Xelerated Xpress

Xelerated Is Four Years Ahead

I participated in an inspiring 100G panel at the Linley Tech Processor Conference last week. We didn’t have to debate about the need for more bandwidth and more processing. The debate, instead, was focused on how to best achieve the goal. Network processors, that are purposely designed for the task, or multicore processors that are general purpose and more capable for advanced services?

The Linley Tech Processor Conference attracted 300 attendees.

In the first day’s sessions, one could easily get the impression that multicores are up to the task of network processing. Thanks to Mike Coward of RadiSys, however, the bold marketing claims got a good reality check. RadiSys build systems based on multicore technology. Today, they do 10G per line card. In two, years, they expect to run up to 100G, and 100G in a single chip is likely four years out, all according to his estimation.

For those that don’t want to wait this long, you are welcome to Xelerated. Our 100G wirespeed NPU is here, and now going into production. And in addition to any of the multicore processors in the market, it also includes an advanced traffic manager.

Update: Xelerated’s presentation on ‘Uncompromised throughput at low power’ can be found here.

by Per Lembre on Oct. 11th, 2011

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Why Xelerated Is Winning New Designs

As was announced last week, we are now taking the HX NPU family to volume production. When looking a bit closer to the type of line cards and pizza boxes where the HX family has been selected, we  start to see a pattern. Our customers look for a combination of:

• Programmable network processing with deterministic performance
• An integrated advanced traffic manager with deep buffering
• Low power consumption

As a product marketeer, I spend quite some time on the first two parts. I’m always excited to work on architecture, describe its features, show performance and outline benefits. And of course, customer care about these things, don’t get me wrong. But features and specifications don’t mean much if power consumption is not kept in control. We have seen several cases where the low power consumption of the HX and AX series have convinced the customer to go with Xelerated, after evaluated some more heated competitive solutions.

For next week’s Linley Tech Processor conference, I’ve put together a presentation on the topic of ‘Uncompromised Throughput at Low Power’. Looking forward to discuss some of this in the 100G Networking panel on second day of the conference.

BTW, here are a couple of articles covering last week’s announcement:

• Lightwave: Xelerated ships HX 100G network processor in volume
• Lightreading: 100G watch: The ramp-up continues
• Telecom paper: Xelerated begins production of HX family
• TMC news: Xelerated starts production of HX family
• Elektroniktidningen (in Swedish): Svensk 100-Gigabit krets i volym

by Per Lembre on Sep. 29th, 2011

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100G Network Processors Start Ramping in November

Xelerated Xpress met with Anders Ericsson, VP of Sales and Marketing at Xelerated, for a chat on the state of the 100G NPU market. He explains how the technology pushes the communications industry to better optimized solutions.

Xpress: How does the 100G NPU technology contribute to the networking industry?

AE: This new generation NPUs is changing some fundamental economics for the design of Carrier Ethernet systems and how system vendors compete. First, we have the bandwidth factor. The next wave of Carrier Ethernet line cards and systems will deliver higher capacities and packet rates within the same power budget. Second, we get more processing and features. The integrated advanced traffic manager allows system vendors to build more capable systems with higher quality and more advanced services at radically reduced dollar per gigabit. Third, the shift in favor to merchant NPU enable system vendors to compete more with software and feature velocity rather than having to depend on internal ASIC projects.

Xpress: How can Xelerated compete with in-house packet processing silicon?

AE: We are gaining experience from so many more customers, markets, sources and stake holders than an internal development group can get. Our solutions are catered for a broader task and can be used in so many more systems and applications. In comparison, Xelerated network processors are more flexible and have a higher integration factor. They include advanced traffic management and buffering, many hardware engines and huge banks of embedded memories. As our technology applies to a broad set of applications, we pay attention to R&D economics such as time to market, and re-usability of investments in software.

Xpress: What attracts system vendors to use silicon from Xelerated?

AE: We provide three fundamental benefits that no other supplier can provide today.

1. Determinism through the wirespeed architecture
2. Highly efficient programmability, and
3. Low power consumption

It is the combination of the three that makes the big difference.

Xpress: Why is low power consumption becoming critical?

