Xelerated Xpress

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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All the Best Wishes for 2011

The Xelerated Xpress blog will now make a short holiday break. Looking forward to a very interesting 2011.

by Per Lembre on Dec. 24th, 2010

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The True Reward: Customer Validation

Recognition is always valued, whether it is being honored for an innovative product, financial performance or the best customer service.  An award speaks to the hard work that a company and its employees contribute day in and day out. But at the end of the day, we do what we do for our customers – to make them successful.  So to be recognized by the customer itself, well, it doesn’t get much better than that.

That being said, a customer recently recognized us with one of the most prestigious awards available – Huawei’s Support Supplier Award.  We are especially humbled because out of 200+ companies, only 4 were recognized for “the most competent in supply.”  I am so happy and proud of this accomplishment for Xelerated.  It truly is the best token for customer appreciation a company can ask for.

by Anders Ericsson on Jun. 9th, 2010

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The Bright Future of Telecoms At the World Expo

Everything at the World Expo in Shanghai is huge. Over the next six months, some 70 million people are expected to visit the show.  In preparation, the city has added 150 metro stations. (Yes, this is more than the complete metro system in Stockholm!) The show includes more pavilions than ever, and despite economic downtimes, countries are investing more than ever before in the World Expo. And there are good reasons. The pace of development in China is amazing, and every nation wants to understand and engage with the superpower.  China is shining.

At the Expo, the international pavilions compete for attention from the crowd. For example, the U.K. pavilion looks like a hedgehog. And the Danes made a brilliant move when they decided to transport the little Sea-Maid over to the Expo.  The Swedish pavilion has a bar on the top of its yellow painted roof.

Still, what attracts my attention the most are the Chinese pavilions. Yes, there are more than one. China Mobile and China Telecom have sponsored one pavilion in particular about the future of Telecoms, while one of the world’s largest ship manufacturers, CSSC, has another pavilion which looks like a complete power generation site.  And yet another pavilion is dedicated to Chinese Private Enterprises. Anyone in doubt of China’s commitment to entrepreneurship should pay a visit to this pavilion. Although we, who are already convinced, should go there anyway to enjoy the world-class piece of art that concludes the tour.

But of these Chinese pavilions, what catches my eye the most is the story told over at the Information and Communication Pavilion – about the bright future enabled by telecommunications.  At this pavilion, visitors are asked to make their wishes for the future by typing them onto a PSP-like device. We then enter the first of two circular cinemas, the first dedicated to the history of telecommunications, and the latter to the future. Glossy cartoon characters, JiLing and GuDu, guide us through the bright history of telecommunications, and to the even brighter future. All wishes which will one day become true. You can teleport yourself into the future, and back to history, have your favorite basketball player to teach you how to score, have the impressionist icon Vincent Van Gogh to teach you how to paint.

The conclusion isn’t hard to capture, despite technical translation issues. The future is bright. For Telecoms. And for China.

by Per Lembre on May. 6th, 2010

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4G Or Not 4G, That Is The Question

Ericsson’s and TeliaSonera’s announcement of the first commercial LTE deployment provoked an intensive debate on LinkedIn’s LTE group. Is LTE really 4G, or is it 3.9 or even 3.8?

Few things triggers more discussion than terms and definition. On one hand, you have a group of professionals that believe that the usage of a term has to be defined strictly in technical terms, and if a technology doesn’t meet the definition to 100%, it is non-compliant. Don’t say it is 4G, if it is not compliant to ITU’s definition, they claim.

The other camp, and I belong to this group, simply say that the new generation of technology is defined by both technical and commercial means. The 4th generation of mobile infrastructure is underway. LTE has a completely new air interface and a completely new core. In practice, the backhaul segment is also re-engineered. This is a huge new investment by mobile operators and the consumers have to buy new handheld devices. A new page in the history book of mobile infrastructure is being turned. I call that 4G.

The debate continues though. You can make your opinion heard here.  Or you can consider contributing to the wikipedia definition of 4G.

by Per Lembre on Jan. 8th, 2010

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Happy Holidays Everyone

Christmas and seasonal holidays are closing in. The conversation at Xelerated Xpress will therefore be a bit more silent over the next two weeks.

Next year will indeed be interesting for silicon vendors serving the service provider industry. We will see a continued pull for technologies that enable unified fiber access solutions and increased service density for the metro space at new cost and integration levels.

But for now, happy holidays everyone!

by Per Lembre on Dec. 23rd, 2009

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Sweet Chips

Xelerated’s HX family of network processors is fast and feature rich, we all know that. Today, we may add that they are, indeed, sweet.

Tempted to try out the chocolate chip version? Stop by the marketing department in Stockholm, or visit the career fair Armada, where Xelerated will be exhibiting November 17-18.

by Per Lembre on Nov. 9th, 2009

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