Except for some edge cases where extreme low-latency or high bandwidth is absolutely required, the Ethernet protocol absolutely rules networking in the datacenter, around the campus, and in our homes. …
Tailoring systems for specific jobs is one of the foundational themes of The Next Platform, so we like to keep an eye on the segments of the systems market that have a particular platform bend to them. …
For the past two decades, Intel has taken on the processor makers for servers and storage in the datacenter and vanquished all but a few suppliers of alternative architectures from the glass house. …
One size does not fit all when it comes to merchant silicon chips that are used to build network devices for enterprise, hyperscale, and service provider customers. …
Facebook and its peers in the hyperscale sector have been pushing the very closed network switch business to open up and embrace hardware designs that look more like X86 servers and that are based on a Linux operating system. …
Sometimes a microserver is just a little too micro to do the job, something that a lot of skeptics have been saying about so-called “wimpy core” machines since the idea took off about five years ago. …
It is no accident that virtualizing the network has taken longer than virtualizing servers or storage, and it is similarly not a coincidence that the hyperscale datacenter operators and a small number of very large businesses have decided to build their own switches and routers operating systems for these devices. …
The so-called industry standard server, by which most people mean a machine based on an X86 processor and generally one made by Intel, has utterly transformed the datacenter. …
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