Bapi Vinnakota, project lead for the Open Compute Project's Open Domain-Specific Architecture (ODSA) initiative, provides an update on the chipset architecture following #OCPSummit2022 in San Jose, California. Two specs have been released this year. A mechanism to describe chiplets in XML was also discussed.
There was also a session on the Bunch-of-Wires interface.
Marvell has confirmed that that leading cable manufacturers, including Amphenol, Molex, and TE Connectivity, are sampling to cloud data center operators their 100G/lane active electrical cables (AECs) powered by Marvell Alaska A PAM4 DSPs.
Marvell says the new AECs enable next-generation 400G, 800G and 1.6T server-to-switch and switch-to-switch interconnects that require 100G serial I/Os.
Marvell’s Alaska A family further applies advanced DSP equalization techniques and flexible firmware-based implementation to optimally compensate for the impairments introduced by the cable on the high-speed 100G PAM4 signal. This provides the ability to deploy thin cables that address the reach and flexibility needs of next-generation data center architectures.
Here is a over of the market from Venu Balasubramonian, VP of product marketing, High Speed Connectivity and PHY Business Unit, Marvell.
Credo unveiled its 1.6Tbps OSFP-XD HiWire CLOS Active Electrical Cable (AEC) supporting lengths up to 2.75m in a thin, compact, cable form factor to support the dense spine switching requirements for next generation hyperscale data centers.
The 1.6Tbps OSFP-XD AEC supports 16 bi-directional lanes of 112Gbps communication with an industry standard Attachement Unit Interface (AUI) on each end. It supports cable lengths up to 2.75m using a compact 32AWG cable connecting the two ends that is no larger than two Cat6e cables. The OSFP-XD AEC consumes less than 20W of power per end and offers the most reliable, lowest power interconnect for in-rack applications such as Distributed, Disaggregated Chassis (DDCs).
Don Barnetson, Vice President of AEC Product at Credo, provides an overview.
International Data Corporation (IDC) is maintaining its forecast for 2% growth in nominal dollar denominated revenue this year for worldwide IT and business services. This corresponds to a 5.7% growth rate if measures in constant currency.
IDC maitains the forecast even against the backdrop of a global recession. Worldwide GDP growth has worsened since March/April and is now expected to grow by only 2.7% this year and 2.4% in 2023, based on August's figures.
"While economic conditions for major economies around the world worsened in the last few months, given the services vendors' strong revenues, bookings, and other leading indicators, the worldwide services market will likely continue on its current growth trajectory," said Xiao-Fei Zhang, program director, IDC Worldwide Services Tracker program. "Also, the real threat to vendors may be from the supply side: with book-to-bill ratios above 1.1 or 1.15, attrition 25% plus, and utilization rate pushing close to 90%, something has to give. A cooler economy may actually help vendors to convert bookings to revenue faster by easing the labor market."
The 2022 market growth represents a slight increase of 12 basis points from IDC's April 2022 forecast. The five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is now projected to be 5.2%, compared to the previous forecast of 4.9%.
D-Wave Quantum is introducing four offerings in AWS Marketplace, including:
“The era of commercial quantum computing is here. Forward-looking organizations are increasingly turning to quantum computing to find solutions for today’s complex and computationally intensive business problems, ultimately to reduce costs and increase revenue,” said Mark Snedeker, senior vice president of growth at D-Wave. “By launching in AWS Marketplace, we’re introducing our Leap quantum computing service to AWS customers, enabling them to quickly and easily start deriving business value from quantum computing, today.”
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations is now available on AWS, The service, which is accessible via an Amazon-provided NICE DCV client or standard web browsers, delivers a high-end Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations environment for powering intensive workloads like animation rendering or data visualization. It supports a variety of GPU-accelerated hardware instances offered on AWS while still delivering a fully-featured Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations environment, delivering a powerful set of capabilities, including:
“Compute-intensive tasks like animation, data visualization or medical imaging require a powerful, scalable and stable operating system. Red Hat Enterprise Linux already delivers these capabilities for high-end workstations, and today’s launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Workstations on AWS further expands this delivery, enabling artists, medical professionals, scientists and engineers to do their work anywhere in the world with the required features and in a low-latency environment."
Verizon reported total revenue of $34.2 billion for Q3 2022, an increase of 4.0 percent from third-quarter 2021. Net income was $5.0 billion, a decrease of 23.3 percent from third-quarter 2021, and adjusted EBITDA1 of $12.2 billion, down 0.4 percent year over year.
