Intel acquires the Open Networking Foundation's team

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.”

https://opennetworking.org/news-and-events/press-releases/onf-enters-a-new-era-focused-on-growing-adoption-and-community-for-its-leading-open-source-projects/

ONF spins out Ananki, a start-up focused on private 5G

Monday, September 27, 2021  Ananki, ONF, Private 5G  

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:

• Optimized 5G+ Experience - Software-defined, automated, AI powered, application optimized connectivity, with enhanced security enabled by a programmable data plane 
• Cloud First - pre-integrated with hyperscaler cloud and edge, delivering private 5G as a SaaS service, creating a continuously improving experience running on any multi-cloud platform
• Industry 4.0 Ready - Empowering developers to build transformative IoT, IIoT and OT solutions with rich APIs

“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.”

https://ananki.io/

http://www.opennetworking.org

 ONF's Aether Edge Cloud selected for DARPA's Pronto Project

Thursday, December 03, 2020  ONF  

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.

https://prontoproject.org/

https://opennetworking.org/

ONF's Aether targets Enterprise 5G/LTE-Edge-Cloud-as-a-Service

Thursday, March 05, 2020  ONF  

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.

Aether leverages existing work from ONF including the CORD and ONOS platforms. It can be run in a Kubernetes environment, and it simultaneously supports deployment on licensed (4G/5G) and unlicensed (CBRS) spectrum.

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IOWN Global Forum's Vision 2030 Roadmap

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/

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Video: 800G over Copper at 3m

 

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.

https://youtu.be/ndTKntb_0_A

Astera Labs' module enables copper-based Smart Electrical Cables at up to 800 GbE

Monday, November 15, 2021  AEC, Astera, Data Centers  

Astera Labs introduced its new Taurus Smart Cable Module portfolio to overcome performance bottlenecks in data center Switch-to-Switch and Switch-to-Server interconnects running up to 100G/Lane for 200/400/800 GbE. The Taurus SCM enables cloud system integrators and cable assembly vendors to rapidly develop and deploy cost-effective, copper-based Smart Electrical Cables (SEC) with purpose-built intelligence capabilities to reliably address reach,...

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Astera raises $50 million for data center connectivity silicon

Monday, September 27, 2021  Data Centers, Silicon, Silicon Valley, Start-Up  

Astera Labs, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, raised $50 million in an over subscribed Series-C funding round for its silicon solutions for intelligent systems.Astera Labs recently launched its Aries Smart Retimer portfolio for Compute Express Link (CXL) 2.0 and PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0 that enable workload-optimized platforms in the cloud. The company is also developing ASIC and module solutions that unlock complex system topologies critical...

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Ampere files for IPO

Ampere Computing, which offers 64-bit Arm processors for hyperscale cloud and edge computing workloads and applications, submitted a draft registration statement on a confidential basis to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. 

Renee James, a former Intel executive , founded Ampere in 2018 and is the company’s Chairman and CEO. 

https://amperecomputing.com/company/about-us.html

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Turkcell and Ericsson target Industry 4.0 with Private 5G

Turkcell and Ericsson signed a collaboration agreement for the digital transformation of industries utilizing Ericsson Private Network solution. 

The companies will explore use cases for different industries in Turkey like smart manufacturing, oil and gas, ports, airports, energy and utilities, and mining. Use cases range from tracking assets, real-time automation to enhanced productivity, optimizing business operations through digital twins and data-driven insights, performing better site inspections or remote-controlled robotics to increase worker safety, and leveraging the capabilities of digital technologies such as Augmented Reality to enhance worker capabilities.

Ceyhun Özata, Executive Vice President for Corporate Sales at Turkcell says: “We are always looking ahead in our digital journey. Partnering with Ericsson on the Private Network solution contributes to the digital transformation of enterprises and industries in Turkey. With the support of Ericsson's leadership and ecosystem of Industry 4.0 partners, we will benefit from a high-performance, secure, and flexible private network that will open doors to numerous use cases in the diverse pool of industries in Turkey.”

