The fund size is 20 billion yen and the investors include NTT, NTT Finance and NTT DOCOMO Ventures. The funding period shall be 12 years. NTT DOCOMO is designated as fund manager.
Thursday, June 1, 2023
NTT Investment Partners Fund IV is established
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
Lightmatter lands $154 million for photonic interconnects / processors
Lightmatter, a start-up based in Boston, raised a $154 million Series C investment round for its photonic interconnects and processors.
Lightmatter’s photonics-enabled products encompass a full stack of hardware and software for AI and supercomputing applications.
“Rapid progress in artificial intelligence is forcing computing infrastructure to improve at an unprecedented rate. The energy costs of this growth are significant, even on a planetary scale,” said Lightmatter co-founder and CEO, Nick Harris. “Generative AI and supercomputing will be transformed by photonic technologies in the coming years, and our investors, partners, and customers are aligned with Lightmatter’s mission of enabling the future of computing infrastructure with photonics.”
The new funding came from SIP Global, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Viking Global Investors, GV (Google Ventures), HPE Pathfinder and existing investors.
Lightmatter has now raised a total of over $270 million to date.
- In 2022, the company announced significant growth with the recruitment of top talent to its leadership team, including Richard Ho, who led Google’s Tensor Processing Unit program, and Ritesh Jain, who led datacenter chip packaging at Intel, as VPs of Hardware Engineering. Lightmatter also announced Jessie Zhang, who led corporate financial planning at Apple, as VP of Finance, and Steve Klinger, former VP at Innovium, as VP of Product.
CoreWeave raises $421 million for GPU cloud service
CoreWeave, a specialized cloud provider built for large-scale GPU-accelerated workloads, announced an additional $200 million in funding to expand its cloud GPU services.
The new funding , which was provided by Magnetar Capital (“Magnetar”), a leading alternative asset manager, comes just one month after the company announced $221 million in Series B funding, also led by Magnetar, bringing the total for the round to $421 million.
CoreWeave said its serverless orchestration layer makes it an attractive option for AI startups rushing to get a product to market, as teams can spin up workloads in as little as five seconds with increased portability, less overhead and less management complexity.
“In my 25-year career, I’ve never been a part of a company that’s growing like this,” said CoreWeave CEO and co-founder Michael Intrator. “It’s an incredible moment in time. From a demand standpoint, revenue and client scale, the rise has been exponential, and Magnetar has been an amazing partner from the beginning.”
CoreWeave was founded in 2017 and is based in Roseland, New Jersey.
Liquid Dataport connects Mombasa to Muanda via terrestrial fiber
Liquid Dataport launched its newest fibre route connecting Mombasa, Kenya, to Muanda on the west coast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo).
The new 3,800 km fiber route reduces data transmission latency by 20 milliseconds.
The route connects Kenya and DRC, passing through Uganda and Rwanda and bringing more reliable and affordable broadband connectivity to over 40 million people living and working in all the major cities along the route. The latest route complements Liquid’s earlier achievement, already a first, in 2019, linking Dar Es Salaam to Muanda on the West Coast of DR Congo via Zambia.
Hardy Pemhiwa, President & Group Chief Executive Officer of Liquid Intelligent Technologies, said, “The real challenge today is closing the access-usage gap in Africa so that more Africans can use the internet technologies available to them, now and in the future. This East-West route which compliments our existing Pan Africa fibre network, is significant because it is helping to solve that problem – it not only brings global traffic to the continent but also improves the cost economics of Africa’s broadband Internet access.”
“We have a significant number of wholesale, enterprise and hyperscale customers along this route, and we fully support them in operating their global networks. The availability of our latest and shortest East to West route brings many proven economic and social benefits – from providing access to online educational resources to creating more jobs and driving the adoption of new technologies,” said David Eurin, Chief Executive Officer of Liquid Dataport.
FCC updates National Broadband Map
The FCC released an updated version of its location-based national broadband map.
The FCC finds that more than 8.3 million U.S. homes and businesses lack access to high-speed broadband.
On net, the improvements to the map since November helped to identify nearly 330,000 more unserved locations.
