650 Group Blog
 Migrating Features to Active Cables to Support Performance and Reliability
Traditional enterprise data centers have an Achilles heel – the single TOR per rack architecture. If that TOR fails, it takes the entire rack offline, and as Microsft recently published, this happens at least 2% of the time in the first 40 days of operation. In the enterprise, this has traditionally been solved with dual-TOR / dual-port NIC MLAG architecture enabling each server to connect to two TORs and the complexity of this connection to be managed by a combination of TOR MLAG software and the hypervisor running on the server. The problem with this approach is speed. NIC speeds are growing from 10G to 100G and beyond. As speed increases, more x86 cores are dedicated to enabling the hypervisor’s management of this configuration. Today, this is about one core for every 2.5Gbps. However, this is not a sustainable path from a power or cost standpoint, especially in hyperscale infrastructure. Hyperscalers have countered this problem by deploying redundancy at the application layer and running redundant server racks to support a TOR failure. Redundancy adds cost and complexity to the Hyperscaler’s operations by taking expensive servers off the revenue path and having them idle, waiting for a TOR failure. Enter the Active Electrical Cable (AEC). In their latest configuration, AECs, which have already enabled the implementation of Distributed Disaggregated Chassis (DDC) deployments, are now ready to enable a new deployment of NIC to ToR implementations. Credo’s HiWire SWITCH AEC eliminates the server management of a dual-TOR configuration and instead presents the server with only a single port. The Network Operating System (NOS), such as SONiC, can manage a MUX located inside the SWITCH AEC. This MUX can switch traffic from one TOR to another in an Active/Standby mode in less than a millisecond. The result is dual TOR reliability with dramatically improved failover performance as compared to MLAG implementations, but without requiring the server to do anything – or frankly even be aware of the dual-TOR architecture. Before 2021, essentially 100% of NIC-TOR applications used passive DAC cables. We expect the TOR to server connection to evolve to address redundancy and other needs in the changing demands placed on the network. The market is upgrading to higher speeds and server applications are growing in complexity and scale, as shown below. Fig.1 NIC to TOR Migration to Active Solutions Source: 650 Group/ Before 2021, essentially 100% of NIC-TOR applications used passive DAC cables. We expect the TOR to server connection to evolve to address redundancy and other needs in the changing demands placed on the network. The market is upgrading to higher speeds and server applications are growing in complexity and scale, as shown below. This topic will be discussed in a pair of livestreaming events hosted by 650 Group with Credo and Microsoft. Learn more about the events and register for the English or Mandarin session at: Wednesday REGISTER FOR ENGLISH BROADCAST Thursday July 22, 2021 @ 9:00AM Shanghai REGISTER FOR MANDARIN BROADCAST By Alan Weckel, Founder and Technology Analyst
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We have published our first story at Forbes Business Council. Read it here https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/07/07/naas-businesses-may-not-have-to-run-their-own-networks-anymore/?sh=525d20d83872 A preview of the concepts: Today, mobile networks and enterprises networks use wholly different network technology and operate using different business models. There’s a push by the same companies that make enterprise networking gear to change their business model toward a various services model, away from the traditional way of selling network gear. This week's MWC Barcelona 2021 had several themes; the most important was that several outsiders to the telecom industry were ever-present. The new entrants – the party-crashers - included Starlink, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Compute, and NVidia. These new players are forcing change either through economics, new technology, or new regulatory frameworks, or combinations thereof. We’ll touch on the importance of these crashers and then circle back to a few other ongoing themes that continue to remain relevant in this article.