AE: Power consumption is a key design parameter in all systems today, across application types.  This is driven by direct energy costs, less complex and faster installation, minimized need for forced ventilation, and compliance to state regulations for environmental protection. And on top of that you gain a more cost-effective design.

Xpress: In what type of platforms do you see the largest adoption for HX and AX chips?

AE: OTN, Transport systems, PTN, Mobile Backhaul, Carrier-Ethernet Switch Routers and PON OLTs

Xpress: Does the technology enable fundamentally new designs, or are we mainly seeing more of the same; more ports, more packets and more bandwidth?

AE: We see both new designs and more of the same. With our state of the art integrated traffic manager we enable new systems with more efficient designs. But there is of course an ongoing cry for more bandwidth and throughput. One has to bear in mind though, that not all components are in the same maturity stage. For instance, there are a lot of optical components that are too expensive to support a cost-effective roll-out of 100G solutions before 2014.

Xpress: Are there any sweet spot designs?

AE: Yes, OTN and PTN. The HX and AX product attributes fit well in these high-volume optimized designs.

Xpress: The dataflow architecture has evolved in HX and AX. How?

AE: Our core technology continuously evolves. The HX and AX with the 100G dataflow architecture is now in production. It includes enhanced service densities; higher lookup rates and more processor cores compared to the 40G generation. In addition, we have enhanced the flexibility by allowing intelligent oversubscription through advanced pre-classification.

Moving forward the dataflow architecture is already staged for 200G and 400G. We are assessing parallel pipes, and enhanced flexibility for ingress and egress processing while retaining the deterministic characteristics.

Xpress: Xelerated is making a strong push for wirespeed processing. Is this inherent to the HX and AX chips?

AE: Wirespeed is by design and inherent to all our products.

Xpress: Doesn’t wirespeed come with a flexibility tax?

AE: Not really, our software and application utilization is not dependent on traffic load. It is always deterministic to the speed and throughput that the devices are specified for.

Xpress: How are customers responding to the new integrated traffic manager? Are customers using this feature?

AE: The market response has been overwhelming, really. It is mainly used for per-user and per-service shaping in both line card and pizza box designs. This was really the primary application we had in mind. But, we also see additional interest for building chassis-based solutions solely on the integrated TM.

Xpress: When do you expect the first platforms in volume based on HX and AX chips?

AE: HX-based products are expected to ramp in November, while AX will ramp in December.

Xpress: 100G network processing is here and now. So what’s next?

AE: The industry is screaming for more bandwidth and more advanced packet services on Carrier Ethernet systems. We have a number of interesting innovations in-design, but it is a bit early still to unveil any secrets.

by Per Lembre on Sep. 8th, 2011

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Thumbs Up for HX Rev B

The HX Rev B Network Processor is back from the wafer, and running in the lab. Xelerated Xpress gives you the initial report on the world’s first 100G NPU production silicon. We met with Johan Westergren, hardware engineer.

Xpress: Were you nervous when you turned on the power on the first HX Rev B processor?

Johan Westergren: Excited is probably a better word for it. We have worked hard and made our preparation.

Xpress: How did the chip respond?

JW: We had an initial hick up, and yes, we got a bit nervous honestly. But it is very common that you set a parameter wrong. But once that was sorted, we could quickly move on to infrastructure tests. We ran BISTs on internal memories, we set clocks, and we ran basic functions on all subsystems. After the first business day, we had a multi- parallel test effort rolling.

Xpress: And what about the continuous progress?

JW: We work at a great pace and the chip behaves very well. We are keeping up with the test plan schedule.

Xpress: So what happens between now and product release in November?

JW: The test plan covers a range of cases, all of them well detailed, implemented and tested on the Rev A version of the HX network processor. System test run application scenarios to verify the chip against customer application types. In addition we have started characterization to validate how the chip behaves under different power and temp conditions.

Xpress: Can you say anything on the quality?

JW: This far it looks promising. We pay close attention to quality in the architecture and design of the chip, and it is in the testing environment you see how that starts to pay off.