The collaboration is driven by the successful deployment of the Ericsson Private Network trial that was conducted recently at the beginning of February in the Turkcell Office.

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Netomnia secures £295 million for UK fibre rollout

Netomnia, a provider of full fibre broadband infrastructure based in the UK, secured £295 million in new funding led by DigitalBridge Investment Management. DigitalBridge’s equity investment will come alongside follow-on commitments from existing shareholders Soho Square Capital LLP and Advencap Limited.

Netomnia has achieved more than 130,000 premises passed since rollout commenced in 2020.

“We are thrilled to partner with DigitalBridge and benefit from their support and industry expertise as we work towards our target of one million premises passed in the next two years. We are scaling rapidly and aim to play an active role in unleashing the UK’s digital potential by delivering the benefits that come with multi-gigabit fibre broadband," states Jeremy Chelot, founder of Netomnia.

https://www.netomnia.com/news/netomnia-youfibre-secure-further-295million-funding

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OIF's Multi-vendor demonstration of Co-Packaged Optics (CPO)

Nathan Tracy, Vice President of Marketing for the OIF, gives a multivendor demonstration of OIF's 3.2T Module project and external laser project (ELSFP). A variety of interoperable components that enable co-packaging are shown, along with a system implementation.

https://youtu.be/qUidEpTG_aw

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Google's Topaz cable to link Canada and Japan

Google unveiled plans for Topaz, the first-ever fiber cable to connect Canada and Asia. 

The Topaz cable will house 16 fiber pairs, for a total capacity of 240 Terabits per second, and will feature Wavelength Selective Switch (WSS) technology for flexibility in routing and advanced resilience. 

Notably, the eastern-end of Topaz will use the original cable landing station in Vancouver employed by the 1960s era Commonwealth Pacific Cable System (COMPAC), a copper undersea cable linking Vancouver with Honolulu (United States), Sydney (Australia), and Auckland (New Zealand).

In a blog post, Bikash Koley,VP and Head of Google Global Networking and Head of Technology and Strategy, also notes that the Google consulted and partnered with First Nations communities in Canada on the project.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/topaz-subsea-cable-connects-canada-and-asia

Pacific Light subsea cable gets U.S. green light

Tuesday, December 21, 2021  Subsea  

Google and Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook) reached an agreement with Team Telecom (U.S. Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security) on how to protect data on the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) system, an undersea fiber optic cable system that will connect the United States, Taiwan and the Philippines. “These agreements enable Google and Meta to take advantage of critical, additional cable capacity while protecting U.S....

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Google and Facebook Team Up for Pacific Light Cable Network

Wednesday, October 12, 2016  Facebook, Google, Submarine Cable, Undersea  

Facebook and Google are teaming up to build the highest capacity, trans-Pacific cable system to date. The Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), which will stretch 12,800 km between Los Angeles and Hong Kong, will have an estimated cable capacity of 120 Tbps.  The cable is expected to enter service in the summer of 2018. The project is organized by Pacific Light Data Communication Co. Ltd., a new company based in Hong Kong. TE SubCom has been...

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Transpacific FASTER Cable Enters Service with 60 Tbps Capacity

Wednesday, June 29, 2016  Google, Submarine Cable, Undersea  

The world's highest capacity undersea cable system has entered commercial service -- six fiber pairs capable of delivering 60 Terabits per second (Tbps) of bandwidth across the Pacific. FASTER is a 9,000km trans-Pacific cable connecting Oregon and two landing sites in Japan (Chiba and Mie prefectures). The system has extended connections to major hubs on the West Coast of the U.S. covering Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland and Seattle....

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Senko: Connectors for the Terabit Era

 

https://youtu.be/KCi49H_B_rk

Tiger Ninomiya, Technology & Innovation Manager, SENKO Advanced Components, shows fiber optic connectors for the next era of terabit connectivity requiring multiple breakouts at the transceivers.