Satellite broadband, while not exactly a mobile technology, will catalyze significant changes to the mobile industry. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite services, evangelized today by SpaceX-owned Starlink, announced plans to spend as much as $30B in building out its constellation over its lifespan. Yet, it will reach users across the globe. Elon Musk said Starlink is in beta in 12 countries, and it plans to have ½-million users in the next 12 months. The billionaire highlighted that Starlink’s ability to reach rural populations is unlike that of terrestrial players. We think the rural reach of LEO broadband is precisely why Starlink will be so important. Musk’s pitch to the mobile industry was that of a partnership – he said that Starlink is partnering with 5G MNOs to offer satellite backhaul and rural broadband services. We view satellite broadband, and later 3GPP satellite, as critical components in the telecommunications industry, and therefore we chose to write about satellite first in this article. All three hyperscalers, Azure, AWS, and GCP, made a splash at MWC21. As a group, these infrastructure providers have already changed the way telcos operate. In fact, the hyperscalers’ architectures were the inspiration behind the decade-old telco push for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV). But, these days, hyperscalers’ operations are more than an inspiration to the telcos. MNOs are now moving some of their workloads to hyperscaler infrastructures. The evolution of these workload migrations to hyperscalers is moving in three phases, phase 1, the back-office, then phase 2, telecom core, and last, phase 3, the access layer. In the weeks leading up to MWC21, we’ve seen progress on all three workload migrations, including that on Mobile RAN. Incoming AWS CEO Adam Selipsky said at MWC that AWS is talking to “virtually every telecom operator.” Some examples of announcements made surrounding the MWC show include:
With Open RAN capabilities come the possibility that MNOs can source various RAN components from multiple vendors. Rakuten has already technically demonstrated multi-vendor sourcing (Altiostar baseband and Nokia and NEC radios). In addition to system-level multi-vendor interoperability, in previous years, multiple semiconductor companies had been bolstering their RAN offerings (Marvell, Qualcomm, EdgeQ). Marvell had previously crashed MWC (MWC19 and MWC20) and is now a RAN supplier to Samsung and Nokia. For MWC21, we saw yet another entrant to the RAN chip market, NVidia. NVidia has received pubic endorsements from Ericsson, Fujitsu, Mavenir, and Radisys. NVidia’s current chip offering is called “AI-on-5G,” and the company’s offering starts in 2021 as an “on a server.” NVidia’s next offering is expected in the 2022-2023 era and will be an “on a card” offering. Then, after 2024, NVidia will offer its “on a chip” offering. Witesand just came out of stealth today, and made a video presentation based primarily at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. Praveen Jain, a co-founder of Witesand and various other networking companies, was the main presenter and conducted various interviews with interested third parties. The company's cloud services asset discovery, NAC, wired and wireless provisioning, monitoring, analytics, and its Network Time Machine service. In our research about the Enhanced Network Access Control (ENAC), we expect to reach a market size of $1.1B in 2025. A significant differentiator of the company is that Witesand's cloud services are hardware-vendor agnostic, meaning that the system is intended to operate with network equipment from other vendors like Cisco, Juniper, and HPE Aruba.
At today's presentation, the company had executives from supporters and customers, including from Planful (a cloud-based NAC customer) and Juniper Networks. While Juniper executive Bob Friday's (who is a founder of recently acquired Mist Systems) in-person attendance was not an explicit endorsement of Witesand by Juniper, we find it interesting that he attended - especially because Juniper does not offer cloud-based ENAC services. The company said it has customers including a global retailer, a publicly traded software company, a global logistics company, a healthcare provider, a Managed Service Provider (MSP), Rahi Systems (a MSP), and others were using its various services, including Cloud Enhanced Network Access Control, provisioning, monitoring and analytics. 650 Group offers thoughts on the state of the global semiconductor industry.
