On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 11:52 AM Mark Tinka <mark.tinka@seacom.com> wrote:
On 6/Aug/20 17:43, Mel Beckman wrote:
I don’t think you’re going to move those volumes with Intel X86 chips. For example, AT&T’s Open Compute Project whitebox architecture is based on Broadcom Jericho2 processors, with aggregate on-chip throughput of 9.6 Tbps, and which support 24 ports at 400 Gbps each. This is where AT&T’s 5G slicing is taking place.
My point exactly.
If much of the cloud-native is happening on servers with Intel chips, and part of the micro-services is to also provide data plane functionality at that level, I don't see how it can scale for legacy mobile operators. It might make sense for niche, start-up mobile operators with little-to-no traffic serving some unique case, but not the classics we have today.
Isn't this just, really: 1) some network gear with SDN bits that live on the next-rack over servers/kubes 2) services (microservices!) that do the SDN functions AND NFV functions AND billing (extending IMS to the edge etc)
Now, if they are writing their own bits of code on or for white boxes based on Broadcom et al, not sure that falls in the realm of "micro-services with Kubernetes". But I could be wrong.
the discussion (I think) got conflated here... there's: "network equipment" and "microservices equipment" (service equipment?) and really 'I need a fast, cheap network device I can dynamically program for things which don't really smell like 'DFZ size LPM routing"' is just code for: "sdn control the switch, sending traffic either at 'default' or based on 'service data' some microservice architecture of NFV things.
Intel has developed nothing like this, and has had to resort to acquisition of multi-chip solutions to get these speeds (e.g. its purchase of Barefoot Networks Tofino2 IP).
The X86 architecture is too complex and carries too much non-network-related baggage to be a serious player in 5G slicing.
Which we, as network operators, can all agree on.
But the 5G folk seem to have other ideas, so I just want to see what is actually truth, and what's noise.
5g folk seem to have lots of good marketing, and reasons to sell complexity to their carrier 'partners' (captive prisoners? maybe that's too pejorative :) )