The SENKO SN-MT can accommodate up to 3,465 fiber connections in a 1 rack unit (RU) patch panel. This next-generation multi-fiber connector carries a maximum of 16-fibers in a single row while maintaining the regular SN connector footprint. 

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Elisa Polystar acquires FRINX for network automation

Elisa Polystar has acquired FRINX s.r.o, a Slovak telecom network automation software supplier. Financial terms were not disclosed.

FRINX is a privately owned software provider founded in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 2016. The company cites deployments with leading CSPs. The company has around 40 experts working in its projects. 

Elisa Polystar is a world-leading network automation and analytics solutions provider, serving over 120 CSPs globally. With its background as an international business of Finland’s largest CSP, Elisa Polystar’s solutions are proven and tested in live networks.

Elisa Polystar says FRINX products and software will complement its own zero-touch automation and analytics offering, which helps communications service providers (CSPs) automate their network management processes in a multivendor telecom network environment. 

Gerhard Wieser, CEO and co-founder of FRINX: “We are excited about the possibilities for us and our customers that arise from joining Elisa Polystar. Elisa Polystar is a true pioneer in network automation and operates globally. By joining them, we get access to a global sales channel as well as increased machine learning capabilities and resources. For our own people, it means a chance to join an extended global network of software professionals with more opportunities for personal growth and broader career opportunities.”

Kirsi Valtari, EVP for Automation at Elisa Polystar: “I am happy to welcome the very skilled FRINX experts to join our Automation team. FRINX products and software are a fantastic complement to our own suite of automation solutions, and we’re excited about the possibilities for collaboration going forward. Together, we will be able to create new and even better ways to enhance the operations of customers of both Elisa Polystar and FRINX.”

https://frinx.io

https://youtu.be/FzYFj0UD_60

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AT&T resets focus on connectivity following WarnerMedia deal

AT&T and Discovery completed their previously announced deal to coming the WarnerMedia business with Discovery. This creates a a premier standalone global media and entertainment company, Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc., leaving AT&T to focus on its exclusively on its connectivity mission.

“We are at the dawn of a new age of connectivity, and today marks the beginning of a new era for AT&T,” said John Stankey, AT&T chief executive officer. “With the close of this transaction, we expect to invest at record levels in our growth areas of 5G and fiber, where we have strong momentum, while we work to become America’s best broadband company. At the same time, we’ll sharpen our focus on returns to shareholders. We expect to invest for growth, strengthen our balance sheet and reduce our debt, all while continuing to pay an attractive dividend that puts us among the top dividend paying stocks in America."

Under the deal, at close AT&T received $40.4 billion in cash and WarnerMedia’s retention of certain debt. Additionally, shareholders of AT&T received 0.241917 shares of WBD for each share of AT&T common stock they held at close. As a result, AT&T shareholders received 1.7 billion shares of WBD, representing 71% of WBD shares on a fully diluted basis. Discovery’s existing shareholders own the remainder of the new company. In addition to their new shares of WBD common stock, AT&T shareholders continue to hold the same number of shares of AT&T common stock they held immediately prior to close.

https://about.att.com/story/2022/close-warnermedia-transaction.html

AT&T looks to ramp investment in 5G and fiber

Sunday, March 13, 2022  AT&T  

 AT&T is setting its sights on becoming "America's best broadband provider" based on a strategy of owning and operating both fiber and wireless. In light of closing its pending WarnerMedia transaction with Discovery, AT&T updated its financial expectations for 2022 and 2023, saying it will shift Capex to fiber and 5G.

