Softbank picks Ericsson and Nokia for 5G

SoftBank Corp. awarded major 5G contracts to Ericsson and Nokia, marking a significant change in its preferred vendors. Huawei has been a supplier of 4G infrastructure for Softbank.

Ericsson was selected by SoftBank as a primary 5G vendor for the deployment of a multi-band 5G network in Japan following a series of successful joint proof-of-concept activities that began in 2015. Under a new agreement, Ericsson will provide SoftBank with radio access network equipment, including products from the Ericsson Radio System portfolio. This will enable SoftBank to launch 5G services on their newly granted 3.9-4.0 GHz and 29.1-29.5 GHz bands for 5G New Radio (NR).

Nokia also confirmed that it was selected to supply its 5G AirScale solution to Softbank for deployment across Japan. Nokia's 5G AirScale supports multiple frequencies, in both distributed and centralized architectures, giving SoftBank tremendous flexibility in its network evolution. Nokia has also been a long term supplier to Softbank. Nokia also noted that it now has 38 5G commercial contracts, including 20 with named customers.

Read More

Palo Alto Networks to acquire Twistlock and Puresec

Palo Alto Networks announced two acquisitions: Twistlock, a specialist in container security, and PureSec, a leader in serverless security.

Twistlock, which is based in Portland, Oregon, combines vulnerability management, compliance, and runtime defense for cloud-native applications and workloads. The company serves more than 290 customers, with more than a quarter on the Fortune 100 list. Twistlock co-founders, Ben Bernstein and Dima Stopel, will join Palo Alto Networks. Palo Alto Networks will pay approximately $410 million in cash to acquire Twistlock. Investors in Twistlock included ICONIQ Capital, YL Ventures, TenEleven, Rally Ventures, Polaris Partners and Dell Technologies Capital. The company raised about $63 million in total funding over several rounds.

"Our vision for a cloud-native security platform is a natural fit with Palo Alto Networks cloud strategy. We have liked-minded teams, and we’re looking forward to accelerating our ability to serve customers and partners on their cloud-native journey together," stated Ben Bernstein, co-founder and CEO, Twistlock.

PureSec, which was founded in 2016 and is based in Tel Aviv, specializes in serverless security. The company provides end-to-end security for serverless functions that cover vulnerability management, access permissions, and runtime threats. PureSec co-founders, Shaked Zin, Ory Segal, and Avi Shulman, will join Palo Alto Networks. Terms of the PureSec transaction were not disclosed.

Palo Alto Networks said the acquisitions will further advance the company’s ability to offer the most complete and comprehensive cloud security suite in all critical areas of cloud security.

"Today marks another exciting step forward in our commitment to offering our customers the industry's most complete cloud security offering. We believe that our acquisition of these leading companies will significantly enhance our ability to be the cybersecurity partner of choice for our customers, while expanding our capabilities and strengthening our Prisma cloud security strategy," stated Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks.

Read More

Palo Alto Networks debuts "Prisma" Cloud Security Suite

Palo Alto Networks unveiled its Prisma cloud security suite to provide business customers with access, data protection, and application security.

The Prisma suite consists of four key components:

• Prisma Access secures access to the cloud for branch offices and mobile users anywhere in the world with a scalable, cloud-native architecture, blending enterprise-grade security with a globally scalable network. It will soon run on Google Cloud Platform (GCP™), extending the service to more than 100 locations for an even faster and more localized experience. Customers will also have access to a streamlined cloud management user interface (UI) that enables rapid onboarding of branches and users. In addition, Prisma Access will include capabilities specifically designed for service providers to enable the rapid provisioning of secure outbound internet connectivity for their customers.
• Prisma Public Cloud provides continuous visibility, security, and compliance monitoring across public multi-cloud deployments. Powered by machine learning, it correlates data and assesses risk across the cloud environment. Starting today, customers can further reduce their attack surface early in the development cycle through a "shift left" approach to security. With the ability to detect vulnerabilities and fix improper configurations in customers' infrastructure-as-code templates, developers can reduce risk without sacrificing agility. 
• Prisma SaaS is a multi-mode cloud access security broker (CASB) service that safely enables SaaS application adoption. It provides advanced capabilities in risk discovery, adaptive access control, data loss prevention, compliance assurance, data governance, user behavior monitoring, and advanced threat prevention. New integrations will bring improved administration experience across IT-sanctioned and IT-unsanctioned SaaS applications with unified visibility and management.
• VM-Series is the virtualized form factor of the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall that can be deployed in private and public cloud computing environments, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), GCP, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and VMware NSX. The VM-Series is also enhanced through infrastructure-as-code automation for deployment and configuration, which reduces complexity for customers.