Semiconductor shortages continue to make headlines impacting almost every industry from automotive, healthcare, consumer, and into all aspects of the data center. Semiconductor shortages have their roots in 2020, with COVID-19 causing a lack of investment in new capacity as well as a significant decrease in orders. Other industries absorbed the decline in orders. For example, the automotive sector slashed orders for semiconductors, and consumer electronic devices picked up that capacity because of a surge in demand to support WFH. When the automotive industry tried to increase orders on a better economic outlook, the suppliers could not respond because that capacity was now allocated elsewhere. Exacerbating the issue is increased political instability and limited, if any, secondary capacity in the world for critical components. Semiconductors are the new steel industry powering the 21st-century economy forward. Like the Industrial Revolution of the past, many verticals stall when the base component of semiconductors cannot fulfill demand. However, unlike in the past, the capital investment in fabs and related supply chain aspects is massive and takes years, so adding capacity is not a simple task. The automotive industry is learning this the hard way right now, with many automotive plants being idled or shut down fully because of parts that cost less than $1. You cannot build 99% of a car, and you cannot make 99% of a data center. With most manufacturing capacity in semiconductors outside the US and limited control in the hands of the companies placing orders, the industry will address this shortage differently than in the past. A multi-source solutions strategy can help address the semiconductor shortage with a long-term plan. If we have billions of IoT devices shipping per year and many devices having significant chip counts in them, the market must change. The solution is forming today, and actions are taking place at all levels of the US government and private sector, including a summit held in the White House to discuss the problem and find solutions. The US must increase capacity to address demand and directly invest a significant amount of capital into building fabs and supply chain resiliency via incentives and policy changes. It is in the US’s best interest and should be a national priority. Today’s shortage is shaving billions off of GDP growth at a time when the economy needs to recover and jobs need to form in a post-COVID-19 world. Imagine the subsequent shortage with no investments today. Customers should seriously consider using multi-source semiconductor solutions. Besides addressing the supply shortages, customers get other benefits, including faster innovation, better products, and ultimately lower cost and healthier supply chains. Datacenter equipment is unique. Customers have historically had multiple silicon suppliers for memory, CPU, HDs/SSDs, but not so much in networking. Now is an excellent time to revisit this strategy. Networking also has uniqueness in moving from trailing edge process geometry to leading-edge with 400 Gbps and will remain leading edge as we look towards 800 Gbps, ZR/ZR+, and silicon photonics. We cannot move forward to higher speeds in networking without increasing the number of vendors, suppliers, and fabs. This is even more so when one looks into the short-term future of new networking demand driven by new applications and workloads centered around edge-computing, AI/ML, and AR/VR. The future is bright, and innovation is widespread. We need to ensure the investment is made today to guarantee one of the core building blocks of the economy can be sustainability manufactured going forward and not end up in a perpetual boom/bust cycle in fab and related supply chain investment. The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) announced the launch of OpenWiFi Release 1.0, which is a community-developed project that encompasses Access Point hardware, an open-source AP operating system, and an SDK to build cloud-native Wi-Fi Controller software for Service Providers (SPs) and Enterprises. TIP is also starting lab and field trials. At the end of this post, we’ll address the question of “will open-source Wi-Fi upset the enterprise Wi-Fi industry?” Here are some of the points made by presenters at the OpenWiFi launch: OpenWiFi is compatible across multiple markets like enterprise, SP and consumer. Boingo’s Derek Peterson said a significant benefit of OpenWiFi is that this system can be applied to various Wi-Fi markets, like consumer/home, enterprise, large venue, multi-tenant venues and SP networks. He shared that no single commercial system spans across the various consumer, SP and enterprise markets. Boingo is actively testing OpenWiFi, and he looks forward to deploying it; Boingo has a goal to “get to 100,000’s,” which we assume means users. OpenWiFi can be used with others’ components, including Access Points and operating systems. Dan Rabinovitsj, who leads Facebook Connectivity said that OpenWiFi is an open system. Even though OpenWiFi offers its own operating system, it is easy to use OpenWiFi with OpenWRT, a operating system for consumer-focused Wi-Fi routers. Additionally, OpenWiFi can be used with various different hardware such as those from Edgecore and TP-Link. Below is a representative list of participants in the webinar and sponsors of the event. Initial support for OpenWiFi is meaningful. The OpenWiFi community includes over 100 participants. SPs, hardware companies, standards bodies, and software companies.