"We took a number of actions in the third quarter that helped drive improved operational and financial performance, but we know there's still more work to be done," said Verizon Chairman and CEO Hans Vestberg. "The pricing actions we took earlier this year, as well as our new cost savings program, show that we are being deliberate and strategic in our decisions to strengthen our business. At the same time, we are focused on executing our 5G strategy, as we are covering every major market and accelerating our C-Band network build. We are on track to reach 200 million POPs within first-quarter 2023."
Highlights
Capital expenditures year-to-date were $15.8 billion, including C-Band spending of $4.5 billion.
Wireless:
Broadband:
"You can feel the energy".
Rebecca Weekly, Chair of the Open Computer Project, provides a wrap-up of this year's #OCPSummit20222 in San Jose, California.
Sustainability has become a key tenet for everything at OCP. A new working group was established. Future technologies, including optical interconnects, are being explored. Innovation in data center infrastructure remains the focus.
Ericsson's shares experienced a sharp drop on Thursday after the company reported that Q3 Group Net Sales grew by 3% organically to SEK 68.0 billion (approx. US$6.031 billion), driven by strong performance from Networks.
Börje Ekholm, President and CEO of Ericsson, stated: "We see robust underlying performance and strong momentum in the business as we continue to execute on our strategy. This includes leadership in mobile networks by growing market share. Since 2017 we have increased RAN market share, excluding Mainland China, from 33% to 39% and we have had multiple contract wins across geographies in this quarter. We continue to solidify our strong position in 5G to capture the considerable opportunities presented by the fastest scaling mobile generation. Our expansion into the exciting high-growth Enterprise space is gaining momentum with the acquisition of Vonage, providing us with access to a powerful range of cloud communication services."
Some highlights
Marvell's first 3nm silicon is now in fabrication with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) on its 3nm shuttle. Marvell said this advancement will enable it to develop some of the most advanced multi-die, multi-chiplet systems-in-package (SiP) for its infrastructure products and co-development of custom ASIC solutions optimized for some of the most challenging infrastructure use cases, such as machine learning.
The 3nm platform includes foundational IP building blocks such as long reach SerDes, PCIe Gen6 PHY, and several standards-based die-to-die interconnect technologies for managing data flow across the data infrastructure.
This 3nm development follows numerous 5nm solutions from Marvell – in production or development – that span electro-optics, switch, PHY, compute, 5G baseband, and storage products, as well as a wide range of custom ASIC programs.
Additionally, this IP portfolio is compatible with 2.5D packaging technologies such as TSMC’s leading-edge 2.5D Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS)
Hugh Durdan provides a perspective.
https://youtu.be/mUYoLecCWoI
AT&T disclosed plans of getting to an even dozen 5G Edge Zones by the end of 2022, up from the current count of 10.
The Edge Zone facilities are standalone network cores with software defined network capabilities located in network data centers close to cross connect facilities that have fast connections to nearby cloud facilities run by the “hyperscaler” cloud providers.
AT&T says these edge zones powered by regional 5G standalone network cores will open a range of new capabilities that simply aren’t possible with 4G.
https://about.att.com/blogs/2022/legg-5g-edge-zones.html
Arelion completed a series of trials with Acacia and Cisco over multiple, third-party, open line systems.
On a live fiber route with existing ROADM infrastructure between Hamburg and Copenhagen, Arelion successfully leveraged Acacia Bright 400ZR+ QSFP-DD coherent modules with greater than +1 dBm transmit power between Cisco 8000 and NCS 5700 router platforms. The trial demonstrated the seamless integration of Routed Optical Networking with DWDM transponders carrying wavelength services.
Acacia's Bright 400ZR+ pluggable coherent optical modules can plug into Cisco routers, enabling Arelion's further adoption of the simpler and more scalable architecture of Routed Optical Networking, combining innovations in silicon, optics and routing systems.
Arelion also highlighted the interworking on brownfield long-haul applications built with third-party optical line systems
"Multi-layer architecture has always been challenging to scale and operate due to decades of accumulated complexity. With this latest trial, Arelion demonstrated the possibility to simplify conversion and interoperability, bringing us closer to Routed Optical Networking that evolves cost structures, scalability and efficiency," said Dariusz Solowiej, VP Network Technology & Customer Operations at Arelion. "400G coherent pluggables will help our customers secure high-performance connectivity at the lowest cost and help us grow our networks in scale as we continue to connect the world."