http://www.paloaltonetworks.com/prisma

Read More

South Africa picks ADVA for nationwide research and education network

The South African National Research Network (SANReN), an initiative of the South African Department of Science and Technology hosted by the Council for Science and Industrial Research (CSIR), has selected ADVA's FSP 3000 platform in combination with ADVA ALM fiber monitoring technology to create a nationwide research and education (R&E) network.

The network, which features ADVA’s dynamic ROADM technology and QuadFlex line cards, will bring high-bandwidth connectivity to universities and research institutions across South Africa.

“With this deployment, we’re empowering scientists and academics across the country to go further than ever before. Such an enormous increase in broadband capacity will enable them to push the boundaries of discovery, utilize advanced applications and collaborate with peers in innovative new ways,” said Leon Staphorst, director, SANReN.

http://www.advaoptical.com

Read More

Marvell sells Wi-Fi business to NXP for $1.76 billion

NXP will acquire Marvell’s Wi-Fi Connectivity business for $1.76 billion in cash.

The deal includes Marvell’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology portfolios and related assets. The business employs approximately 550 people worldwide and generated roughly $300 million in revenue in Marvell’s fiscal 2019.

NXP said the acquisition enables it to offer a full range of wireless connectivity solutions including WiFi 4, 5, 6 and Bluetooth/ BLE combo along with its flagship edge computing platforms. including I.MX, Layerscape, Kinetis, LPC and the newly introduced RT Crossover Processors.

“We are excited to be able to combine Marvell’s world-class connectivity with NXP’s industry leading embedded processing, we can offer our customer base the broadest portfolio of Edge solutions which includes tailored security and a full suite of wireless connectivity spanning WiFi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee, Thread and NFC,” said Richard Clemmer, chief executive officer of NXP.

“NXP has built a broad consumer footprint and an optimized platform for IoT applications, making it an ideal home for our innovative Wi-Fi technology and team,” said Matt Murphy, president and CEO of Marvell. “At the same time, this transaction yields a premium valuation and substantially higher economic return for Marvell shareholders while accelerating our transformation into a leading infrastructure supplier spanning 5G, data center, enterprise and automotive Ethernet applications.”

“We are excited to be able to combine Marvell’s world-class connectivity with NXP’s industry leading embedded processing, we can offer our customer base the broadest portfolio of Edge solutions which includes tailored security and a full suite of wireless connectivity spanning WiFi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee, Thread and NFC,” said Richard Clemmer, chief executive officer of NXP. “I am delighted this world-class team with the right set of complementary connectivity technologies is joining NXP, enabling us to deliver on our commitment to provide Secure Connections for the Smarter World.”

Read More

New PCI Express 5.0 spec handles 32 gigatransfers per sec

A newly released PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0 specification reaches 32 GT/s transfer rates, while maintaining low power and backwards compatibility with previous technology generations.

PCIe 5.0 Specification Highlights

• Delivers 32 GT/s raw bit rate and up to 128 GB/s via x16 configuration
• Leverages and adds to the PCIe 4.0 specification and its support for higher speeds via extended tags and credits
• Implements electrical changes to improve signal integrity and mechanical performance of connectors
• Includes new backwards compatible CEM connector targeted for add-in cards
• Maintains backwards compatibility with PCIe 4.0, 3.x, 2.x and 1.x
• The new specification increases performance in the high-performance markets including artificial intelligence, machine learning, gaming, visual computing, storage and networking.
• 
  

“New data-intensive applications are driving demand for unprecedented levels of performance,” said Al Yanes, PCI-SIG Chairman and President. “Completing the PCIe 5.0 specification in 18 months is a major achievement, and it is due to the commitment of our members who worked diligently to evolve PCIe technology to meet the performance needs of the industry. The PCIe architecture will continue to stand as the defacto standard for high performance I/O for the foreseeable future.”

