Server Hypervisors, Vsphere
prnewswire | August 29, 2023
Napatech™ (OSLO: NAPA.OL), a leading provider of programmable Smart Network Interface Cards (SmartNICs) and Infrastructure Processing Units (IPU) used in cloud, enterprise and telecom datacenter networks, today announced the availability of the Napatech's first 400Gbps programmable SmartNIC solutions, leveraging the latest Intel Agilex® 7 FPGAs to deliver best-in-class performance for applications in security, cloud services, network monitoring and recording.
Enterprises and OEMs providing high-performance solutions for network monitoring and recording require NICs with a performance level that matches the high PCI Express (PCIe) bandwidth available in the latest servers such as those based on 4th Gen Intel Xeon® Scalable Processors. The new Napatech NT400 SmartNIC platform, based on the Intel® FPGA SmartNIC N6000-PL Platform, addresses this need through a PCIe Gen 4 16-lane host interface which enables full-duplex 2x100Gbps traffic between network ports and host applications. Similarly, for applications like the 5G packet core in telecom infrastructure that require high-bandwidth inline processing of network data, the NT400 platform sustains a total 400G of traffic over tens of millions of flows.
The NT400 programmable SmartNIC platform includes two QSFP56 network ports, supporting up to 2x200G traffic with the flexibility to configure 10G, 25G, 40G, 50G, 100G and 200G network links. The SmartNIC hardware is complemented by Napatech's portfolio of production-grade software packages, including Link-Capture™ for use cases such as network monitoring and recording, Link-Virtualization™ that provides a virtualized data plane for cloud services and Link-Inline™ for inline applications such as 5G User Plane Function (UPF). These integrated solutions deliver a true "IT experience" whereby the user just installs the card and the software, immediately achieving seamless acceleration of their application with no requirement to directly program the SmartNIC itself.
At the core of the NT400 platform is the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA F-Tile chiplet, which incorporates a configurable, hardened Ethernet protocol stack for supporting rates from 10G to 400G. Napatech chose the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA for a host of reasons, including scalability options that allow support for five different configurations that meet various price, performance, power and feature goals, tailored to specific customer applications and use cases. The F-Tile features are critical in enabling the NT400 to operate within the space and power limitations of standard servers deployed in network appliances, data centers and edge locations.
"As the networking landscape continues to evolve, SmartNICs emerge as the predominant growth catalyst in the expansive NIC market, poised to reach $3.3 billion annually by 2025" said Manoj Sukumaran, Principal Analyst for Datacenter Compute and Networking at Omdia. "High bandwidth programmable Ethernet adapters require very fine optimization in hardware and software to ensure deterministic and predictable processing time and making them suitable for real-time networking applications. Napatech is among the very few vendors who could provide highly optimized SmartNICs and software solutions leveraging FPGAs from vendors like Intel, and deliver highly efficient network offload capabilities" he added.
"The NT400 platform represents the latest generation within our portfolio of SmartNIC solutions," said Jarrod Siket, Chief Marketing Officer at Napatech. "We will deliver multiple SKUs based on this platform, providing products with memory configurations as well features like time synchronization and management ports that are precisely tuned to the requirements of our customers' applications, all packaged with the applicable production-grade software."
"We are delighted to see Napatech choose the Intel Agilex 7 FPGA for their leading-edge SmartNIC solutions," said Mike Fitton, Vice President Programmable Solutions Group and General Manager, Network Business Division at Intel. "The combination of our FPGAs, which deliver high performance, and power efficiency plus a rich feature set for the most demanding applications, together with Napatech's production-grade hardware and software, helps ensure that customers can deliver leading solutions for a wide range of enterprise and telecom applications."
About Napatech
Napatech is the leading supplier of SmartNIC solutions used in cloud, enterprise, and telecom datacenters. Through commercial-grade software suites integrated with high-performance hardware, Napatech accelerates network infrastructure and security workloads to deliver best-in-class system-level performance while maximizing the availability of server compute resources for applications and services.
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Server Virtualization
businesswire | August 03, 2023
Tachyum® today announced that it has completed porting of all the software necessary for chip validation on the Prodigy FPGA prototype before it is sent for tape out with the successful running of the Xen hypervisor on a QEMU software emulator.
Xen is a type-1 hypervisor providing services that allow multiple virtual machines to run on a single physical host system, sharing resources such as memory, processing and devices. Its bare metal capabilities allow the Xen hypervisor to communicate directly from the host’s hardware, acting like a lightweight operating system. It supports four types of virtualization: paravirtualization, full hardware virtualization, full virtualization with a set of paravirtualization drivers, and paravirtualization with hardware virtualization support.
Tachyum demonstrated its support of XEN running in three different modes:
Standard “dom0” mode – the most privileged domain and the only virtual machine that has direct access to hardware by default. From dom0, the hypervisor can be managed and unprivileged domains (domU) can be launched.
Hyperlaunch – enabled seamless transition for existing systems that require a dom0. Provides a new general capability to build and launch alternative configurations of VMs, including support for static partitioning and accelerated start of VMs during host boot while adhering to the principles of least privileged.
