What role FPGA server co-processors for virtual routing?

Part 2:  Accelerating virtual routing functions using FPGAs

IP routing specialists have announced first virtual edge router products that run on servers. These include Alcatel-Lucent with its Virtualized Service Router and Juniper with its vMX. Gazettabyte asked Alcatel-Lucent's Steve Vogelsang about the impact FPGA accelerator cards could have on IP routing.

Steve Vogelsang, IP routing and transport CTO, Alcatel-Lucent

The co-processor cards in servers could become interesting for software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV).

The main challenge is that we require that our virtualised network functions (vNFs) and SDN data plane can run on any cloud infrastructure; we can’t assume that any specific accelerator card is installed. That makes it a challenge.

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FPGAs embrace data centre co-processing role

Part 1: Xilinx's SDAccel development tool

The PCIe accelerator card has a power budget of 25W. Hyper data centres can host hundreds of thousands of servers whereas other industries with more specialist computation requirements use far fewers servers. As such, they can afford a higher power budget per card. Source: Xilinx

Xilinx has developed a software-design environment that simplifies the use of an FPGA as a co-processor alongside the server's x86 instruction set microprocessor.

Dubbed SDAccel, the development environment enables a software engineer to write applications using OpenCL, C or the C++ programming language running on servers in the data centre.   

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Books in 2014 - Part 1

Gazettabyte is asking various industry figures to recommend key books they have read this year.

Joe Berthold, vice president, network architecture at Ciena

Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I really enjoyed The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable when I read it several years ago, so when I learned about Antifragile from a friend during a chat at an NSF workshop at the end of 2013 I decided to read it. He warned me that it was tough going at times. I enjoyed it so much I decided to reread The Black Swan and then also read Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets which I had not read. Then I went back and read Antifragile again. Yes, it was tough going at times, but I found it very worthwhile book to read and ponder.

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Is the tunable laser market set for an upturn?

Part 2: Tunable laser market

"The tunable laser market requires a lot of patience to research." So claims Vladimir Kozlov, CEO of LightCounting Market Research. Kozlov should know; he has spent the last 15 years tracking and forecasting lasers and optical modules for the telecom and datacom markets.

Source: LightCounting, Gazettabyte

The tunable laser market is certainly sizeable; over half a million units will be shipped in 2014, says LightCounting. But the market requires care when forecasting. One subtlety is that certain optical component companies - Finisar, JDSU and Oclaro - are vertically integrated and use their own tunable lasers within the optical modules they sell. LightCounting counts these as module sales rather than tunable laser ones.

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North American operators in an optical spending rethink

Optical transport spending by the North American operators dropped 13 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2014, according to market research firm Dell'Oro Group.

Operators are rethinking the optical vendors they buy equipment from as they consider their future networks. "Software-defined networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) - all the futuristic next network developments, operators are considering what that entails," says Jimmy Yu, vice president of optical transport research at Dell’Oro. "Those decisions have pushed out spending."

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NeoPhotonics to expand its tunable laser portfolio

Part 1: Tunable lasers

NeoPhotonics will become the industry's main supplier of narrow line-width tunable lasers for high-speed coherent systems once its US $17.5 million acquisition of Emcore's tunable laser business is completed. Gazettabyte spoke with Ferris Lipscomb of NeoPhotonics about Emcore's external cavity laser and the laser performance attributes needed for metro and long haul.   

Key specifications and attributes of Emcore's external cavity laser and NeoPhotonics's DFB laser array. Source: NeoPhotonics.

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Alcatel-Lucent serves up x86-based IP edge routing

Alcatel-Lucent has re-architected its edge IP router functions - its service router operating system (SR OS) and applications - to run on Intel x86 instruction-set servers.

Shown is the VSR running on one server and distributed across several servers. Source: Alcatel-Lucent.

The company's Virtualized Service Router portfolio aims to reduce the time it takes operators to launch services and is the latest example of the industry trend of moving network functions from specialist equipment onto stackable servers, a development know as network function virtualisation (NFV).     

"It is taking IP routing and moving it into the cloud," says Manish Gulyani, vice president product marketing for Alcatel-Lucent's IP routing and transport business. 

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