Read all about the family of HX network processors, and the Carrier Ethernet solutions they empower.

by Per Lembre on Sep. 8th, 2011

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Green Sign for Xelerated Traffic Manager in System Test

Xelerated has put the integrated Traffic Manager to a big performance and functional test. And it came through in a good shape. Olof Rutgersson, System Test Manager, reports for Xelerated Xpress.

Xpress: What did you test?

OR: We put the TM up for a realistic broadband user and service shaping case featuring hierarchical shaping and buffering. We ran several types of tests to see how the system behaves under stress.

Xpress: What were the test objectives?

OR: Our goal was to utilize every part of advanced TM functionality simultaneously under high traffic load. The tests were designed to validate both the TM hardware and the TM software APIs to handle the high demands on functionality and performance in today’s broadband networks.

Xpress: And what were the results?

OR: Everything went as expected. With no exceptions. So I have only green marks to report in the test report.

Xpress: Is that so? Can you possibly elaborate a bit further?

OR: The results were very conclusive, for every test the TM performed according to its design specification. The results were almost surprisingly perfect with regards to shaper accuracy, buffer depth, scheduling algorithms and WRED drop probabilities. Our test results were nearly indistinguishable from the theoretical models.

Xpress: What was the most challenging test?

OR: That was to simultaneously monitor and measure performance on 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports with 38,400 queues to check throughput rate, buffer depth and traffic prioritization for every single queue. The dynamic nature of traffic management required some tests to run for several hours before final results were reached.

Xpress: Promising results. Any conclusive remarks?

OR: All in all I am happy that we with great confidence can offer such a well-designed integrated Traffic Manager to our customers.

Want to read the full report? Please contact us to get your own issue of the Traffic Manager Test Report.

by Per Lembre on Sep. 8th, 2011

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It Is About Time for One-step PTP

Xelerated is providing the industry’s most flexible and exact Precision Time Solution. The new Rev B of the HX network processors and AX programmable Ethernet switches come with enhanced precision time logic. We met with Tord Haulin and Johan Bäck who have engineered Xelerated’s precision time solution to give you the details.

Xpress: What’s new in Xelerated’s precision time solution?

Tord Haulin: We have added a Precision Time Unit to every Ethernet MAC embedded on the NPU. This is a piece of flexible time stamping and time correction logic, which allows advanced synchronization services. The precision time unit has one-step time stamping capability and offloads the CPU from latency calculation tasks.

Xpress: What is One-step PTP?

TH: One-step PTP is quickly becoming a key requirement for synchronization services to base stations in Carrier Ethernet mobile backhaul networks.  It allows to fully utilize the advantages provided by PTPv2-2008. With one-step time stamping each PTP event packet gets its latency time added ‘on-the-fly’, before the PTP packet is further forwarded to the next node towards the base station. Although this adds to the processing of PTP packets, we have implemented a solution that actually improves the time stamp precision.

Xpress: How precise is the solution?

Johan Bäck: To achieve high accuracy, time stamping has to be done as close to the wire as possible. We have paid close attention to jitter, and even managed to reach nanosecond time stamp accuracy for the higher link speeds. You won’t find anything better than that in the market.

Xpress: What about customers who want to support other PTP profiles, like legacy two-step PTP?

TH: The precision time solution supports PTPv1 and all clock modes in PTPv2-2008.

Xpress: What about Synchronous Ethernet?

TH: Synchronous Ethernet is of course also supported. You can flexibly monitor and select links for locking the frequency of the real time clock embedded on the NPU.

Xpress: Can other applications benefit from the new precision time unit?

JB: Sure.The technology has been developed for superior flexibility. We see One-step PTP as an important use case of course, but having time logic in the MAC increases the overall capability of the network processor. The most obvious area for other usages is OAM and performance monitoring.

Interested to understand more about Xelerated Precision Time Solution? Check out our Precision Time white paper.

Note! PTP is short for Precision Time Protocol. This is an IEEE standard initially developed for the automation industry in mind, but was re-engineered in 2008 to support wide scale carrier deployments. The updated standard is referred to PTP IEEE 1588-2008.

by Per Lembre on Sep. 8th, 2011

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Online Video Driving Demand for 100G

In an interview with Light Reading, Paul Savell of Level3 comments on 100G.  In a nutshell, he says 100G is very important, but service providers are struggeling with the economics. He is looking for a new and more cost effective 100GE/OTU4 technology.