“For 27 years, the PCI-SIG has continually delivered new versions of I/O standards that enable designers to accommodate the never-ending increases in bandwidth required for next generation systems, while preserving investments in prior generation interfaces and software,” noted Nathan Brookwood, research fellow at Insight 64. “Over that period, peak bandwidth has increased from 133 MB/second (for the first 32-bit parallel version) to 32 GB/second (for the V4.0 by16 serial version), a 240X improvement. Wow! The new PCIe 5.0 standard doubles that again to 64 GB/second. Wow! We have come to take this increased performance for granted, but in reality, it takes a coordinated effort across many members of the PCI-SIG to execute these transitions so seamlessly.”

Read More

Palo Alto Networks hits quarterly revenue of $726.6

Palo Alto Networks reported revenue of $726.6 million for its fiscal third quarter 2019, ended April 30, 2019, up 28 percent year over year. GAAP net loss for the fiscal third quarter 2019 was $20.2 million, or $0.21 per diluted share, compared with GAAP net loss of $40.4 million, or $0.44 per diluted share, for the fiscal third quarter 2018.

Non-GAAP net income for the fiscal third quarter 2019 was $130.1 million, or $1.31 per diluted share, compared with non-GAAP net income of $100.0 million, or $1.04 per diluted share, for the fiscal third quarter 2018.

"Our team continues to execute on our plan and deliver robust results. The excitement around our new products is incredible and will only grow once customers have a chance to experience it for themselves," said Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks. "Both Twistlock and PureSec will be important additions to helping protect our customers' journey to the cloud. Combining their capabilities with Prisma, our leading cloud security suite, is a huge win for all of our customers."

Read More

AWS intros an ML services for text/data extraction

AWS introduced a fully managed service that uses machine learning to automatically extract text and data, including from tables and forms, in virtually any document without the need for manual review, custom code, or machine learning experience.

Amazon Textract identifies the contents of fields in forms, information stored in tables, and the context in which the information is presented, such as a name or social security number from a tax form or the product SKU or quantity in a warehouse from an inventory report.

The power of Amazon Textract is that it accurately extracts text and structured data from virtually any document with no machine learning experience required. Subsequently, developers can analyze and query the extracted text and data using our database and analytics services like Amazon Elasticsearch Service, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Athena and integrate with other machine learning services like Amazon Comprehend, Amazon Comprehend Medical, Amazon Translate, and Amazon SageMaker to help customers derive deeper meaning from the extracted text and data,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President, Amazon Machine Learning. “

Read More

FCC auctions 24 GHz and 28 GHz spectrum for $2.7 billion

The FCC announced the close of bidding in Auction 102 for millimeter wave spectrum in the 24 GHz band suitable for 5G.

Auction 101 for 28 GHz band licenses was completed in January.

The FCC said the auction raised more than $2.7 billion in gross bids.  Combined, 55 applicants were qualified to bid, and the winning bidders won 5,869 licenses.

The FCC will release a public notice in a few days providing detailed auction results and notifying Auction 102 winning bidders of deadlines for payments and the filing of long-form applications, as well as other post-auction procedures needed for the prompt issuance of licenses. 

“American leadership in 5G means deploying more airwaves for the next generation of wireless connectivity,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.  “The successful conclusion of our nation’s first two high-band flexible, mobile-use spectrum auctions is a critical step.  By making more spectrum available, we’ll ensure that American consumers reap the substantial benefits that 5G innovation will bring and we’ll extend U.S. leadership in 5G.”

• On December 10, the FCC will begin Auction 103, which includes the upper 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 47 GHz bands.  This will be the largest spectrum auction in U.S. history, with 3400 megahertz up for bid.

