to be working with KKR on this next phase of Barracuda’s journey.”
IP Infusion said its network operating system platform, OcNOS, attracted 20 new customers in 1Q 2022 and now has 160 unique paying customers.
The company reports heightened demand for its Provider Edge and Aggregation Router, which yielded a 60 percent increase in new orders representing five times the revenue growth posted in 1Q 2021.
First quarter customer wins announced include Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), Mobicom, uGrid and Kazakhtelecom. IP Infusion also launched in 1Q 2022 several new global business partnerships including Jabil, Distri X, Syncworks, Aircom, Netier, and SoftNet Solutions.
“It’s gratifying to leverage our momentum in 2021 into a powerful growth trajectory continuing in 2022, especially in the Provider Edge and Aggregation Router space,” said Atsushi Ogata, President and CEO of IP Infusion. “By delivering a carrier-grade, open disaggregated network operating system platform, IP Infusion enables network operators to break vendor lock-in and deploy best-in-class technologies that unleash unprecedented innovation.”
The Open Networking Foundation (ONF), which was established in 2011 with a mission of transforming networking by championing software-defined networking (SDN), disaggregation and open source, has released all of its projects to open source with permissive software licenses as it transitions away from code development by an internal team. To this end, ONF has open sourced the entirety of its portfolio of production-ready platforms, including solutions for public 5G (SD-Core, SD-RAN), private 5G networks (Aether), software-defined broadband (SEBA/VOLTHA) and P4 programmable networks (SD-Fabric, PINS).
As part of the announcement, it was disclosed that Intel has acquired the Open Networking Foundation's (ONF’s) development team and Ananki, the independent venture-backed company that was recently spun out of the ONF to deliver open source-based Software-Defined Private 5G as a commercial service. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The ONF Executive Director, Guru Parulkar has joined Intel as VP of its Network and Edge Group under Nick McKeown, founding ONF board member and Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Network and Edge Group at Intel. In addition, the majority of ONF’s internal development team will transition to be employed by Intel.
Timon Sloane will lead the ONF as General Manager, and new Area Governance Boards will be formed to steer the major project areas as ONF transitions into a more classic open source organization.
“ONF has made important contributions to the industry with its software-defined development projects, and I am confident that its move to a community-sourced model as part of its next stage of growth will fuel further contributions as the industry and its needs advance,” said Nick McKeown, founding ONF board member and Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Network and Edge Group at Intel. “As a result of ONF’s shift in direction, we are pleased to welcome ONF’s development team to Intel. We look forward to our continued contributions to ONF projects, the ongoing success of ONF-developed platforms, and our active participation in the ONF community.”
“ONF’s journey has been transformational,” said Guru Parulkar, VP Intel NEX and Board Member, ONF. “In collaboration with our partners, our small amazing team has challenged the status quo and ignited the SDN movement. We have built platforms that naysayers said were doomed to fail, we’ve proven what’s possible, and today a number of our platforms have been deployed in production networks and others are now production ready and expected to be broadly adopted. I’m exceptionally proud of our team and of the work we have accomplished to date - but our work is not done. Today we are simply shifting to a new model optimized for the next phase of our transformative journey towards open networking. While ONF’s engineering team is moving to Intel, the work of ONF proceeds unabated, and I’m more bullish than ever that its impact will continue to grow.”
The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) launched Ananki, an independent venture-backed company to deliver open source-based Software-Defined Private 5G as a commercial service to address enterprises’ unique requirements of Industry 4.0. The ambition is to enable enterprise private 5G that is hardened and optimized for industrial applications, yet as easy to consume as Wi-Fi.
Ananki’s technological foundation is ONF’s open source Aether, SD-RAN, SD-Fabric and SD-Core projects. The company will offer a private 5G solution delivered as a SaaS.
Key attributes:
“ONF continues to innovate in ways that magnify the power of open systems and open source across our industry. The ONF board recognizes that the lack of support for open source initiatives from commercial companies remains an inhibiting factor for scaled adoption. To meet this challenge, we have agreed to spin out Ananki as an independent company to pursue commercialization of Aether with a view that this will help accelerate the adoption and impact of open source,” states Andre Fuetsch, ONF Board Chair and AT&T CTO.
