Merchant Silicon in Data Centers

The data center market is undoubtedly changing towards disaggregated network infrastructures and industry experts recognize a trend that has been rapidly evolving over the last few years. Even legacy vendors have started to integrate third-party commodity silicon into their proprietary solutions to meet the operators’ needs for acceleration and uniformity. The article ‘Why Merchant Silicon Is Taking Over the Data Center Network Market’ by Emily Carr, published by Data Center Knowledge, talks about the increasing relevance of merchant silicon for today’s data center infrastructures.

IHS Markit analysts expect that 63 percent of all Ethernet switches shipping in 2022 will be merchant silicon, and even legacy vendors such as Cisco and Juniper are following this trend for disaggregation. Mike Bushong, VP of enterprise and cloud marketing for Juniper, estimates that the adoption of merchant silicon will increase rapidly throughout the data center industry. Not only are the benefits of economic nature, but operations can also be performed faster and much more efficiently by reducing diversity.

A decisive circumstance fueling this development occurred in 2016, when companies such as AT&T and the Chinese hyperscaler Tencent employed Tofino-based Barefoot Networks switches with a P4 programmable chipset. By incorporating open source software to their proprietary solutions, legacy vendors like Arista and Cisco eliminate the need for technologically advanced programmers to benefit from the complexity of white boxes, making their solutions accessible to companies of any size.

Alexander Jeffries, founder and CEO of STORDIS, talks to Data Center Knowledge about his experiences and what role the ‘STORDIS Advance Programmable Switches’ (APS) are playing in this development. Jeffries has witnessed the transition of data center networks for more than ten years, he knows the industry, he talks to customers and understands their demand for certain kind of hardware devices.

‘The kind of customers we’re talking to for these kinds of switches are quite a bit different to what we were talking to in the past,’ Jeffries says. ‘We’re getting a lot of interest from service providers – so telecommunication companies – the security environments, lots of interest in academic research, from all kinds of use cases,’ quotes the article.

 

Jeffries expects that open source will become standard in the network industry and supports the acceptance and use of open source in the German market. As a result, STORDIS is an active member and contributor to open source projects and organizations such as ONF (Open Network Foundation), P4 Language Consortium, and Open Source Business Alliance.

The company designed the APS to provide P4 programmable, open, high-performance bare metal switches delivering versatile features, such as INT and PTP, in a unique combination with powerful hardware.

 

Disclaimer:

The original article ‘Why Merchant Silicon Is Taking Over the Data Center Network Market’ by Emily Carr was published by the leading online source Data Center Knowledge on June 5th. We are not liable for the content of or any opinions expressed in the original article. Alexander Jeffries, CEO of STORDIS gave an interview in the context of the OCP, which was included in the article.

You can read the full article at https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/networks/why-merchant-silicon-taking-over-data-center-network-market

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P4 Training Course in July 2019

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July 16th – 19th, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Our latest P4 training course was again incredibly inspiring! Vladimir Gurevich from Barefoot Networks hosted the four-day course on data plane programming in P4, Tofino device architecture, and P4 Studio™ Software Development Environment (SDE). Just like the previous time, the course generated strong interest and the participants were highly motivated to learn and apply their knowledge.

P4 programming language is becoming increasingly popular among companies and developers. After a successful P4 training course in June with more than thirty attendees, the recent course hosted by STORDIS ACADEMY in collaboration with Barefoot Academy again nearly sold out. With the course, STORDIS strives to give all interested parties the chance to learn about data plane programming in P4, Tofino device architecture and P4 Studio™ Software Development Environment (SDE), and ensure a proficient realization to meet everyone’s expectations.

Twenty-seven programmers, developers and system engineers from all over Europe took part in the second P4 Training Course BA-102 hosted by Vladimir Gurevich, Director of Customer Training and Education at Barefoot Networks. BA-102 is an introductory course designed to cover a variety of material, which allows participants to easily read, understand, and modify switch.p4_16 and related APIs. Excerpts from switch.p4_16 were discussed and used as examples throughout the course. The course provided the theoretical basis to data plane development and gave the participants time for practical application of the material.