Read More

MEF releases SD-WAN service standard

MEF released a draft standard that defines an SD-WAN service and its various attributes. MEF is now moving the draft SD-WAN Service Attributes and Services standard (MEF 70) through the last phase of membership and Board approval.

MEF said its goal is to help ecosystem stakeholders to use the same terminology when buying, selling, assessing, deploying, and delivering SD-WAN services. The SD-WAN service definition is a foundational step for accelerating sales, market adoption, and certification of MEF 3.0 SD-WAN services orchestrated across a global ecosystem of service provider networks.

“MEF’s team of SD-WAN experts has worked overtime to develop a robust and timely industry standard following multiple rounds of in-depth peer review,” said Pascal Menezes, CTO, MEF. “We will officially publish MEF’s SD-WAN service standard by mid-July 2019, but we are making the final draft publicly available now because broad industry alignment on common terminology will be healthy for market growth.” 

MEF’s SD-WAN service definition standard describes requirements for an application-aware, over-the-top WAN connectivity service that uses policies to determine how application flows are directed over multiple underlay networks irrespective of the underlay technologies or service providers who deliver them.

The new standard provides for critical terms such as:

• SD-WAN UNI - s definition for Carrier Ethernet is extended to cover things for SD-WAN using common characteristics
• SD-WAN Edge - a functional element in the network such as CPE or a virtual appliance such as a VNF.
• UCS (underlay connecticty service) - describes the underlay WAN service, which Could be DSL, cable, MPLS or 4G/5G. 
• TVC (tunnel virtual connection) - this uses the same methodology as an Ethernet virtual connection

MEF already has begun work on the next phase of SD-WAN standardization (MEF 70.1), which covers more complex service attributes related to application business importance and prioritization, underlay network characteristics, and connectivity to private/public cloud services consistent with market priorities for SD-WAN services. MEF also is progressing standards work focused on LSO APIs, application security, and intent-based networking for SD-WAN services.

In addition, MEF said it remains on track to launch its pilot MEF 3.0 SD-WAN Service Certification program in 2019. This certification will test a set of service attributes and their behaviors defined in the SD-WAN standard and described in detail in the upcoming MEF 3.0 SD-WAN Service Certification Blueprint.

Read More

Nikkei Asian Review: Undersea cables -- Huawei's ace in the hole

Huawei Marine is estimated to be building about 30 subsea cables at the moment, most under 1,000km in length, and is making rapid strides to catch up to market leaders Subcom, Alcatel Submarine Networks and NEC, according to this report by Nikkei Asian Review.

The article discusses Huawei's progress in the subsea sector in light of the U.S. government's blacklisting of Huawei.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Comment/Undersea-cables-Huawei-s-ace-in-the-hole

Read More

Hungary's new autonomous vehicle test track offers 5G

A newly-opened test track in Hungary for autonomous vehicles features Ericsson 5G technology installed on an existing radio tower owned by Magyar Telekom.

The ZalaZone track provides car manufacturers in Europe with a 2-kilometer handling course that includes a multi-surface braking platform and multiple test track modules for everything from highway roads to bad rural roads and a water basin.

The 5G infrastructure provides high-capacity and low-latency connectivity for test vehicles.

At the official opening of ZalaZone, attended by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the country’s Minister for Innovation and Technology László Palkovics, attendees were shown demos of self-driving cars using the 5G mobile network for the first time in Hungary.

Read More

Gartner's Q1 worldwide smartphone sales snapshot

Gartner published a snapshot of Q1 2019 smartphone, providing a good look at Huawei's rising market position prior to the May 15 listing of the company on its Entity list.

Overall, Gartner finds that global sales of smartphones to end users declined 2.7% in the first quarter of 2019, totaling 373 million units, as slowing innovation in flagship smartphones and rising prices continued to extend replacement cycles. Sales in the U.S. and China declined by 15.8% and 3.2%, respectively, in the first quarter of 2019.

The report shows continued growth for Huawei all regions, especially Europe and Greater China, where its smartphone sales grew by 69% and 33%, respectively.

