Digital Walkabout

Frustrated with dropped calls?

A new 4:1 telecommunications strategy and embedded processors from Intel mean fewer dropped calls for end users and cost savings for telecommunications providers.

You might have had this experience before: You’re on a phone call on your morning commute. In the middle of an urgent conversation, your call is dropped. Annoyed with your mobile carrier, you try to reconnect to your important call.

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This common frustration is due to the increasing demand across the global telecommunications network. For instance, a series of brief text messages between you and a friend is a much larger workload than a phone call—or even a day spent connected to the internet via a traditional computer. This is because each text message must be processed as a signal processing package, including a unique connect and disconnect (just like an entire phone call) per text.

As demand continues to increase, many network service providers and telecom equipment manufacturers struggle to keep up with the overwhelming workloads and the rapid advances in communication network technology. In addition, different microarchitectures are deployed for different communication workloads, and a single network element, such as a router or a switch, will often contain multiple architectures. Multiply that complexity across the entire communication network, and service providers and telecom equipment manufacturers face greater development costs, the need for multiple development teams, and longer time-to-market.

Workload consolidation is key

To address these challenges in the communications ecosystem, a team in the Embedded and Communications Group (ECG) at Intel is working to reduce the number of architectures needed by each network element. According to Steve Price, Director of Intel's ECG Performance Products Marketing, “providing a simplified architecture is a significant value proposition” for both Intel and communications customers.

The team is delivering on a strategy called 4-to-1 Communications Workload Consolidation. This means that they are working to move four different types of communications workloads—application processing, control processing, packet processing, and signal processing—onto IA.

Traditionally, Intel’s communication processors have primarily been designed for application processing workloads. “We win at application, hands down,” Steve explained. “That’s what we’re known for. Nobody does application better than we do.”

But with the recently released multi-core Intel® Xeon™ processor 5500 series (codenamed Jasper Forest), IA has moved into control processing as well. That has made customers like Huawei and Cisco take notice. With high performance and low energy demands (meaning less heat generation for form factors that are often too space constrained for many heat sinks or cooling fans), Jasper Forest has taken Intel from practically no footprint in control processing arena to winning 4 out of 5 major customers.

From 2-to-1 to 4-to-1

And the advancements don’t stop there. With the next generation, Intel will make significant traction in packet processing. Finally, a future generation embedded processor will then consolidate signal processing, as well.

Workload consolidation combined with the tremendous scalability possible on IA offers savings to customers in terms of development costs. Developers will only have to use one programming code base, and the simplified programming will mean that senior engineers can focus on creating nuance within the system rather than working on basic programming.

It also gives telecom customers the opportunity to create a “communication cloud computing” environment—a virtual environment where workloads can be moved or distributed evenly across equipment. Ultimately, this virtual environment will enable service providers to buy less equipment and still maintain a “load balance.”

This 4-to-1 communications workload consolidation offers a bevy of benefits for telecommunications providers and customers. So what’s in it for you? You get to look forward to a world of no dropped calls.

 

 

IDF 2010

The Policy of Innovation

As a Technology Strategist, my charter is to drive bold technologies to transform my organisation, deliver world-class technical innovation, know the external research community, know my organisation, and provide technical leadership. I thus spend a significant amount of my time looking for how to achieve that transformation through "innovation". With a smaller portion of my time, I present at a number of conferences on these strategies, their associated technologies, and how they can be applied to solve real-world problems.

One recent presentation was given at CloudCamp Hamburg. One of the reasons I chose to do so was to reach a new audience. The sessions at the event were quite good, focussing on developments in the business models, usage models and technologies of the Cloud. Yet, I read posts such as this one, and wonder that, based on my experience in Europe and the Americas, if there a) is a problem with the state of innovation in Europe, or rather, b) the taxonomy of innovation exemplified in the post is a problem in and of itself.

Anyone who has spent any time with me will know that I am not one for fussing about with taxonomies. I feel that, essentially, these are a tertiary consideration, and to be addressed after what I consider to be the 'real work of taking a concept from idea to reality. My personal opinion is that taxonomies are pedantry, used to constrain, limit and control the process of innovation, and are too often used as a device to be heard, rather than to solve any problems of significance. Yet, when I hear or read the use of the word 'innovation' or phrase 'big picture' to focus only on business models, and ignore usage and technology, think there's something amiss. If we limit 'innovation' to *exclude* usage and technology advances, we are truly advancing style over substance.