The FCC mapping team has reviewed challenges to availability data for more than 4 million locations. Over 75% of those challenges have already been resolved and the majority have led to updates in the data on the map showing where broadband is available. At the same time, the new map also reflects a net increase of more than one million new serviceable locations, as compared to the November 2022 pre-production draft.
https://www.fcc.gov/national-broadband-map-it-keeps-getting-better
MACOM opens European Semiconductor Center in France
MACOM is establishing a European Semiconductor Center to offer its customers higher frequency Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) and Gallium Nitride (GaN) monolithic microwave integrated circuits.
The OMMIC facility, which is located near Paris in Limeil-Brévannes, France, will become the foundation for MACOM’s newly established European Semiconductor Center.
“We are excited to open MACOM’s European Semiconductor Center,” stated Stephen G. Daly, President and Chief Executive Officer, MACOM.
5G Open Innovation Lab aims for faster deployment of private mobile
The 5G Open Innovation Lab (5G OI Lab) is collaborating with F5, GXC and Spirent Communications to showcase an enterprise Private Mobile Network (PMN) capable of delivering service in hard-to-reach locations with greater security, control, and resilience.
As 5G infrastructure becomes more mainstream, enterprises and organizations are subsequently deploying more private networks and telco clouds into strategic locations to leverage newly available connectivity, lower latency, and agility. The consistent throughput and capacity on these PMNs bring the promise of 5G to revenue-driven use cases such as IoT and network slicing, while being mindful that security must expand accordingly beyond legacy policies and be thoroughly tested. Especially in edge use cases, one of the requirements most in demand is the need for local breakout to route traffic to as part of a Mobile Edge Compute (MEC) infrastructure or hosted within a data center.
F5, a hybrid and multi-cloud application services and security company, deployed its carrier-grade BIG-IP Virtual Editions. These security functions were consolidated with an N6/SGi-LAN solution adding another layer of speed and security at the network level.
GXC, a NaaS communications early-stage tech company which is part of the 5G OI Lab ecosystem, contributed their unique distributed mesh configuration for easier and faster deployment of a private network while providing full coverage and capacity of a cellular network.
This collaboration was validated using Spirent’s Landslide test and emulation platform, which provided device and RAN emulation to create a diversity of traffic flows across multiple data networks through the 5G core which is monitored and managed by F5 behind the UPF.
Finally, the entire solution was pressure-tested through technology made available through the 5G OI Lab and its enterprise and operator partners deployed with GXC’s ONYX Portal.
The 5G Open Innovation Lab notes that in the four years since its founding, its membership roster has grown to include Accenture, Amdocs, Avanade, Dell Technologies, Deloitte, Ericsson, F5, GAF (Standard Industries), Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Palo Alto Networks, SK Telecom, Spirent, T-Mobile and VMware as well as 101 multi-stage enterprise startups who have collectively raised $1.641B of venture capital.
Tuesday, May 30, 2023
Amazon Security Lake consolidates data from cloud, on-prem and SaaS
Amazon Web Services launched a service that automatically centralizes an organization’s security data from across their AWS environments, leading SaaS providers, on-premises environments, and cloud sources into a purpose-built data lake.
The service builds the security data lake using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and AWS Lake Formation to automatically set up security data lake infrastructure in a customer’s AWS account, providing full control and ownership over security data.
The data lake collects security data from sources like Amazon VPC Flow Logs and AWS CloudTrail, third-party sources like Splunk, CrowdStrike, Datadog, and Cribl, and their own sources of data.
Keysight and Nokia test 6G active sub-THz components
Keysight Technologies and Nokia Bell Labs will demonstrate component and radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) characterization for 6G subterahertz (sub-THz) radio frequency (RF) applications in the D- and E-bands at the International Microwave Symposium 2023 (IMS 2023) in June.
The companies have been collaborating to develop characterization techniques to test active sub-THz components, such as amplifiers, mixers, and frequency converters, to ensure they do not introduce additional signal distortion into communications systems.