“Demand for premium smartphones remained lower than for basic smartphones*, which affected brands such as Samsung and Apple that have significant stakes in high-end smartphones,” said Anshul Gupta, senior research director at Gartner. “In addition, demand for utility smartphones* declined as the rate of upgrading from feature phones to smartphones has slowed, given that 4G feature phones give users great advantages at a lower cost.”

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-05-28-gartner-says-global-smartphone-sales-declined-2-7--in

Read More

FireEye acquires Verodin for $250 million

FireEye has acquired Verodin, which provides cyber security control verification, for approximately $250 million in cash and stock, net of acquired net cash and excluding assumed unvested options, based on the closing price of FireEye’s common stock on May 24, 2019.

The Verodin Security Instrumentation Platform can help identify gaps in security effectiveness due to equipment misconfiguration, changes in the IT environment, evolving attacker tactics, and more.

Equipped with FireEye frontline intelligence, the Verodin platform will measure and test security environments against both known and newly discovered threats, empowering organizations to identify risks in their security controls before a breach occurs, and rapidly adapt their defenses to the evolving threat landscape.

FireEye said the acquisition will be accretive to revenue, cash flow from operations and non-GAAP operating income in 2020, and add approximately $20 million to billings in 2019 and more than $70 million to billings in 2020.

“Security effort does not equal security effectiveness. That is why security-conscious customers red-team their networks – they need the unvarnished truth of how effective their security programs are. Verodin gives us the ability to automate security effectiveness testing using the sophisticated attacks we spend hundreds of thousands of hours responding to, and provides a systematic, quantifiable, and continuous approach to security program validation,” said Kevin Mandia, chief executive officer at FireEye. “We believe there is no better way to train people and instrument better security than by continually attacking the environment and adapting security controls to the real threats. Finally, organizations will have a reliable and consistent way to quantify cyber risk in a manner understandable to frontline technicians and in the Board room.”

Verodin is based in McLean , Virginia.

In June 2016, Verodin closed a new $10 million Series A funding round with backin g from Blackstone, Rally Ventures, Crosslink Capital and Cisco Investments.

Read More

CyrusOne and ODATA’s open data center in Bogotá

CyrusOne has partnered with ODATA to construct and launch the company’s first data center in Bogotá, Colombia.

ODATA’s new data center, DC BG01, is the second ODATA data center, the first outside Brazil after DC SP01 in São Paulo, which has been operational since May 2017. The BG01 Data Center is a 7.8MW facility, the largest carrier-neutral data center in Bogotá, Colombia. It is a high density, certified Tier III Design data center, with 6,400 m² total area. Customers moved on-site in April 2019. With CyrusOne global expertise in data center construction and operation, the new facility was fully constructed in just 6 months and deploys industry-leading standards for physical security.

In October 2018, CyrusOne invested $12 million in exchange for a 10% equity interest in ODATA. In connection with the investment, CyrusOne and ODATA entered a commercial agreement covering leasing activity with CyrusOne customers in the ODATA portfolio. In addition, Kevin Timmons, CyrusOne’s chief technology officer, joined the ODATA board of directors.

“DC BG01 was built in record time through a powerful combination of ODATA´s local expertise with CyrusOne’s global supply chain that enables customers in Colombia the same level of services we offer to our customers globally, “ said Timmons. “We are excited about ODATA´s expansion in Colombia and look forward to working alongside our global and local customers at the new flagship data center.”

“ODATA has grown rapidly in Brazil with the construction of their second data center in São Paulo, and now for the first time in Colombia. Combining tour local expertise with CyrusOne’s global platform enables our customers to have world-class data center capacity in the region,” said Ricardo Alario, chief executive officer of ODATA. “With the ongoing development of the largest data center campus in Brazil, and now with a strong presence in Colombia, ODATA is well positioned to be a truly dominant player on the continent.”

CyrusOne operates more than 45 data center facilities across the United States, Europe and Asia.