Most of the widely recognized innovations in history which have advanced the standard of living for many in modern civilisation arose from usage or technology innovation addressing very specific, detailed problems. The innovation may have encompassed a grand vision, but that vision arose from connecting the dots which started with solving a specific problem. To make the blanket claim that innovation is hindered by being too "busy nitpicking on time consuming details" makes as much sense as reality television. An artist worth the enduring attention of the public will need to have mastered the fundamentals of their craft; a reality 'star' will exit the spotlight in relatively short order (although not fast enough for some of us) since their recognition was purely situational, and they had not addressed any of the 'time consuming details' necessary to sustain any career in entertainment.

Based on my assumptions, the iPhone is 10% innovation and 90% evolution. The device has truly been innovative in its enablement of Augmented Reality - Apple improved a number of existing technologies such as touch screen, application integration and metadata management, to provide a usage model which was a step beyond the expectations of a mobile device. The innovation lay in how the individual technologies were deployed to provide a better (and now widely adopted/mimicked) usage model; the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Yet even the improvements in the parts, not to say new usage model, required a foundation rooted in time consuming details. Ask any Apple engineer working on any of the technologies that were developed or revised, and they can attest to how much effort - deep in the bowels of hardware, software and/or user experience engineering - was required of each and every one of them to deliver them.

The innovation of Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and subsequently the Rich Services Cloud - something with which I have been intimately involved - arose from similar efforts. The underlying engines supporting this, such as Flash, had already been widely deployed for nearly a decade, but it was the understanding of the limitations of Web 1.0, at the level of nitpicking on time consuming details, married with the vision for a rich yet agile development and user experience, that drove the development of platforms such as Flex and Apollo/AIR, Silverlight, and now HTML5/Chrome. Each of these implementations of RIA innovation recognised that the real world, devil-in-the-detail problems of Web 1.0's fully remoted architecture were non-performant, did not scale, and limited the web experience to very simple, highly constrained models

Innovation is not in the vision itself, or in the nano-level details, but in how recognising the vision that can be realised from creating or enhancing bits at the level of time consuming detail, and successfully mapping them. Business across Europe may not have adopted North American-style Public Cloud, with its Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) user experience and generally coarse Service Level Agreements (SLAs), but that does not reflect their difficulty with innovation. Rather, it reflects that organisations across Europe have chosen to focus their energies solving some very important problems, after already bravely diving into related areas such as the Open Business Initiative wholly, and learning important lessons from such moves. Europe has proven itself truly innovative in business models, usage models, and technology, as exemplified in it's world-leading or -challenging development in areas of mobile, automation, and web, to name a few. European organisations have not been shy to embark on bold endeavours to transform their business and usage models by developing, adapting or adopting innovative technologies.

Likewise, I've encountered plenty of innovation in North America arising from the unabashed confrontation of time-consuming-detail problems presented by the challenges of Cloud Computing. There have been plenty of clever applications of Cloud, but no matter how cool they may be, the real innovation, in my definition, is in the usage models and technologies that have enabled them together with a number of not-so-cool apps. Throwing something on the Cloud with a slick interface and a minimal SLA isn't innovation. Developing the foundations for HTML5 and Native Client Libraries, developing MapReduce and Hadoop, developing image recognition algorithms that scale by shifting cycles across compute resources based on capabilities and utilisation  - these mapped to new business and usage models is innovation.

ARM unveils new 'super' core

This week executives at UK chip designer ARM Holdings came to Silicon Valley to unveil their latest chip design: the ARM Cortex A15 MPCore, code named “Eagle,” received with much excitement by the tech press.

 

Om Malik of GigaOm wrote, “I distinctly remember the day when Intel Corp. launched the Pentium processor. It was the day desktop computing changed for me and for a lot of others. It was also the day when Intel started to put a gap between itself and all its wannabe processor rivals. I bring up that day because I feel that we are about to see a similar shift in the world of mobile, thanks to ARM Holdings.”

 

Tom’s Hardware, which called it a “super chip,” said the Cortex A15 “promises to deliver a 5x performance improvement over today's advanced smartphone processors, within a comparable energy footprint. The Cortex-A15 processor has the projected headroom to run at up to 2.5GHz and is targeted at manufacture in 32nm, 28nm, with a roadmap extending to 20nm.”

 

The New York Times reported that ARM executives said consumers “could expect to see smartphones in 2012 that have about the same performance as a current business laptop. The fastest phones at that time will have four 2.5-gigahertz processor cores and be able to handle things as complex as running virtualization software.

 

“People could theoretically use the virtualization software to give their phones different personalities, like a work version with added security and a personal one with entertainment applications.”