“Now that the close of the WarnerMedia deal is approaching, we are near the starting line of a new era for AT&T,” said John Stankey, AT&T chief executive officer. “The transformation we’ve undergone over the past 18 months while delivering outstanding operational results has brought us to this point. We will be a simpler, more focused company with the intent to become America’s best broadband provider. We plan to ramp up investment in our key areas of growth — 5G and fiber. And at the same time, we will retain our focus on growing customer relationships, continuously improve our execution to enhance the customer experience and deliver growth and returns for our shareholders.

Key elements of the plan:

• AT&T plans to double its fiber footprint to 30-plus million locations,2 including increasing its business customer locations by 2x to 5 million. In doing so, the company expects to add 3.5 million to 4 million customer locations each year. 
• AT&T plans to deploy 120 MHz of mid-band spectrum to cover more than 200 million people by the end of 2023. This complements the company’s existing 5G footprint, which covers more than 255 million people in more than 16,000 cities and towns.
• AT&T also expects to continue benefitting from the migration of customers to its unlimited plans, particularly to higher-ARPU Unlimited Elite — the company’s fastest-growing rate plan. In addition, as its fiber footprint expands, the company expects to continue gaining share in the consumer broadband market where it offers fiber, building upon the momentum it has established with four consecutive years of 1 million or more fiber subscriber additions.
• AT&T expects to drive significant savings by reducing the company’s legacy copper footprint. By 2025, AT&T expects that 75% of its network footprint will be served via fiber and 5G and that it will have reduced its copper services footprint by 50%. At the same time, the company will successfully navigate the timing and profitability of the migration from legacy to next-generation products to optimize returns.
• AT&T is also focused on simplifying its business product portfolio, with plans to reduce the number of products and legacy rate plans by 50%. This simplification enables the company to focus on a repeatable playbook to deliver core connectivity and transport solutions with attractive owner’s economics.
• AT&T is also developing software solutions on top of its connectivity. These include Network Edge solutions through alliances with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud; Private 5G services offering businesses, universities and the public sector private cellular networks that seamlessly integrate with AT&T’s nationwide macro network; and solutions to provide safe, secure connectivity in today’s hybrid work environments.
• AT&T plans to use cash flow from more mature businesses to help fuel its planned $24 billion in annual capital investment in 2022 and 2023, with incremental cost savings hitting the bottom line.3
• By the end of 2023, the company expects to reach $6 billion in run-rate cost savings. By the end of 2021, it had achieved more than $3 billion in cost savings, which were primarily reinvested into the company’s growth engines.
• In addition to its network pivot from copper to fiber and 5G, the company is focused on enhancing the customer experience and streamlining operations in areas like corporate G&A, supply chain and technology platforms to yield further cost benefits. And in 2022 and 2023, AT&T expects an additional $2.5 billion in cumulative cost savings, which will increasingly fall to the bottom line, driving growth in adjusted EBITDA.

For 2022, the company expects:

• Low single-digit total revenue growth, up from $118.2 billion on a pro forma basis in 2021, driven by 3% or better growth in wireless service revenues and 6% or better growth in broadband revenues.
• Adjusted EBITDA of $41 billion to $42 billion, up from $40.3 billion on a pro forma basis in 2021, even with about $600 million in headwinds from 3G shutdown costs and absence of CAF II credits, which are weighted to the first half of 2022.
• In addition to revenue growth, the company expects adjusted EBITDA to benefit from incremental cost transformation savings of about $1 billion versus 2021 levels.
• Adjusted EPS of $2.42 to $2.46, compared to $2.41 on a pro forma basis in 2021, with growth in adjusted EBITDA and operating income partially offset by a higher effective tax rate.7
• Capital investment in the $24 billion range, including about $5 billion to deploy 5G spectrum, compared to $20.1 billion on a pro forma basis for 2021.

For 2023, the company expects:

• Continued low single-digit revenue growth, driven by low single-digit growth in wireless service revenues and a ramp in broadband revenue growth to the mid to high single-digit range.
• Adjusted EBITDA of $43.5 billion to $44.5 billion, with approximately $1.5 billion in additional cost transformation savings.
• Adjusted EPS of $2.50 to $2.60.
• Capital investment in the $24 billion range with consistent investment in 5G spectrum deployment in the $5 billion range.