Read More

Napatech brings new funding for expanding SmartNICs business

Napatech raised $8.7 million in a private placement of financing to support its expanding business in reconfigurable computing platforms. The new funding was underwritten by a group of well-known European investors by offering new shares in Napatech.

Napatech said it will use the net proceeds to accelerate and commercialize new, innovative solutions in cybersecurity and virtualization acceleration that will improve growth within its FPGA-based hardware and software product lines. In addition, the company will focus on new and additional engineering development to accelerate delivery of these new products to the market in 2019 and 2020.  This includes SmartNICs, which are being used to accelerate virtual switching applications, such as Open Virtual Switch. In cybersecurity, SmartNICs deliver 100% packet capture for real-time network insight and action.

Napatech’s FPGA SmartNIC software is available for use with the leading FPGA solutions from Xilinx, including the Virtex and Ultrascale+ lines, and the Intel Programmable Acceleration Card (PAC) featuring the Intel Arria 10 GX FPGA.

Napatech’s FPGA-based intelligent network interface cards (NICs) provide an easy way for enterprises and service providers to accelerate applications, improve cybersecurity and increase server utilization as cloud, hybrid and software-defined networks become more mission-critical.

Ray Smets, CEO, Napatech said: “Major changes in communications created by hyperscale computing, 5G mobile and the Internet of Things are transforming the technology needs of businesses. As the volume of users, devices and data continues to increase, Fortune 5000 enterprises, service providers and government operators are rethinking the way they design, deploy, operate and secure their networks and services.  We believe we are well-positioned to move toward our goals of bringing hyper-scale computing benefits to IT organizations of every size and enhancing the long-term growth of the company and value for shareholders.”

http://www.napatech.com

Read More

NVIDIA unveils EGX Edge Computing Platform

NVIDIA introduced its EGX edge computing platform for performing low-latency AI on continuous streaming data between 5G base stations or other edge locations.

NVIDIA said EGX was created to perform instantaneous, high-throughput AI where data is created – with guaranteed response times, while reducing the amount of data that must be sent to the cloud.

“Enterprises demand more powerful computing at the edge to process their oceans of raw data — streaming in from countless interactions with customers and facilities — to make rapid, AI-enhanced decisions that can drive their business,” said Bob Pette, vice president and general manager of Enterprise and Edge Computing at NVIDIA. “A scalable platform like NVIDIA EGX allows them to easily deploy systems to meet their needs on premises, in the cloud or both.”

EGX begins with the tiny NVIDIA Jetson Nano, which delivers one-half trillion operations per second (TOPS) of processing in only a few watts, and scales all the way to a full rack of NVIDIA T4 servers, delivering more than 10,000 TOPS.

EGX servers are available from global enterprise computing providers ATOS, Cisco, Dell EMC, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Inspur and Lenovo. They are also available from major server and IoT system makers Abaco, Acer, ADLINK, Advantech, ASRock Rack, ASUS, AverMedia, Cloudian, Connect Tech, Curtiss-Wright, GIGABYTE, Leetop, MiiVii, Musashi Seimitsu, QCT, Sugon, Supermicro, Tyan, WiBase and Wiwynn.

NVIDIA EGX servers are tuned for NVIDIA Edge Stack and NGC-Ready validated for CUDA-accelerated containers.

NVIDIA has partnered with Red Hat to integrate and optimize NVIDIA Edge Stack with OpenShift. NVIDIA Edge Stack is optimized software that includes NVIDIA drivers, a CUDA Kubernetes plugin, a CUDA container runtime, CUDA-X libraries and containerized AI frameworks and applications, including TensorRT, TensorRT Inference Server and DeepStream.

NVIDIA is also promoting “On-Prem AI Cloud-in-a-Box”, which combines the full range of NVIDIA AI computing technologies with Red Hat OpenShift and NVIDIA Edge Stack together with Mellanox and Cisco security, networking and storage technologies.

“Mellanox Smart NICs and switches provide the ideal I/O connectivity for data access that scale from the edge to hyperscale data centers,” said Michael Kagan, chief technology officer at Mellanox Technologies. “The combination of high-performance, low-latency and accelerated networking provides a new infrastructure tier of computing that is critical to efficiently access and supply the data needed to fuel the next generation of advanced AI solutions on edge platforms such as NVIDIA EGX.”

