Nokia's open SDN, SoC-it-to-me open 'Chiplets', Verisign exits the DDoS protection biz, and more

Roundup Nokia this week announced an SDN-based open optical transport management suite of products for optical transport management, WaveSuite.

The Finns said WaveSuite has tools for service enablement, node automation, and network insight.

The company said it was designed to complement its carrier SDN system, Nokia Network Services Platform, and the FlowOne Operational Support System (OSS).

Seven vendors open 'chiplet' architecture

Disaggregation is coming to silicon: networking SoC company Netronome has unveiled its contribution to a new "open architecture" collaboration, with what it calls the "Open Chiplet Architecture".

The architecture is part of a seven-company collaboration between Achronix, Global Foundries, Kandou, NXP, Sarcina, SiFive, and Netronome dubbed the Open Domain-Specific Accelerator Workgroup (ODSA).

The ODSA Workgroup wants to cut the admittedly steep cost of silicon development by publishing an architecture and specifications for chiplets – subsystems shared between chip designers.

The focus of the ODSA Workgroup is on the various kinds of accelerators now winning acceptance to offload tasks from CPUs, partly in response to the slowing pace of "Moore's Law", but also to help silicon business contain the size and complexity that lifts the cost of development while reducing manufacturing yield.

There's already a healthy proprietary market in boards that can move processor-intensive tasks like firewalls and SSL acceleration away from the CPU.

Designers also need reduced latency, smaller form factors, and reduced power consumption, Netronome said.

The OSDA Workgroup wants a complete stack of components, with "known good die, packaging, interconnect network, and software integration stack" so that "any vendor's silicon die can become a building block that can be utilised in a chiplet-based SoC design".

Netronome is tipping its Network Flow Processor (NFP) architecture into the effort. The other six vendors' contributions are:

• Embedded FPGA technology from Achronix;
• ASIC technology with a data centre focus from Global Foundry;
• The Glasswing USR SerDes interface technology from Kandou;
• NXP's Multicore Arm SoC technology;
• Sarcina is contributing its packaging technology, which it says targets complex, high pin-count, high-speed chips; and
• SiFive is offering its RISC-V Core IP as a chiplet.

The OSDA Workgroup is soliciting participation at the application layer, memory management layer, link layer, PHY interface layer, and the substrate layer.

Ciena adds cloudy Insights

Ciena has clouded up a bunch of analytics into a single offering called Insights Service, in a three-tier subscription model.

NetOps can use Discover to get visibility of network assets, service availability, network health, and risks; machine learning helps process trend information for network optimisation in the Analyze offering; and Predict is designed to help spot likely network issues before they occur.

As well as supporting the company's own packet optical solutions, Ciena said it also supports third-party vendor kit.

Different tiers are selected according to the visibility the customer needs, the offering includes customisation and implementation services like network audit, geo-analysis, optimisation, and integration with IT service management.

Mobileum buys Evolved Intelligence

US mobile roaming risk management vendor Mobileum this week acquired Brit company Evolved Intelligence for an undisclosed sum.

Evolved Intelligence specialises in providing security for the notoriously vulnerable SS7 telecommunications signalling protocol, and also offers roaming and signalling analytics products.

Mobileum promised to maintain Evolved Intelligence's platform and architecture, while integrating it with its own Active Intelligence platform.

The deal also gives the US company a better presence in Europe.

Verisign exits DDoS protection biz

Neustar and Verisign have signed an agreement that will see Verisign exit DDoS, DNS Firewall, and DNS managed services.

The info-services provider will absorb Verisign's Security Services customers into its Digital Defence and Performance solutions,

The buyer promises a “seamless transition” for Verisign customers, while Verisign will focus its attention on “critical Internet infrastructure”, including root zone management, root server management, .gov and .edu operation, and authoritative resolution for the .com and .net domains. ®