Silicon photonics: concerns but viable and still evolving

Blaine Bateman set himself an ambitious goal when he started researching the topic of silicon photonics. The president of the management consultancy, EAF LLC, wanted to answer some key questions for a broad audience, not just academics and researchers developing silicon photonics but executives working in data centres, telecom and IT.

The result is a 192-page report entitled Silicon Photonics: Business Situation Report, 59 pages alone being references. In contrast to traditional market research reports, there is also no forecast or company profiles. 

Blaine Bateman's risk meter for silicon photonics. Eleven key elements needed to deploy a silicon photonics solution were considered. And these were assessed from the perspective of various communities involved or impacted by the technology, from silicon providers to cloud-computing users. Source: EAF LLC.

“I thought it would be helpful to give people a business view,” says Bateman.

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The connected vehicle - driving in the cloud

Cars are already more silicon than steel. As makers add LTE high speed broadband, they are destined to become more app than automobile. The possibilities that come with connecting your car to the cloud are scintillating. No wonder Gil Golan, director at General Motors' Advanced Technical Center in Israel, says the automotive industry is at an 'inflection point'.

"If you put LTE to the vehicle ... you are going to open a very wide pipe and you can send to the cloud and get results with almost no latency"

Gil Golan, General Motors

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Arista Networks embeds optics to boost 100 Gig port density

Arista Networks' latest 7500E switch is designed to improve the economics of building large-scale cloud networks.

The platform packs 30 Terabit-per-second (Tbps) of switching capacity in an 11 rack unit (RU) chassis, the same chassis as Arista's existing 7500 switch that, when launched in 2010, was described as capable of supporting several generations of switch design.   

"The CFP2 is becoming available such that by the end of this year there might be supply for board vendors to think about releasing them in 2014. That is too far off."

Martin Hull, Arista Networks

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Alcatel-Lucent adds networking to enhance the cloud

Alcatel-Lucent has developed an architecture that addresses the networking aspects of cloud computing. Dubbed CloudBand, the system will enable operators to deliver network-enhanced cloud services to enterprise customers. Operators can also use CloudBand to deliver their own telecom services.  

“As far as we know there is no other system that bridges the gap between the network and the cloud"

Dor Skuler, Alcatel-Lucent

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Calient brings optical switching to the data centre

Calient Technologies has redesigned its 3D MEMS optical switch technology to address emerging data centre and cloud computing requirements.

Source: Calient

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Fulcrum's Alta switch chips add programmable pipeline to keep pace with standards

Briefing:  Data centre switching 

Part 2: Ethernet switch chips

Fulcrum Microsystems has announced its latest FocalPoint chip family of Ethernet switches. The Alta FM6000 series family supports up to 72 10-Gigabit ports and can process over one billion packets a second.

“Instead of every top-of-rack switch having a CPU subsystem, you could put all the horsepower into a set of server blades”

Gary Lee, Fulcrum Microsystems

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Is Broadcom’s chip powering Juniper’s Stratus?

Briefing:  Data centre switching

Part 1: Single-layer switch architectures

Juniper Networks’ Stratus switch architecture, designed for next-generation data centres, is several months away from trials. First detailed in 2009, Stratus is being engineered as a single-layer switch with an architecture that will scale to support tens of thousands of 10 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) ports.

Stratus will be in customer trials in early 2011.

Andy Ingram, Juniper Networks

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