Guru Parulkar, Executive Director ONF and CEO of Ananki, comments: “Ananki is broadening the impact of the ONF’s work, and will help ONF’s Aether become much more broadly adopted. By providing a commercially supported option for consuming Aether, many more organizations will be able to easily and economically leverage the benefits of Private 5G for building Industry 4.0 solutions. And in turn, Ananki is committed to contributing back to the ONF open source, helping to advance the Aether platform and broaden the ONF community.”
ONF's Aether Edge Cloud selected for DARPA's Pronto Project
The Open Networking Foundation's Aether 5G Connected Edge Cloud platform is being used as the software platform for Pronto, a project backed by $30 million in DARPA funding to develop secure 5G network infrastructure. Specifically, DARPA is funding ONF to build, deploy and operate the network to support research by Cornell, Princeton and Stanford universities in the areas of network verification and closed-loop control.
Aether (pronounced ‘ee-ther’) provides mobile connectivity and edge cloud services for distributed enterprise networks, all provisioned and managed from a centralized cloud. ONF will enhance and deploy its open source Aether software platform as the foundation for the Pronto research work, and in turn the research results will be open sourced back into Aether to help advance Aether as a platform for future secure 5G network infrastructure.
One of Pronto's goals is "to leverage network programmability to enable deep and wide network visibility, verification, and closed-loop control, giving programmers tools to build and dynamically deploy customized network functionality in a secure and reliable manner."
ONF also confirmed that it is now running a beta production deployment of Aether. This deployment is a single unified cloud managed network interconnecting the project’s commercial partners AT&T, Ciena, Intel, Google, NTT, ONF and Telefonica. This initial deployment supports CBRS and/or 4G/LTE radio access at all sites, and is cloud managed from a shared core running in the Google public cloud.
The University campuses are being added to this Aether deployment in support of Pronto. Campus sites will be used by Pronto researchers to advance the Pronto research, serving as both a development platform and a testbed for use case experimentation. The Aether footprint is expected to grow on the university campuses as Aether’s 5G Connected Edge Cloud capabilities are leveraged both for research on additional use cases as well as for select campus operations.
The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) announced Aether – the first open-source platform for delivering Enterprise 5G/LTE-Edge-Cloud-as-a-Service.
Aether (pronounced ‘ee-ther’) provides mobile connectivity and edge cloud services for distributed enterprise networks, all provisioned and managed from a centralized cloud.
The IOWN Global Forum, which is pursuing the vision of an Innovative Optical and Wireless Network based on next generation photonics-based technologies, published its Vision 2030 Roadmap. The consortium said has completed Phase 1 of its mission and is now moving onto Phase 2, which includes designing Proof of Concepts for some of the world’s most advanced communications technologies.
“We are progressing steadily towards achieving our 2030 goals for a more connected world,” said Katsuhiko Kawazoe, Ph.D., President and Chairperson of the board, IOWN Global Forum. “The finalization of our Roadmap and other key work items showcases how far we’ve come and a path for delivering the communications infrastructure of tomorrow. Now more than ever, this is the ideal time for innovators to join with us to build the future.”
The Vision 2030 Roadmap summarizes the group’s plan to realize reliable, high-speed, low-latency data and communications paths over an all-optical data transport layer using a data-centric infrastructure. The IOWN Global Forum’s technical reference documents focus on the network architecture framework and methodologies for moving data in faster and more energy-efficient ways than what is available today.
Now the organization’s focus will shift to developing the technical specifications needed to build reference implementations and Proof of Concepts based on adopting IOWN technologies. The learnings gained from these next work items will inform a clearer view of how the group’s technical concepts, such as Open All-Photonics Network (Open APN), Data-Centric Infrastructure (DCI), and Data Hub, will be implemented in future real-world applications.
In addition, the IOWN Global Forum said it will continue to build new liaison relationships with other organizations to align and complement the various aspects of its respective work and standardization efforts.
https://iowngf.org/white-papers/
What's hot at DesignCon22? Sanjay Gajendra talks about AsteraLabs' Smart Cable Modules for 100G/Lane Ethernet Switch-to-Switch and Switch-to-Server interconnects.