He reports the Internet backbone traffic growth is back at 100%, driven mainly by video traffic going online. Netflix, Voddler and other over the top video services are quickly gaining popularity. In the US, Netflix represents 30% of the Internet bandwidth at peak hours, according to a report by Sandvine.

Another point of interest is the increased need for adaptability. Cloud services are mainly driven by IT, not by the networking folks. While packet-based networks are flexible, the equipment serving our public broadband networks is not always designed to cope with unexpected changes of traffic patterns. Neither are they designed to support future protocol innovations developed to make networks better suitable to online video and ultimate on-demand nature of cloud services.

See the complete interview with Paul Savell at LRTV.

by Per Lembre on May. 18th, 2011

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Facebook Site Like 16,000 Houses

Facebook is planning a new site with three data centers in the city of Luleå, Sweden. Sources say the data centers will occupy approximately 13 soccer fields, and consume 473 million kWh, which translates to 16,000 family houses.

There is a huge potential for the industry to reduce power. Right there.

by Per Lembre on May. 17th, 2011

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Ethernet Backhaul Is Here and Now. What’s Next?

New statistics from Infonetics research shows a rapid transition to IP/Ethernet-based mobile backhaul. The momentum towards IP/Ethernet is very strong; 89% of all backhaul spending was on IP/Ethernet equipment in 2010. With a net addition of 1.6 billion mobile broadband subscribers between 2011 and 2015, we can expect continued healthy growth in this market.

The transition towards IP/Ethernet has been foreseen. We are in a catch-up phase to deliver on the strong demand for streaming content down to mobile smartphones and tablets. Mobile TV and video drive bandwidth demand, implicating mobile backhaul infrastructure as well as to content distribution sites. One example is radio streaming providers in the Nordics, that recently had to scale up their bandwidth towards mobile networks as radio is going narrowband. To send a live signal in unicast is not necessarily the most effective distribution method, but the trend towards individual content consumption can’t be held back.

The industry is learning how to engineer the always-on-society. Mobile backhaul is now Ethernet/IP. What is next? There will be a significant portion of ‘more of the same’, but with the many implementation options (microwave vs fiber vs copper, Ethernet vs MPLS, P2P vs MP2MP, PTP vs Synchronous Ethernet vs legacy sync), there is also plenty of room for optimization.

We are just at the beginning of the mobile broadband era, and best practice is still to be defined.

by Per Lembre on Apr. 13th, 2011

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Making a Rapid Move to 100GE

The 40GE/100GE standards are ready, but the industry has a long way still to go before we see high volumes. What is holding back adaption? Big content providers like Facebook and Google have been pushing for commercial viable 100GE systems for some time. The Internet backbone players are increasingly challenged to keep up with bandwidth demand. I believe Michael Howard of Infonetics summarized it well at the Ethernet Summit in San Jose recently. As he put it, “Early components are expensive as well as large, power-hungry and hot, and there are still several generations to go in downsizing these parts for more economical systems.“

So, let us look at an example of a 100GE board of today, using in-house designed packet processing silicon:

The line card is packed with silicon to perform packet processing, traffic management and buffering for 100 Gbit/s of traffic. Here is where the new member of the HX family, the HX336 comes into play. The HX336 includes a 100 Gbit/s traffic manager with deep packet buffering in off-chip DRAM. By utilizing the service density of the HX family, the line card above can be optmized to only use two chips for packet processing and traffic management, a pair of HX326 and HX336. The HX336 is used in the egress pass supporting both packet processing and traffic management. The HX326 is responsible for traffic classification and packet processing in the ingress path. Reducing the number of chips for packet processing, traffic management and buffering from four to six to two result in significant power and cost savings. Several of our customers have witnessed a 50% reduction of power consumption.

The new HX336 network processor is Xelerated’s contribution to the industry’s transition to 100GE and optical transport networks OTU4 standard. The transition may not be immediate, but as technologies matures, the shift may be stronger than expected.

by Per Lembre on Apr. 1st, 2011

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