"As the latest entrant in our comprehensive family of 400G pluggables, the Bright 400ZR+ QSFP-DD is designed to expand optical transceiver applications by supporting higher transmit power and performance consistent with legacy coherent optics," Benny Mikkelsen, Vice President/Chief Technology Officer at Acacia, now part of Cisco. "The ability of these solutions to meet the varying needs of network operators, while driving economies of scale on a common technology platform, is a key advantage for providers such as Arelion to grow their networks."
https://www.arelion.com/about-us/press-releases/400G-field-trial.html
Citing strong, sustained momentum in customer additions across its growing 5G wireless and fiber networks, AT&T reported Q3 2022 revenue of $30.0 billion versus $31.3 billion in the year-ago quarter, down 4.1% reflecting the impact of the U.S. Video separation in July 2021. Excluding the impact of U.S. Video, operating revenues for standalone AT&T were up 3.1%, from $29.1 billion in the year-ago quarter. This increase primarily reflects higher Mobility revenues, and to a lesser extent Consumer Wireline and Mexico, partly offset by lower Business Wireline revenues.
“We’re investing at record levels to enhance our 5G and fiber connectivity and to deliver the best experience available in the market,” said John Stankey, AT&T CEO. “Our results show our strategy is resonating with customers as we continue to see robust levels of postpaid phone net adds and approach 1 million AT&T Fiber net adds for the year."
Some highlights:
https://about.att.com/story/2022/q3-earnings.html
Equinix announced a US$45 million investment for the construction of BG2, a new International Business Exchange (IBX) in Bogotá - its second data center in Colombia.
The initial phase of BG2 will have a capacity for 550 cabinets, with space for additional cabinets in future phases. At full build, the facility will provide capacity for 1,100 cabinets.
The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) and the Linux Foundation (LF), which are now collaborating on hardware-software co-design strategy, announced "Caliptra", a new effort to standardize silicon embedded hardware root of trust (ROT) security.
Caliptra is supported by AMD, NVIDIA, Microsoft and Google. The hardware root of trust provides a set of security properties that anchor the security of a system-on-a-chip (SOC), including CPUs, GPUs and SSDs, into the hardware.
"An important part of the OCP mission, on top of serving our hyperscale operator community, is to make it easy for everyone to consume hyperscale innovations, which end up embedded in OCP recognized products. Understanding that deployable solutions need hardware and software that is integrated into a complete and validated solution, we are pleased to be able to bring together the strengths of the Linux Foundation for collaborative open source software development and the OCP for hardware specifications, and ability to develop supply chains for emerging markets. As part of the expanded collaboration with LF, we are pleased to have new security contributions from Google and Microsoft," said George Tchaparian, CEO Open Compute Project Foundation.
"The Linux Foundation is happy to collaborate with the OCP to create communities that participate on both LF and OCP projects with a common goal and harmonized process to deliver market ready solutions combining open hardware and software," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge, and IoT, the Linux Foundation. "We also look forward to partnering with the OCP on go-to-market initiatives developing emerging market supply chains in support of our vendor and system integrator members."
"Independent hardware and software initiatives by different communities and consortiums often require significant integration efforts by the industry. Vendors need to convert and integrate the initiative into solutions with the market need in mind. The net effect is that many innovations never see the light of the day or serve the needs of the broader market. The expanded collaboration between the Open Compute Project and Linux Foundation has the strong potential to accelerate the absorption of open innovations into meaningful products and services", said Ashish Nadkarni, Group Vice President and General Manager, Worldwide Infrastructure at IDC.
https://www.opencompute.org/blog/cloud-security-integrating-trust-into-every-chip
CXL can enable memory expansion within a system locally, but also can enable more innovative solutions that allow pooling/sharing of memory across multiple hosts.
The Composable Memory Systems Project aims to follow a a hardware-software co-design strategy , developing a community to standardize and drive adoption of tiered and hybrid memory technologies and solutions that can benefit data center applications across industries such as AI-ML/HPC, Virtualized Servers and Cache/Databases.
OCP members who have joined this effort include Meta, Microsoft, Intel, Micron, Samsung, AMD, VMware, Uber, ARM, SMART Modular, Cisco and MemVerge. As the group becomes a formal sub-project under the OCP Server Project, the industry can join and drive the memory focused innovations to adoption.