Roaming capabilities are inherent in OpenWiFi. OpenRoaming, Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) Passpoint 2.0, and Google’s Orion OpenRoaming service are all supported in OpenWiFi. Some Wi-Fi OEMs have been promoting proprietary roaming capabilities. By offering compatibility with these open roaming systems, more Wi-Fi users will be able to bounce between various networks in the future. Disruption of existing Wi-Fi industry, according to presenters at the event. FB Connectivity’s Dan Rabinovitsj thinks that existing OEMs will see OpenWiFi as threatening. On the other hand, Rabinovitsj does not expect existing enterprises to adopt OpenWiFi based systems; but for SPs, he expects them to adopt OpenWiFi. Boingo’s Peterson said the industry must change because SPs are not just building networks; they are building experiences and systems focused on various use-cases. Deutsche Telekom’s Daniel Brower commented that by using OpenWiFi, this can reduce the likelihood that it will be subject to vendor lock-in. Participating hardware players comments were interesting. Edgecore/Accton’s Edgar Masri says his company is buying more inventory than normal because lead times are longer than usual; Edgecore expects the supply chain issues will persists for about two years. CIG says WiFi chipset lead times are around 52 weeks; CIG plans to ship its Wi-Fi 6E based Access Points by the end of 2021. Qualcomm’s Nick Kucharewski promoted Wi-Fi 7 at the event; and Kucharewski also said that product shortages may be partially addressed by adopting OpenWiFi because those who use it can buy hardware from various OEMs and ODMs instead of being locked into one. TIP plans to incorporate cellular capabilities in the future. Doron Givoni, Solution Architect at Facebook, described TIP’s plan to incorporate cellular capabilities alongside with OpenWiFi. According to our research, the private cellular market is in its infancy and we see it as generally complementary to Wi-Fi. Many enterprise focused Wi-Fi vendors have not launched their own cellular capabilities, and we see that it is possible that some could adopt the cellular capabilities from TIP. As for the question of “Will open-source Wi-Fi upset the enterprise Wi-Fi industry?” What we learned at the TIP OpenWiFi launch today, it appears there is significant support for the project by Service Providers and very limited support by the enterprise-focused WiFi vendors. We expect that SPs and MSPs initially will be the primary addressable market for the OpenWiFi community; over time, though, as TIP incorporates cellular capabilities to OpenWiFi, this could open up the market for more enterprise-focused opportunities. To elaborate, initially, OpenWiFi will appeal to users/operators with a relatively high degree of in-house capabilities like Service Providers. We’ve seen that many medium-sized and large-sized enterprises rely on their vendors to provide a significant amount of support to simplify operations. In addition to traditional service providers who will leverage OpenWiFi, we see initial support from Managed Service Providers (MSPs). Examples of MSPs include OpenWiFi supporter, Indio Networks (India), Boingo (USA), iBrowse (Europe); MSPs generally have teams capable of integrating various hardware and software systems that are then used to deliver a service to customers such as Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). Interestingly, TIP mentioned that in future releases, it would support cellular technology. Few enterprise Wi-Fi vendors have brought cellular capabilities to the market. It is possible that when TIP delivers cellular support, that enterprise OEMs may participate in the TIP/OpenWiFi community.