Analyst Day materials are posted online.

https://investors.att.com/news-and-events/events-and-presentations

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Radcom confirms AT&T contract renewal

Radcom confirmed that AT&T Services has renewed its multi-year contract. Financial terms were not disclosed.

With this renewal, RADCOM will continue its relationship with AT&T, providing automated service assurance for its cloud network to ensure the network performance and service quality.

http://www.radcom.com

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OIF Multivendor 400ZR Interoperability video

 

Karl Gass provides an overview of the OIF's 400ZR multivendor interoperability demonstration at OFC22 in San Diego, California.

Two set-ups are tested:

• 400GE to Transport DWDM link - from an EXFO traffic generator/analyze via NeoPhotonics OSFP traversing a Cisco Open Line System to a Ciena Open Line system to a Cisco CFP-DCO in a Viavi traffic generator/analyzer
• Round robin path consisting of 14 QSFP-DD modules, including modules from Cisco, Juniper, Ciena, Marvell, NeoPhotonics, and Fujitsu

https://youtu.be/DC3_4bcuFVg

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MaxLinear debuts Quad-Port 2.5GBase-T PHY and 1GBase-T Switches

MaxLinear launched two 1000BASE-T Ethernet Switches (GSW125, GSW145) and a quad-port 2.5GBASE-T PHY (GPY245), expanding its Ethernet product portfolio to better serve harsh temperature environments.

The GPY245 quad-port 2.5GBASE-T industrial PHY supports

• Low power consumption below 3.5W in 2.5GBASE-T mode
• An effective rBOM
• Industrial grade features like MACSec, PTP and SyncE
• Either 4 x 2.5G SGMII or a 10G USXGMII-M MAC interface
• Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) to reduce power consumption during low traffic periods
• The low pin count and small size package (236 pin BGA 12mmx12mm) make this product ideal for 4-layer PCBs.

The GSW125, GSW145 industrial 1000BASE-T switches support

• Two or four twisted-pair interfaces (PHYs)
• Two MAC interfaces which can be 2.5G SGMII and RGMII
• QoS to prioritize switch traffic for different classes of applications, such as VoIP, video, audio, and data based on port ID
• Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) to reduce power consumption during low traffic periods
• They are available in a small size 105 pin 8mmx8mm MRQFN package.

"MaxLinear has a 40-year history of being a leading supplier in industrial interface devices, having shipped over 1B serial transceivers over the past five years," said James Lougheed, Vice President of Marketing, High Performance Analog. "As the requirements for industrial-grade Ethernet products continue to grow, we continue to invest to remain in a strong position to support these fast-growing markets."

"Verifone, a global FinTech leader and payment solution provider to the world's largest retail brands, recently adopted the MaxLinear GSW145 Quad-port 1G Ethernet switch for its Engage family of payment terminals that provide secure, reliable and flexible payment experiences to merchants around the world," said Henry Wang, Global Commodity Director at Verifone. "This builds on the established relationship we have with MaxLinear as our supplier for our Interface product needs."

https://www.maxlinear.com

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Lightbits adds key exec to its team

Lightbits Labs, a start-up based in San Jose, California focused on NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP) software-defined storage, has appointed Charla Bunton-Johnson as its new Vice President of Global Alliances and Channel. 

Before joining Lightbits, Bunton-Johnson worked at Telos, NVIDIA, Symantec, and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. In addition, Charla is a member of Chief, a private network specifically designed for senior women leaders to strengthen their leadership journey, cross-pollinate ideas across industries, and affect change from the top-down.