“Cisco is excited to collaborate with NVIDIA to provide edge-to-core full stack solutions for our customers, leveraging Cisco’s EGX-enabled platforms with Cisco compute, fabric, storage, and management software and our leading Ethernet and IP-based networking technologies,” said Kaustubh Das, vice president of Cisco Computing Systems.

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-launches-edge-computing-platform-to-bring-real-time-ai-to-global-industries

Read More

Arm unveils next gen Cortex CPU for 5G

Arm unveiled its latest Cortex-A77 CPU, promising a 20% performance improvement over current generation Cortex-A76 devices.

The new Cortex-A77, which targets smartphones, laptops, and other mobile devices, is positioned as Arm's Cortex-A77 5G-ready processor. It will be implemented in 7nm. The company notes that the past two generations of Cortex-A7x series processors (Cortex-A76 and Cortex-A77) have increased overall ML performance by 35x.

Arm is also introducing its Mali-G77 GPU, which leverages its new Valhall architecture to deliver a nearly 40% performance improvement over the previous Mali-G76 devices. Mali-G77 also boasts key microarchitecture enhancements including engine, texture pipes, and load store caches, which achieve 30% better energy efficiency and 30% more performance density. 

In addition, Cadence Design Systems announced that its full-flow digital and signoff tools support the new Arm Cortex-A77 CPU. Cadence delivered a complete 7nm Rapid Adoption Kit (RAK) that utilizes Arm 7nm POP™ IP libraries.

https://www.arm.com/company/news/2019/05/delivering-next-generation-ai-experiences-for-the-5g-world

Read More

Vodafone to host mobile gaming over 5G

Vodafone will host a mobile gaming tournament with the final round to be played live over its 5G network.

The Vodafone 5G ESL Mobile Open will commence on 31 May and run until 29 September 2019, and is open to players from 17 countries where Vodafone is present.  The competition features two popular online mobile games: arcade racer Asphalt 9: Legends; and multiplayer battle royale title, PUBG MOBILE.

Vodafone said tThe Grand Finals for both games will be contested live only on Vodafone’s 5G network at Milan Games Week on 28-29 September, providing a major showcase of Vodafone’s high-speed, real-time 5G network for gaming.

There is a total prize fund of €165,000 for all placing Vodafone 5G ESL Mobile One live finalists, including a top prize of €14,000 for the winning Asphalt 9: Legends player and a top prize of €40,000 in total for the victorious PUBG MOBILE team.

https://pro.eslgaming.com/mobileopen/home

Read More

Wiwynn offers edge server based on OCP OpenEDGE

Taiwan-based Wiwynn introduced an Edge Platform based on the Nokia-led OCP OpenEDGE specification.

Wiwynn EP100 is a 3U edge system that supports up to five 1U half-width servers and can flexibly configure with 2U half-width and 1U full-width server sleds. Communication service providers can also scale computing power by adding more EP100 systems for applications ranging from base stations to regional central offices.

“We are thrilled to embrace edge cloud opportunities in the 5G era by applying Open Compute Project (OCP) hardware and initiating an open firmware development kit,” said Dr. Sunlai Chang, Senior Vice President and CTO of Wiwynn. “Wiwynn EP100 enables communication service providers to address diverse low-latency data processing demands of Cloud RAN and modern central offices with a flexible and high-efficiency architecture at a balanced cost.”

“Nokia AirFrame open edge launched April 2018 welcomes Wiwynn’s adoption of the Nokia led OCP OpenEDGE specification, with this announcement of a new equipment provider for enclosure and sled designs. Wiwynn’s contribution to OCP OpenEDGE is an important step forward in the creation of a healthy ecosystem and providing Far Edge Data Center Equipment consumers with multi-source procurement options to avoid vendor lock-in,” said Hannu Nikurautio, Head of Cloud RAN Product Management of Nokia.

Read More