As the CSM group formally launches as an OCP Project, we would like to invite all of you to participate and help us drive this next frontier of innovation for computational infrastructure systems from the perspective of a hardware and software and systems architecture.
https://www.opencompute.org/blog/ocp-launches-composable-memory-systems-subgroup
Software-defined memory systems have tremendous potential to accelerate innovation in large data centers. Manoj Wadekar, Hardware Systems Technologist, Meta, shares a perspective on discussions underway at OCP Summit 2022 in San Jose, California.
Telecom Infra Project is launching a new project group to address metaverse-ready networks.
The TIP Metaverse-Ready Networks Project Group’s primary objective is to accelerate the development of solutions and architectures that enhance network readiness to support metaverse experiences. Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Sparkle, T-Mobile and Telefónica will be the initial co-chairs of the Project Group.
Working in close collaboration, the Project Group will aim to align on industry-wide network capabilities, specific APIs and mechanisms required to access end-to-end (E2E) network capabilities supporting immersive applications at scale. The group will define requirements and methods for measuring E2E Quality of Experience (QoE), and provide a prioritization of future network architectures needed to achieve metaverse readiness.
Alex Harmand, Head of Network Platforms at Telefónica and Co-Chair of the MRN Project Group said: “This new group will enable operators to address the exciting opportunities that the metaverse is creating in both the consumer and enterprise segments. Telefonica is looking forward to collaborating to define the network capabilities and associated APIs needed to enhance metaverse services. The TIP community is the perfect environment for this initiative, as it will allow us to leverage multiple current project groups, such as OpenRAN, Open Optical and Packet Transport, to deliver end-to-end architectures and solutions that we will then test in Telefonica’s and other TIP Community Labs.”
https://telecominfraproject.com/tip-launches-metaverse-ready-networks-project-group/
EllaLink, which operates a subsea cable directly connecting Europe to Latin America, plans to build a direct connection between Sines and the Lisbon Metro Area via a new subsea cable.
The multi-petabit capacity "Olisipo" system will connect all the international submarine landings in Portugal with the major data centers in the region, including the data centers of Start Campus NEST in Sines and Altice LDV in Lisbon. The cable will land in Carcavelos and Sines and will be ready to branch into Seixal & Sesimbra cable landing stations and connect the Setubal area.
The unrepeatered, 110km fully buried cable will incorporate 288 fibers, providing a design capacity of 4.3 Petabits. The cable robustness will be enforced by particular care given to route engineering with special attention to cable crossing, full subsea and terrestrial burial strategy, full cable armouring and extra shore-end protection with bore pipe in Sines.
The Olisipo system will provide direct POP to POP connectivity at fibre pair level between the main Data Centres located in Sines and Lisbon Metro Area, connecting at day one
https://ella.link/2022/10/18/olisipo-the-new-ellalink-cable-petabits/
Cobalt Digital demonstrated high-speed transport of uncompressed audio and video signals in an SMPTE-2110 environment using ADVA’s Oscilloquartz timing technology. The trial network offers a simple, reliable and low-cost way to share broadcast streams in multiple digital formats at the highest quality.
The demonstration featured OSA 5401 small form-factor pluggable (SFP) PTP grandmasters and Digital’s high-density audio and video processing technology with native SMPTE-2110 support and multiple 25 Gbps Ethernet interfaces.
“This demo verifies the viability of an incredibly flexible technology for transporting video, audio and broadcast data without the need for compression or reformatting. With Indigo, our next-generation platform, and ADVA’s unique timing plug, the trial solution delivers the highest levels of availability and quality and with an extremely small footprint,” said Suzana Brady, SVP of worldwide sales and marketing at Cobalt Digital. “ADVA’s pluggable Oscilloquartz timing device enables quick and simple deployment in a power-on and run environment. It removes the complexity of local network configurations and can support both GNSS-based and arbitrary time modes.”
“Leveraging our most compact Oscilloquartz PTP timing technology, this demo shows how broadcast and media production network operators can achieve higher speeds while significantly improving efficiency. By processing natively over IP, Cobalt Digital’s platform removes complexity and significantly reduces cost,” commented Gil Biran, GM of Oscilloquartz, ADVA. “High-quality video and audio transmission rely on accurate and stable timing and our pluggable device was crucial to the success of this trial. The flexibility and simplicity of our accessSync™ OSA 5401 SyncPlug™ were key as well as its ability to distribute timing to many devices from a single SFP.”
