<font color=RoyalBlue>Intel Focuses on Back-End Communications
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By Alex Romanelli -- Electronic News, 6/3/2003
Intel Corp. today continues its push into the communications space, this time focused on the back-end infrastructure of telecommunication equipment providers, taking on giants like Sun Microsystems Inc.
At Supercomm 2003 in Atlanta today, Intel announced it is working with Hewlett-Packard Co., Alcatel and others to spread its technology across a number of communications form factors.
“There is not one single form factor that meets all the different requirements companies have,” said Wendell Wenjen, product marketing manager for Intel’s telecommunication platforms. “So we have different form factors for different classes of application: AdvancedTCA, carrier grade rack mount servers and Hampton-T.”
Intel is focusing its efforts on communications technologies that will utilize its Itanium processor, embedded Intel Architecture processors and packet processing technology. Intel’s strategy is to offer customers a choice of hardware form factor on which to standardize, upon which they can run their own software stack. The company believes this offers tremendous cost savings to equipment providers.
“We’re pulling together an entire ecosystem to let people have a great degree of choice among all these platforms, enabling people to have access to our silicon and the choice above that silicon,” said Ron Peck, director of marketing for Intel’s communications platforms.
HP plans to offer Intel-based rack mount servers (RMS) and products using Intel technology meeting the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA) specification. AdvancedTCA was ratified in December and can be used as a blade architecture. This provides Intel with a common platform to into which it can fit its packet processing architecture. Intel said RMS and AdvancedTCA would allow telecommunication equipment providers to effectively consolidate platform designs around a re-usable, flexible and interoperable platform that is optimized for wireless and wire line network infrastructure as well as enterprise network edge applications.
“We are extending our relationship with HP from the back-end further out into the infrastructure where the AdvancedTCA is going to play,” Peck said. “That is a big deal for us because it puts system integration above AdvancedTCA, which is really fitting because at Supercomm you’ll see the first round of products coming out for that standard.”
Intel has begun shipping its second generation of carrier-grade telecom server platforms, which use its Xeon processor, and Alcatel is already using the TIGPR2U server. Intel’s Itanium chip will show up in its telecom products during 2004, Peck said. Intel will act as OEM for the carrier-grade RMS, with HP delivering the Intel-based RMS to equipment providers in Q3.
“We see rack mounted servers coming in primarily across from enterprise in the back-end communications, meaning that they really end up being predominantly existing server designs, and then people harden them for enterprise,” Peck said. “What’s compelling about that is it brings with it the existing software structures that come out of that side of the world and a remarkable change in economics.”
Intel also extends its existing enterprise blade agreement with IBM Corp. into back-end communications. Codenamed Hamptom-T, this Intel server uses a modular based standards infrastructure, offering a good mix of I/O and processing requirements, Wenjen said. Hampton-T is based on existing Intel enterprise technology, using the same enterprise blades but with a new chassis designed specifically for the central office environment.
e-insite.net
June 3, 2003
<font color=DarkBlue>HP Shows Off its 'Carrier-Grade' Attitude
</font>By Michael Singer
About 25 years ago, Hewlett-Packard (Quote, Company Info) began making servers and networking products for the telecommunications industry.
Tuesday, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based computer and printer maker reminded customers of that as it launched its latest carrier class rack-mount server.
The company said its HP cc3310, is designed specifically for network equipment providers (NEPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) that supply fixed and mobile operators and who want to get away from custom, proprietary systems (more on that in a minute). HP Director Of Carrier-Grade Server Christine Martino told internetnews.com that boils its choice down to Intel running Linux, which seems to be very popular these days.
"By and large the requests are for Linux with maybe a few requests for Windows," Martino said. "About 80 to 90 percent of the customers we've talked to are either running Linux or are working on running Linux in the near term."
The cc3310 builds on the higher end of the company's two main models and is a NEBS Level 3-certified rack-mount server running Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1. Configured with either single or dual Intel Xeon processors running at 2.4 GHz; 12 gigabytes of DDR266 SDRAM DIMM memory, the servers support up to two redundant, hot swappable disk drives and 292 gigabytes of disk storage. The units are made to cover several workloads at once: media gateways, signal gateways, media servers, softswitches. The servers also come with either an AC or a DC option.
HP says customers will be able to order in July with shipping in August. Prices have not yet been determined. The units also come with and extended sales life (3 years) and support life (8 years). Martino said that is that is significant because it could take an equipment provider that long to develop applications for its customers.
The new servers round out HP's portfolio of carrier grade systems to ones based on Linux and Intel Xeon processors; HP NonStop servers; HP PA-RISC platforms running HP-UX; and HP ProLiant servers, based on Intel processors running Linux and Windows.
As first reported two-years ago, Intel and HP have been working on a carrier-class line of products based on the Itanium chip family. HP says its cc-series servers running the 64-bit processors are expected next year.
"It will become the flagship of our product line, but there will be co-existence with Xeon," said Martino.
Building on that relationship, HP also said it has joined Intel's (Quote, Company Info) Communication Alliance (ICA) as a premier member. The membership signals the chipmaker's move to advance on IBM and Sun and other proprietary systems to migrate to a system on IA - Linux.
"The telco server industry is really seeing a shift away from some of the proprietary systems that were for so long the staple upon which carriers relied," In-Stat/MDR senior analyst said. "As both the processors and operating systems found in enterprise markets have risen to the reliability standards the service providers have come to expect -- specifically for x86-based CPUs and Linux -- the significant cost saving that these architectures bring are being looked at very favorably by today's cost-sensitive telecommunications companies."
While IBM recently introduced its carrier-class products for telcos and ISPs, it is based on blades, HP debates that kind of strategy is not the best route for data centers.
"IBM's servers is not based on hardware standards - they have a design for the communication industry only," said Martino. "True benefit from bladed architecture is that one that is based to create the ultimate solution for you."
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