The demonstration characterizes a Nokia power amplifier (PA) developed for use in 6G D-band wireless communications systems and designed to operate with a low error vector magnitude (EVM). Using the Keysight N5290A PNA Millimeter Wave System, Nokia Bell Labs can accurately detect the PA’s low EVM, which is a measure of the signal distortion introduced into the communications system by the component. With these measurements, Nokia Bell Labs can better understand the PA’s performance to optimize its 6G transmission system design.
Keysight and Nokia Bell Labs are also partnering to showcase an E-band test solution at IMS 2023. The demonstration features the Keysight N9042B UXA Signal Analyzer used in combination with the V3050A Signal Analyzer Frequency Extender to measure a Nokia transceiver RFIC designed for use in an E-band system for backhaul applications.
Shahriar Shahramian, Head of RFIC & Packaging Lab, Nokia Bell Labs, said: “At Nokia Bell Labs we continue to push the carrier frequency and complexity of our RFIC, packaging, and module integration. With these advancements we move the frontier of what is possible from 6G wireless and optical communication systems. Consequently, the test and measurement industry plays a vital role to enable the complex characterization demanded from our devices and to reduce our time to market.”
NVIDIA’s data center revenue rises 14% yoy to $4.28B
NVIDIA reported quarterly revenue of $7.19B, down 13% compared to a year ago but well above its outlook. More significantly, NVIDIA again affirmed that Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) and enterprises are racing to deploy its flagship NVIDIA Hopper- and Ampere-architecture GPUs to meet surge in interest in generative AI.
GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.82, up 28% from a year ago and up 44% from the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.09, down 20% from a year ago and up 24% from the previous quarter.
“The computer industry is going through two simultaneous transitions — accelerated computing and generative AI,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “A trillion dollars of installed global data center infrastructure will transition from general purpose to accelerated computing as companies race to apply generative AI into every product, service and business process. Our entire data center family of products — H100, Grace CPU, Grace Hopper Superchip, NVLink, Quantum 400 InfiniBand and BlueField-3 DPU — is in production. We are significantly increasing our supply to meet surging demand for them.”
Some highlights
- Data center first-quarter revenue was a record $4.28 billion, up 14% from a year ago and up 18% from the previous quarter.
- Google Cloud is the first cloud provider offering the new NVIDIA L4 Tensor Core GPU to accelerate generative AI applications.
- Gaming first-quarter revenue was $2.24 billion, down 38% from a year ago and up 22% from the previous quarter.
- Professional Visualization first-quarter revenue was $295 million, down 53% from a year ago and up 31% from the previous quarter.
- Automotive first-quarter revenue was a record $296 million, up 114% from a year ago and up 1% from the previous quarter.
HPE sees growth in GreenLake edge-to-cloud
Hewlett Packard Enterprise reported Q2 revenue of $7.0 billion, up 4% from the prior-year period and 9% in constant currency. GAAP margin amounted to 36.0%, an all-time record for the company.
“Building on a great start to the fiscal year, HPE grew revenue, increased the contribution of recurring revenue through the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform, and delivered exceptional profitability to generate a strong second quarter performance,” said Antonio Neri, president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “Our shift to a higher-margin portfolio mix led by the Intelligent Edge segment, and the strong demand for our AI offering, further strengthen the investment opportunity for our shareholders.”
Some highlights:
* Intelligent Edge revenue was $1.3 billion, up 50% from the prior-year period in actual dollars and 56% in constant currency, with 26.9% operating profit margin, compared to 12.6% in the prior-year period.
* High Performance Computing & Artificial Intelligence revenue was $840 million, up 18% from the prior-year period in actual dollars and 22% in constant currency.
* Compute revenue was $2.8 billion, down 8% from the prior-year period in actual dollars and 3% in constant currency.
* Storage revenue was $1.0 billion, down 3% from the prior-year period in actual dollars and up 2% in constant currency. HPE Alletra revenue grew triple digits from the prior-year period.
* Financial Services revenue was $858 million, up 4% from the prior-year period in actual dollars and up 7% in constant currency.
https://investors.hpe.com/news-and-events#investor-events
IP Infusion cites surging demand for white box open networking
IP Infusion reported record-breaking growth in 1Q 2023 with sales at the highest ever level for a single quarter.