On April 21, 2021, DISH, the fourth wireless operator in the US market, and hyperscaler Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced plans to work together, whereby DISH will leverage AWS infrastructure and services to build a cloud-based 5G Open Radio Access Network. The DISH/AWS announcement is important because this is the first 5G Radio/hyperscaler deal – or second if you count Rakuten as a hyperscaler. We are encouraged by the DISH/AWS deal and think this represents a big step in the industry. What’s so important is that two of the three major Radio Access Network (RAN) functions will be running on AWS; these are the Centralized Unit (CU) and the Distributed Unit (DU). We see the DU running on the AWS service called Outposts as being the most critical part of this announcement, because historically this hardware has been delivered as a proprietary hardware system using proprietary semiconductors from the likes of vendors like Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei. Thus, AWS’ involvement in the DISH network serves as a reminder of the opportunity for RAN vendors to deploy cloud native RAN in future cellular network deployments. DISH is employing a terminology it called a “Capital Light” model, whereby it reduced the amount of capital spending it requires to build out its planned national network. Key to achieving this light capital model is leveraging the capital spending done by AWS and instead leveraging what some might call an OPEX oriented model. DISH plans to launch live cellular services in Las Vegas, NV first, and then its 5G network will cover 20% of the US population by June 2022 and then 70% by June 2023 and 75% of by June 2025, and thereafter it will continue its build to “match competitors beyond 2025.” The company also plans to begin building enterprise focused 5G networks beginning in 2021. In our follow-up inquiries to the AWS and DISH teams, we have learned that DISH is exercising an option to run O-RAN using AWS Graviton hardware plus Enterprise Kubernetes Services. Additionally, DISH has the option to use Intel based COTS based hardware in parts of its network. Thus, DISH has flexibility to deploy baseband systems on AWS or in its network, and can use Graviton or Intel systems. We have seen AWS engage in contracts with other parties where there are minimum usage rates or dollar commitments. We are not sure this is the case for the DISH deal, but AWS explains that it expects to deliver “thousands of site specific hardware,” while at the same time DISH expects that by mid 2023, it will have built out “15,000 cellular sites.”  What AWS plans to deliver to DISH  DISH use of AWS infrastructure We wanted to share some insights on how this relationship appears to be structured. It appears that many scenarios have been envisioned as to how the relationship may evolve in the future, and we think that both parties have worked in contract terms that allow some flexibility in achieving each company’s goals. We did not review the contract between the two companies, but in a webinar presentation held April 30, 2021, executives from DISH hedged their bets somewhat on the relationship with AWS in ways we found interesting:
Each year, Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company has its Atmosphere conference. This year the conference theme was “Journey to the Edge.” However, this year was also much different from previous conferences because Aruba completed the acquisition of Silver Peak last September. As a result of the acquisition, the conference had a significant focus on SD-WAN, the primary product of Silver Peak, and integration with Aruba. A critical new trend that the combined company is now pivoting towards is SASE, which Aruba includes in “Edge to Cloud Security.” Aruba is partnering with well-known companies to deliver a complete “Edge to Cloud Security” portfolio. Aruba’s broadening portfolio allows it to “land and expand” to customers and provide a more comprehensive portfolio. Portfolio growth is what other competitors to Aruba are doing because there’s a growing need to manage networking and security systems simultaneously as users and computing leave the campus environment. Additionally, the company made several new announcements to advance Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform), like Aruba Central being available on-prem, ClearPass Policy Manager integration with the Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN edge platform, and IDS/IPS/UTM capabilities. The company also updated its partners on its growing AIOps capabilities and hinted that it would be making Wi-Fi 6E announcements “soon.” New announcements
Future announcements. Management hinted at some announcements that will come in the future. These include:
Updates. We felt some noteworthy comments came up during the show.
    NVidia Announcements impact every industry, and every company in the world Today's GTC keynote by Jensen unleashed significant enhancements across the NVidia portfolio. NVidia did an excellent job of discussing verticals and giving examples with the company, clearly positioning itself as a leader in the data center space with expertise in ASIC development. A clear theme throughout is that AI/ML is moving at a slightly faster pace than Moore's law, and in many cases, applications that used to take days to years can now complete in a fraction of the time. These advancements will forever change verticals, like transportation and healthcare. We are just a few years away from having over 100 trillion parameter models. The results of such large datasets will change how we construct data centers. Not only will this milestone usher in technologies like silicon photonics, but we will also see new ways to power and cool these data centers. Moving data into the data center will drive significant growth in DCI using ZR/ZR+ options. End-users will not be aware of the cloud's computational power going into every aspect of their lives. We see innovation in AI and the use of AI in enterprises as still in its infancy, and for markets like data center switching and servers, AI is an additional growth driver over the next few years. 650 Group looks forward to other GTC events this week.  |
CHRIS DePUY
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