 

ARM’s upcoming Cortex-A15 core

 

While the NYT gave a 2012 estimate for products with the A15, other sites said it would be more like 2013 before they hit the market. Delays wouldn’t be surprising—ARM’s current top-of-the-line Cortex A9 processor still isn’t in any widely available smartphones.

Nevertheless, many writers are already foreseeing a titanic struggle emerging between ARM chipmakers and Intel.

 

“ARM's A15 processor could be described as a cloud on Intel's cloud computing horizon,” wrote Peter Clark in EETimes.

 

ARM executives have not been shy about saying the new core could be used in servers, The Wall Street Journal said, “…which would help propel ARM into Intel’s stronghold in corporate data centers.” The WSJ noted that execs from Dell and Hewlett-Packard, “two big Intel customers” attended the ARM event.

ARM unveils new 'super' core

This week executives at UK chip designer ARM Holdings came to Silicon Valley to unveil their latest chip design: the ARM Cortex A15 MPCore, code named “Eagle,” received with much excitement by the tech press.

 

Om Malik of GigaOm wrote, “I distinctly remember the day when Intel Corp. launched the Pentium processor. It was the day desktop computing changed for me and for a lot of others. It was also the day when Intel started to put a gap between itself and all its wannabe processor rivals. I bring up that day because I feel that we are about to see a similar shift in the world of mobile, thanks to ARM Holdings.”

 

Tom’s Hardware, which called it a “super chip,” said the Cortex A15 “promises to deliver a 5x performance improvement over today's advanced smartphone processors, within a comparable energy footprint. The Cortex-A15 processor has the projected headroom to run at up to 2.5GHz and is targeted at manufacture in 32nm, 28nm, with a roadmap extending to 20nm.”

 

The New York Times reported that ARM executives said consumers “could expect to see smartphones in 2012 that have about the same performance as a current business laptop. The fastest phones at that time will have four 2.5-gigahertz processor cores and be able to handle things as complex as running virtualization software.

 

“People could theoretically use the virtualization software to give their phones different personalities, like a work version with added security and a personal one with entertainment applications.”

 

ARM’s upcoming Cortex-A15 core

 

While the NYT gave a 2012 estimate for products with the A15, other sites said it would be more like 2013 before they hit the market. Delays wouldn’t be surprising—ARM’s current top-of-the-line Cortex A9 processor still isn’t in any widely available smartphones.

Nevertheless, many writers are already foreseeing a titanic struggle emerging between ARM chipmakers and Intel.

 

“ARM's A15 processor could be described as a cloud on Intel's cloud computing horizon,” wrote Peter Clark in EETimes.

 

ARM executives have not been shy about saying the new core could be used in servers, The Wall Street Journal said, “…which would help propel ARM into Intel’s stronghold in corporate data centers.” The WSJ noted that execs from Dell and Hewlett-Packard, “two big Intel customers” attended the ARM event.

VMworld: It's all about mobility

The one pervasive theme from this year's VMworld has been mobility. Although the official positioning has focussed on server-centric models, the media and third party vendors have focussed on how workloads, compute and quality of experience can be moved across devices, using local resources to the fullest. Mobility is the emerging vector in cloud computing and virtualisation, and the reasons for this are clear. 

Imagine you’re a new employee in the and it’s your first day on the job. You expect from past experience at other workplaces, that you’ll get an outdated PC, a desk phone, and maybe some training. You also expect that you may be staring at your cubicle walls for some hours before IT gets around to you.  

 Rather, let's say you get a visit from your department admin. She hands you a voucher for, say, $1,500,  and a thumb drive. The admin explains that the voucher  is for purchasing the computing device of your choice, and the the thumb drive authenticates both you *and* your device to the network, where your OS and applications are waiting to be deployed to whatever device you may use.

Welcome to the mobile workplace.  If you think this scenario is too far-fetched, it’s time to rethink. Technically, it's already here. 

Traditionally, mobility has meant carrying around a standardized, company-issued PC weighing 8 to 10 pounds, fully loaded with an operating system, a stack of standard applications - many of which you won't use - and all your data. The more you carry it around, the heavier it seems, and it’s a never-ending chore for you and IT to keep your hardware and software updated, and your data secure. 

True mobility, however, provides device independence combined with device targetting. This enables the applications and data to be deployable, employing isolation, to a variety of devices, and grants you access to them from wherever you are. For example, you would choose a device for your corporate work, your home notebook, smartphone, mobile Internet device (MID), etc. Virtualisation technologies would employ a container, provided by your corporate IT, that can run on any hardware that supports the virtualisation platform. IT manages the container, deploying IT applications and data to it on the device. The environment is protected because it runs within a virtual environment employing memory and I/O isolation. Employees could run the IT environment alongside personal applications and data on the same device hardware, keeping both environments safely protected from each other.