The company, which is a wholly owned and independently operated subsidiary of ACCESS CO, said first quarter OcNOS sales orders are more than three times Year over Year compared to Q1 2022, led by robust demand for OcNOS’s disaggregated Data Center, Aggregation Router and Cell Site Router products.
In addition, 23 new customers in the first quarter chose OcNOS, the industry’s first and preferred full-featured modular extensible network OS designed for white box open networking solutions.
“IP Infusion is proud to report yet another unequaled quarter of sales growth fueled by a powerful demand for our industry-acclaimed OcNOS products,” said Atsushi Ogata, President and CEO of IP Infusion. “This solid performance reflects our commitment to exceed expectations for delivering the most advanced disaggregated solutions to our expanding customer base and partners across the globe.”
Vector Capital to acquire Riverbed
Vector Capital, a leading private equity firm, agreed to acquire Riverbed Technology. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Riverbed, which was founded in 2002 and is based in San Francisco, specializes in network acceleration and telemetry.
Riverbed’s existing lenders will continue to support the Company by providing it with a new credit facility at closing.
Stephen Goodman, a Principal at Vector Capital, added: “With a significantly enhanced balance sheet and greater financial flexibility, Riverbed will have the ability to accelerate innovative offerings like Aternity and Alluvio IQ, creating value for its blue-chip customer base.”
Semtech appoints new CEO
Previously, Mr. Pickle has served as president and chief executive officer and member of the board of directors of Lantronix. Before that, he served as president and chief operating officer of Microsemi Corporation, a provider of semiconductor and system solutions, from November 2013 until Microsemi was acquired by Microchip Technology Inc. in May 2018 for $10.3 billion.
Monday, May 29, 2023
NVIDIA positions Spectrum-X Networking for generative AI
NVIDIA introduced its Spectrum-X Networking Platform for Ethernet-based AI clouds.
The Spectrum-X solution consists of the company's existing 51 Tbps NVIDIA Spectrum-4 Ethernet switch and the NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPU, along with acceleration software and software development kits (SDKs).
Advanced RoCE extensions work across the Spectrum-4 switches, BlueField-3 DPUs and NVIDIA LinkX optics to create an end-to-end 400GbE network that is optimized for AI clouds. The Spectrum-4 Ethernet switch supports smart-leaf, spine, and super-spine designs. It offers 64 ports of 800GbE in a dense 2U form factor, and up to 256 200Gbs ports can be connected by a single switch, or 16,000 ports in a two-tier leaf-spine topology.
The software stack includes Cumulus Linux, pure SONiC and NetQ — which together enable the networking platform’s extreme performance. The BlueField DPUs are powered by NVIDIA DOCA™ software framework.
The Spectrum-X solution set also includes a selection of direct attach copper cables (DACs), active copper cables (ACCs), active optical cables (AOCs), and optics needed to connect OSFP and QSFP-based fabrics.
“Transformative technologies such as generative AI are forcing every enterprise to push the boundaries of data center performance in pursuit of competitive advantage,” said Gilad Shainer, senior vice president of networking at NVIDIA. “NVIDIA Spectrum-X is a new class of Ethernet networking that removes barriers for next-generation AI workloads that have the potential to transform entire industries.”
MediaTek’s auto chip integrates NVIDIA GPU chip via coherent interconnect
MediaTek will develop automotive SoCs and integrate the NVIDIA GPU chiplet, featuring NVIDIA AI and graphics intellectual property, into the design architecture. The chiplets are connected by an ultra-fast and coherent chiplet interconnect technology.
In addition, MediaTek will run the NVIDIA DRIVE OS, DRIVE IX, CUDA and TensorRT software technologies on these new automotive SoCs to enable connected infotainment and in-cabin convenience and safety functions.
“AI and accelerated computing are fueling the transformation of the entire auto industry,” said JensenHuang, NVIDIA’s founder and CEO. “The combination of MediaTek’s industry-leading system-on-chip plus NVIDIA’s GPU and AI software technologies will enable new user experiences, enhanced safety and new connected services for all vehicle segments, from luxury to entry-level.”