“This key appointment combined with our technical expertise in private, public, and edge cloud storage provide the backbone that partners can leverage to serve the market more effectively. Charla has a wealth of experience in the channel and building programs for partners to deliver value through technology-driven leadership. We have exciting opportunities ahead of us, and we are looking forward to Charla’s influence in increasing the footprint of Lightbits as the partner of choice for a high-performance cloud data platform,” said Kam Eshghi, Chief Strategy Officer at Lightbits.

A key focus for Bunton-Johnson will be the collaboration with Intel. Lightbits software-defined storage when combined with Intel high-performance hardware—Xeon Scalable processors, Intel Optane Persistent memory (PMem), and Intel Ethernet 800 Series Network Adapters—delivers the ultimate in performance, resilience, and scalability while lowering cost.

https://www.lightbitslabs.com

Intel and Lightbits Labs targets NVMe over Fabrics TCP

Wednesday, September 30, 2020  Intel  

 Intel announced a partnership with Lightbits Labs focused on disaggregated storage solutions. The partnership includes technical co-engineering, go-to-market collaboration and an Intel Capital investment in Lightbits Labs. Lightbits, which is based in Israel, delivers high-performance shared storage across servers while providing high availability and read-and-write management designed to maximize the value of flash-based storage. Lightbits...

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Lightbits delivers software-defined NVMe/TCP storage for VMware

Wednesday, September 29, 2021    

Lightbits Labs, a start-up that offers NVMe-based, scalable and software-defined elastic block storage, completed a rigorous certification of LightOS with VMware vSphere 7 Update 3 and will be listed on the VMware Compatibility Guide. Lightbits' LightOS is a scalable, efficient NVMe/TCP storage solution with intelligent flash management. The company claims its solution improves flash endurance by up to 20X and delivers performance that is equivalent...

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Lightbits awarded U.S. patent for NVMe/TCP overprovisioning

Tuesday, July 13, 2021  Patents, Silicon Valley, Start-Ups, Storage  

Lightbits Labs, a start-up based in San Jose, California focused on NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP) software-defined storage, has been assigned a patent (11,03,6626) for “a method and system to determine an optimal over-provisioning ratio.”The abstract of the patent (11,03,6626) published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: A system and a method of managing over-provisioning (OP) on non-volatile memory (NVM) computer storage media including...

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Israel Electric Corp invests in Prisma Photonics for fiber sensing

Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) has made a strategic investment in Prisma Photonics, a start-up based in Tel Aviv that is developing optical monitoring solutions.

The PrismaPower is a fiber optics based electrical overhead powerline monitoring solution. As part of the collaboration with IEC, the Prisma Photonics system was deployed on IEC's transmission grid. It identifies safety incidents such as compromising or climbing power towers, electrical issues, short circuits, and partial electric discharges. It also alerts for unusual weather events such as strong winds, lightning hits near the lines, etc. In addition, the electro-optical fiber monitoring further protects against physical cyber-hacking of the communication infrastructure.

By leveraging IEC's optical fiber network, PrismaPower monitors 100 km of grid for electrical faults, physical damage to power towers and transmission lines, and extreme weather conditions. The system tracks faults and events right down to the power tower closest to the source of the problem.

"Having your strategic customer as your strategic partner is the strongest vote of confidence a company can hope for," added Dr. Eran Inbar, Prisma Photonics' CEO. "As an innovative corporation, IEC started collaborating with us six months ago. The current investment supports its commitment to advancing Israel's power supply industry through innovation. To date, our system has transformed the optical fiber infrastructure deployed on IEC's high-voltage grids into a sequence of extremely sensitive sensors that identify issues and track their precise location down to the nearest power tower level in real-time and with no need for placing additional sensors along the transmission lines."

Prisma Photonics raises $20 million for fiber sensing

Thursday, February 10, 2022    

Prisma Photonics, a start-up based in Tel Aviv, announced $20 million in a Series B funding for its optical monitoring solutions.