Dom0less – a set of Xen features that enable the deployment of a Xen system without a control domain (dom0). It is a hyperlaunch-like configuration with static partitioning without using dom0. This means that there are no virtual devices and hardware resources are statically assigned to a specific virtual machine using the passthrough method.
“In order to assure that Prodigy truly becomes the means for transforming data centers into Universal Computing Centers, we need to ensure that it can properly handle any number of components, software and technology available now or in the future,” said Dr. Radoslav Danilak, founder and CEO of Tachyum. “By successfully running Xen in our Prodigy software emulator, we can confidently assure organizations that they will reap the full benefits of Prodigy when it becomes commercially available. I’m proud of the work of our highly skilled software team as they continue to complete the final components needed before tape out.”
Prodigy delivers unprecedented data center performance, power, and economics, reducing CAPEX and OPEX significantly. Because of its utility for both high-performance and line-of-business applications, Prodigy-powered data center servers can seamlessly and dynamically switch between workloads, eliminating the need for expensive dedicated AI hardware and dramatically increasing server utilization. Tachyum's Prodigy delivers performance up to 4x that of the highest performing x86 processors (for cloud workloads) and up to 3x that of the highest performing GPU for HPC and 6x for AI applications.
About Tachyum
Tachyum is transforming the economics of AI, HPC, public and private cloud workloads with Prodigy, the world’s first Universal Processor. Prodigy unifies the functionality of a CPU, a GPGPU, and a TPU in a single processor that delivers industry-leading performance, cost, and power efficiency for both specialty and general-purpose computing. When hyperscale data centers are provisioned with Prodigy, all AI, HPC, and general-purpose applications can run on the same infrastructure, saving companies billions of dollars in hardware, footprint, and operational expenses. As global data center emissions contribute to a changing climate, and consume more than four percent of the world’s electricity—projected to be 10 percent by 2030—the ultra-low power Prodigy Universal Processor is a potential breakthrough for satisfying the world’s appetite for computing at a lower environmental cost. Prodigy, now in its final stages of testing and integration before volume manufacturing, is being adopted in prototype form by a rapidly growing customer base, and robust purchase orders signal a likely IPO in late 2024. Tachyum has offices in the United States and Slovakia.
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Virtual Desktop Strategies, Virtual Server Management
PR Newswire | August 25, 2023
Liquidware,the leader in digital workspace management, today announced their first SaaS solution, Liquidware CommandCTRL™, is now generally available at this week's VMware Explore event. CommandCTRL is the only SaaS real-time remediation solution that includes a DVR-like function that provides expeditious point-in-time problem solving. The many other features provide business benefits such as reduced time to resolution of incidents that increases productivity and improves user experience. CommandCTRL is a cost effective solution as there is no infrastructure required with minimal training to get up to speed. With the majority of troubleshooting being done in the background while the user is uninterrupted provides improved user sentiment.
CommandCTRL has four key differentiators to other solutions on the market today:
DVR-like playback functionality- Playback-mode captures 30-days history so admins can see exactly what occurred in the environment at specific dates and times
AI integration - with ChatGPT for process identification
Protocol mirroring - displays the protocol to the physical machine endpoint
Switch - seamlessly switch and navigate between two distinct environments: the local desktop and the cloud-based desktop.
"CommandCTRL fills a gap in the market for assisting organizations in expediting incident resolution, the solution is purpose-built to support interactive remediation of remote workspaces," commentedJason Mattox, CTO Liquidware. "While CommandCTRL is a standalone product, we envisage many customers buying it to accompany their Stratusphere™ UX investment."
In a recent Gartner® research report* it states, "To address the demands of digital business, IT service desks must reduce the number of simple and repeatable incidents and service requests they process manually." Gartner recommends Infrastructure and Operations leaders focused on IT operations transformation should, "Eliminate the cause of low-value, avoidable issues and requests to focus business productivity teams on high-priority work."
CommandCTRL adds another dimension of enterprise management to Liquidware's industry-leading solutions that include ProfileUnity™ user environment management, FlexApp™ application layering and Stratusphere™ UX digital experience monitoring.
Other key features include:
Real-time metrics data updates every three seconds
Real-time remediation actions speed problem identification and resolution
Threshold violations are highlighted in real-time mode and inDVR, these highlights alert the admin to end users' problems in seconds
Admins have two separate ways to shadow users: Quick Assist and Remote Assist
Multi-tenant membership allows partners to be a member of customers' sites to assist with remediation
Powershell and Cmd options for creating scripts to automate needed functions
Full scripting store organizes custom and external scripts for easy access and implementation.
About Liquidware
Liquidware is a leader in digital workspace management solutions for Windows desktops. The company's products encompass all facets of management to ensure the ultimate user experience across all workspaces – physical, virtual, DaaS or in the cloud. Enterprises across the globe utilize Liquidware solutions to dramatically decrease time spent managing desktops, while delivering increased security, flexibility, and scalability. Supported platforms include Microsoft physical, Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), Windows 365, Citrix Desktops, VMware Horizon, Amazon WorkSpaces, and Dizzion Frame. Liquidware products are available through a global network of partners.
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