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2023/05/28/mediatek-intelligent-cabin-solutions/
Arm intros its next CPU + GPU platform for mobile computing
Arm introduced its Total Compute Solutions 2023 (TCS23) platform for mobile computing.
A vital part of the high-performance cluster for smartphones is the new Arm Cortex-X4, which is the fastest CPU that Arm has ever built, bringing 15 percent more performance compared to the Cortex-X3. Meanwhile, the new power efficient microarchitecture consumes 40 percent less power than Cortex-X3 on the same process.
Cadence and Arm target faster path to tapeout
Cadence Design Systems, in collaboration with Arm , is targeting a faster path to tapeout through use of Cadence digital and verification tools and the new Arm Total Compute Solutions 2023 (TCS23), which includes the Arm Cortex-X4, Arm Cortex-A720 and Cortex-A520 CPUs and Immortalis-G720, Mali-G720 and Mali-G620 GPUs.
Through this latest collaboration, Cadence delivered comprehensive RTL-to-GDS digital flow Rapid Adoption Kits (RAKs) for 3nm and 5nm nodes to help customers achieve power and performance goals using the new Arm TCS23.
Cadence said its Cerebrus tool provided Arm with AI-driven design optimization capabilities that resulted in 50% better timing (TNS), a 10% reduction in cell area and 27% improved leakage power on the Cortex-X4 CPU, empowering Arm to achieve power, performance and area (PPA) targets faster.
“With the delivery of Arm TCS23, we’re unlocking the creative potential for customers around the world who demand high performance and efficient compute for next-generation mobile experiences,” said Chris Bergey, senior vice president and general manager, Client Line of Business at Arm. “Through our ongoing collaboration with Cadence, we successfully leveraged the Cadence digital and verification flows to get our latest generation of CPUs and GPUs into our customers’ hands faster and accelerate time to market.”
“Arm is known for building foundational computing platforms that address performance and efficient compute requirements, and the new Arm TCS23 is aimed at empowering designers to create the world’s most advanced mobile designs that provide the best user experience,” said Dr. Chin-Chi Teng, senior vice president and general manager, Digital & Signoff Group at Cadence. “By collaborating with Arm on the development of TCS23 and by delivering innovative digital and verification flows, we’re jointly leading our customers to improve overall productivity and achieve faster time to tapeout.”
Dell'Oro: Improving component supply drives growth in optical transport equipment
Optical Transport equipment revenue grew 8 percent year-over-year in 1Q 2023, according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group.
"For a second consecutive quarter, the Optical Transport equipment market growth exceeded our expectations," said Jimmy Yu, Vice President at Dell'Oro Group. "Equipment manufacturers are benefiting from the record level of backlog built-up over the past two years due to a lack of component supply. As these shortages moderate and lead times shrink, vendors are in a position to deliver long-awaited DWDM systems to their customers. This was the first time in two years that we did not hear a single vendor mention component shortage as a reason for lower than expected revenue in the quarter," added Yu.
Additional highlights from the 1Q 2023 Optical Transport Quarterly Report:
- The largest global suppliers in the trailing four quarter period were Huawei, Ciena, Nokia, ZTE, and Infinera. Among these vendors, Nokia and Infinera outperformed. For the trailing four quarter period, Nokia's optical revenue grew 13 percent and Infinera's grew 20 percent.
- China market slightly contracted in the quarter. If we exclude China from the worldwide figures, the optical market grew at a much higher rate of 12 percent year-over-year.
- Internet content provider (ICP) spending on WDM equipment increased year-over-year in the quarter, continuing the rebound in purchasing that started in 4Q 2022 after an unexpected drop in the third quarter.
Ofcom greenlights discounted wholesale fibre pricing from Openreach
The new pricing scheme, know as the Equinox 2 plan, gives lower prices to retail providers – such as BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Vodafone – if they agree to use mainly Openreach’s full-fibre products for new orders instead of its legacy copper products.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2023/decision-on-openreach-equinox-2-pricing-offer