Prisma Photonics said its fiber sensing works by transmiting optical pulses down a fiber. A minute fraction of light is reflected from each point along the fiber. The system measures the reflected light to determine the strain, temperature, pressure, and other quantities over hundreds of kilometers of fiber with sub-meter resolution.

The funding round was led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from SE Ventures (Schneider Electric's venture capital arm) and Future Energy Ventures, the venture capital investment and collaboration platform of E.ON. This brings the total funding raised by Prisma Photonics to over $30 million. The company's earlier investors include i3 Equity Partners and Chione Switzerland.

Prisma Photonics customers manage thousands of kilometers of infrastructures, among them New York Power Authority, Israeli Natural Gas Lines, Israel Electric Corporation and other tier-1 utility operators). 

"With the demand for energy on the rise, utility operators find it harder to keep their assets operating smoothly and safely. It is a challenge to monitor and maintain these long infrastructures," said Dr. Eran Inbar, Prisma Photonics CEO. "Our Machine Learning based solutions are unique as we address this huge scale challenge with ease and accuracy. The investment is a vote of confidence from Insight Partners and a first of its kind in a new domain of critical infrastructure management."

https://www.prismaphotonics.com

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Arrcus cites 80% growth in bookings in Q1

Arrcus, a privately-held company that develops networking software for core-to-edge network infrastructure, reported an 80% YoY growth in books for Q1 2022.

The company cited its largest seven-figure recurring revenue software subscription transaction with a leading financial services company.

In addition, Arrcus announced two new executive appointments. Sanjay Kumar has been appointed vice president of marketing and product management and Sreekanth Kannan takes on a newly created role on the management team as vice president focusing on the company’s growing cloud and multi-cloud networking business.

Kumar previously held leadership roles in product management and product/corporate marketing at such leading companies as Aruba Networks (HPE), Broadcom, Cisco Systems and IP Infusion. 

Kannan previously worked in product management and marketing roles at large companies like Cisco and VMware and as a startup executive for over a decade with successful companies like Aerohive Networks, Aviatrix, Megh Networks (a cloud-native networking company that he cofounded) and VeloCloud Networks.

“Our momentum in Q1 2022, following our high growth in 2021, demonstrates that the Arrcus value proposition strongly resonates with service providers and enterprises,” said Shekar Ayyar, CEO and chairman at Arrcus. “Our list of marquee customers is growing each quarter.”

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Lumentum ships first multi-junction VCSEL arrays for LiDARs

Lumentum introduced its M Series multi-junction VCSEL arrays for next-generation automotive, industrial LiDAR, and 3D sensing applications..

Lumentum's automotive qualified, high-performance M Series features peak powers suited for short- and long-range advanced mobility and industrial LiDAR applications. In addition to higher available power densities, extensive accelerated life testing of the multi-junction M Series has shown the same high reliability as single junction VCSEL devices already in volume production. 

The first M Series product is a 905 nm 70 W multi-junction VCSEL array.

"The Lumentum M Series enable automotive and industrial customers to accelerate the development of next-generation LiDAR systems," said Alex Ju, Product Line Manager for 3D Sensing at Lumentum. "The M51-100, with its extremely small size, is a versatile solution applicable to a wide range of customer systems. We are excited to deliver industry-leading VCSEL technology with proven quality and volume manufacturing capability into the advanced mobility space and enable a greater range of industrial applications."

https://www.lumentum.com

Lumentum to acquire NeoPhotonics for $918M amidst strong demand

Thursday, November 04, 2021  Lumentum, Neophotonics  

Lumentum agreed to acquire NeoPhotonics for $16.00 per share in cash, representing a total equity value of approximately $918 million and a premium of approximately 39% to NeoPhotonics' closing stock price on November 3, 2021.The companies cited significant next-gen 400G+ opportunities as a leading driver for the merger.NeoPhotonics, which was founded in 1996 and is based in San Jose, is a leading supplier of tunable lasers and optoelectronic components,...

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