The appetite for network bandwidth is insatiable, as is that of compute and storage, but our enthusiasm to acquire larger and larger chunks of all of these things is curtailed significantly by cost. …
If Andy Bechtolsheim, the chief technology officer at datacenter switching upstart Arista Networks, wanted to design ASICs to try to take a bigger piece of the switch pie – or more precisely, thought that this was a good idea at all – rest assured, Arista would be spending money engineering its own chips and fighting for capacity at the four remaining foundries that have advanced processes. …
The best way to make a wave is to make a big splash, which is something that Andy Bechtolsheim, perhaps the most famous serial entrepreneur in IT infrastructure, is very good at doing. …
Processing for server compute has gotten more general purpose for the past two decades and is seeing resurgence in built-for-purpose chips. …
There are two competing trends in platform designs that architects always have to contend with. …
The “Tomahawk” switch chips from Broadcom, which are based on the new 25G Ethernet standard crafted by hyperscalers, are starting to appear in more and more devices. …
It looks like networking price war is getting set to break out in the largest datacenters of the world, and this is precisely what Google and Microsoft had in mind when they formed the 25G Ethernet consortium back in July 2014. …
Everything seems to be easier for the hyperscalers than it is for large enterprises, but it is just an illusion created by the confluence of some of the best minds in IT with a whole lot of money. …
Drawing the lines where the server ends and the network begins is getting more and more difficult. …
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