Following the previous course in June, we aspired to improve the structure of the course and amended the schedule to give every participant more time to engage in the subject and try out the theoretical content of the course. ‘I am very proud of all those motivated students; they become more and more involved each time and are already very well prepared since the first day. And just as every time, it was a pleasure to work together with STORDIS and Delta Networks to make this happen,’ Vladimir says.

Further training courses are scheduled to take place in Autumn 2019:

  • Nov. 12th – 15th

 You will find the registration form and further information about the course content at STORDIS ACADEMY.

If there are any related questions, please contact enquiries@stordis.com

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STORDIS Inside: From Apprentice to Expert

STORDIS is proud to announce that Jason O’Connell, who has been a trainee in our order processing department for the last three years, has successfully completed his apprenticeship and will be a full member of STORDIS as of today. Jason will continue to work for STORDIS in the order processing department and we will support his further career at our company. We strongly believe that a company’s responsibility goes beyond customer satisfaction and economic success. We consider it an obligation to offer young people a place to learn, help them develop their skills, and guide them through the working world in the best possible way.

Jason O’Connell has been one of our trainees since September 2016, during which time he has been introduced to the order processing department, the sales department, the accounting department, and our on-site warehouse, all of which have contributed towards an overall insight into a company operating worldwide with a wide range of different customers. He has benefited from experiencing a broad spectrum of activities within the company. He also took the chance to significantly improve his communication skills and learnt to cope with exceptional situations.

“I am thankful for the great support I had throughout my entire training and for the people who accompanied my personal development. At STORDIS I was being prepared not only for work but also for life. I learnt to keep up with the subject until it was completed and to always give one hundred percent, even for the smallest things which might seem unimportant,” Jason says.

Jason greatly appreciates the support he receives at STORDIS, the future prospects, and the possibilities for personal and professional development, and he gladly decided to maintain his position in the order processing department. He is very happy with the team and the positive work environment, and considers STORDIS to be forward-thinking and future-oriented.

 

We are happy that he decided to remain a part of the growing STORDIS team to pursue a promising career among colleagues. Sarah Dezordo, Jason’s trainer at STORDIS, is proud of him and his accomplishment. “It was great to have watched his personal development over this period of time and how well he has integrated himself into the team. I hope he will stay at STORDIS for a long time, and I wish him all the best for his future!”

We congratulate you on the completion of your apprenticeship and it’s great to have you with us, Jason!

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Use Case: Television Broadcaster

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State-of-the-art technologies in the broadcasting industry and growing standards call for increased data traffic and demand the highest levels of throughput and storage. Česká televize is a public television broadcaster in the Czech Republic delivering six channels of news, sports, family, arts and educational content, producing the majority of their content in-house. STORDIS supported Interlab, a French solution provider focusing on the broadcasting and media industry, to realize a fully integrated, high-speed, yet cost-efficient network infrastructure.

As the Open Networking Expert, STORDIS aims to drive innovation in the field of Open Networking. Therefore, it was a great opportunity to support Interlab set up a future-proof network environment for Česká televize with the most efficient combination of high-quality hardware and software. Interlab employed an Edgecore AS5712-54X switch with PICOS®, an open Layer 2/3 network operating system created by Pica8.

Open Networking Use Case: Television BroadcasterDownload

Edgecore Networks AS5712-54X

Edgecore Networks offers scalable, disaggregated network solutions. Their industry-leading products are essentially qualified to meet network requirements in different markets, particularly in the broadcasting industry. Edgecore’s complete solutions generate value for customers by offering a broad product portfolio spanning data center switches, core switches, access switches, enterprise-level wireless devices and network management tools. STORDIS endorses the high quality of Edgecore’s bare metal switches and the spectrum of possibilities their products offer.

 

Pica8 developed a Linux-based operation system which runs on a large number of conventional white box switches from various manufacturers and perfectly complements the Edgecore AS5712-54X. The unique network operating system PICOS® provides unlimited, non-disruptive control of the enterprise applications, enables monitoring dynamic traffic and security and delegation capabilities. PICOS® is fully interoperable with the existing legacy infrastructure, increasing flexibility, performance, security and reliability at a fraction of the cost, which made it the perfect choice for the Czech television broadcaster.

Open Networking Use Case: Television BroadcasterDownload

 

Do you have any question or are curious how you could benefit from Open Networking? Get in touch with us and we will help you!

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