Mobility also requires ability to move workloads from device to device, based on immediate needs, and maintain task continuity, is critical to user productivity. Employees performing tasks on one device in transit often need to, or can benefit from, moving to another device at home, or the office. The continuity of performing those tasks requires that the workload be moved, or synchronized, to the other device when that device is accessed. Users can then seamlessly switch from device to device, keeping their tasks intact. 

Two major emerging technology trends behind the concept are workspace virtualisation and the consumerisation of IT. 

Traditionally, technology became available to enterprises first and spread to consumers later. But a reverse trend—consumerization of IT—is emerging rapidly. A variety of technologies are being adopted by consumers first, who then informally introduce them into the enterprise. As the consumer market explodes with new products—lighter and smaller notebooks, netbooks, and feature-rich MIDs─employees want platforms they’re familiar with from personal use. And they’re using personal devices for work. The reality for IT shops everywhere is that consumer devices are crossing over into the workplace in increasing numbers. This unavoidable osmosis poses a real challenge for IT departments to manage and secure the maverick devices.

In the traditional computing platform model without any virtualisation, the IT applications and data become entwined in the registry, file system, and even the hardware itself. This model is complex and expensive to manage. One of IT’s largest costs is device hardware support. For employees, the model is limiting too, with little choice of client devices and an inability to run IT apps and data seamlessly alongside personal applications and data. 

With workspace virtualisation, the entire software environment—applications, data, and IT services—are moved to a low-overhead virtual container and “decoupled” from the underlying subsystems. It can be managed and updated centrally and distributed to a variety of device hardware devices. IT could configure different containers, and distribute them to different hardware platforms. There could be a standard Windows* container, a standard Linux* container, a purely Open Source container, a Software Developer’s container, etc.  

The result of implementing consumerisation and virtualisation is a flexible, platform-independent approach that can increase employees’ choices and productivity and allow IT to focus resources on providing and supporting IT services, not on managing the platform.

Combining multiple emerging technologies, a number of vendors have used used standard corporate and consumer notebooks and desktops with Intel^® Core™ i5/i7 processors running Windows or Linux. At VMworld, RingCube demonstrated deploying workspace virtualisation technologies and policy management software, using Intel Virtualisation Technology™, illustrating that along with all traditional device functionality, workspace virtualisation was used to access IT applications over the corporate network from home and office locations, clearly illustrating the feasibility of mobility. For more information on the joint RingCube/Intel efforts, see the white paper "Hardware Assisted Workspace Virtualization". 

Multiple technology vendors have defined both strategies and products with the potential to transform the way IT delivers services, including Citrix XenClient, Wanova Mirage, Phoenix Technologies’ HyperSpace, and Parallels Workstation. Combined with the continued media feedback at VMworld 2010, it is apparent that the future is here with true mobility. 

Is the operating system irrelevant?

In his keynote at VMworld 2010, VMware CEO Paul Maritz spoke of how virtualisation is radically rewriting the computing landscape, in that the existing IT model is being replaced by cloud based on virtualisation, and that IT will increasingly focus on delivering customised applications. "This is the new stack, and we are in a transition from a client/server world to the stack of the cloud era.... One thing history teaches us is that there are winners and losers in moving from stacks. But something like this will happen if we are for it or not," Maritz said.

This is but the latest in the trend toward operating system abstraction. Since viable virtualisation technologies arrived on the scene, models and architectures have shaped to serve varying needs. From type-1 hypervisors, to virtual workspaces, to rich services runtimes, the number of virtual applications have outstripped the installed base since 2007. Now, service providers have deployed vast virtual data centres, and companies investing in virtualisation are following suit in building their private and hybrid clouds - the latter in which tiered virtual machines are being created in third-party datacentres so that companies can scale to meet demand.

As virtualisation continues to expand, software practices have had to dramatically shift in kind. As the operating system abstracted development from the underlying hardware, and interpreters abstracted away from the operating system, the latest generation of platforms now abstracts away from the gory details that once dogged development and test alike. Maritz stated how "There hasn't been a lot of development in the operating system environment for 20 years. Now, a developer working with Ruby on Rails doesn't need to care about what operating system is under the hood." I would take this a step further - a developer working with HTML5, JavaScript, RoR, Flex/AIR or the rest don't need to care about what application platforms or containers are under the hood. It is difficult not to agree with Maritz that old-style software development has no place in the new, virtualised environment. Rather, new applications are needed so that companies can meld new information flows into existing applications and meet client demand.