Intel announced that it is collaborating with América Móvil in Latin America, working in an advisory role to help the operator transform and upgrade its network, or to "cloudify" it, so to speak.
The news follows Intel's previously announced collaboration wtih Verizon (NYSE: VZ) in the U.S. on 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT). Intel today also announced the expansion of the Intel Xeon Processor D-1500 product family and new Ethernet controllers to boost network performance and bandwidth.
As mobile operators move further into the IoT world and toward 5G, Intel wants to help them get ready for the transition. New offerings in the Intel Xeon Processor D-1500 product family provide a foundation for extending intelligence from the network core to the edge for better performance and latency, the company said.
The Intel Xeon processor D-1500 product family is Intel's third generation 64-bit SoC and the first based on Intel Xeon processor technology. Intel is expanding the family with eight new processors, ranging from 4 cores to 8 cores that bring increased intelligence and reliability to various networking devices and allow designs to scale depending on the performance requirements.
Intel earlier in the year announced a Xeon D that was micro server-centric, but this one in particular has more of a network and storage optimization feel to it, according to Lynn Comp, director of Market Development for Intel's Network Platforms Group. "The goal is the to bring the capabilities of virtualization, high availability … further out into the edge of the network, so base stations and RANs, not just the control plane but starting to really extend into the data plane and towards the network edge to be able to support these new capabilities."
Two other new products focus inside the data center, multi-host and single-host controllers designed to handle the dense east/west traffic that happens between virtual machines. As cloud densities have grown greater, virtual machines need to communicate with each other more and more, and as a result you need a different kind of capability within the Ethernet supporting functions so the VM can be as agile as possible, she said.
Intel recently was one of the partners featured on stage when Verizon announced its IoT strategy and ThingSpace, a web-based platform designed for developers to have an easy on-ramp on to the IoT. Intel wasn't part of the inaugural partners in Verizon's 5G Technology Forum partners but later joined Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC), Cisco, Nokia (NYSE:NOK), Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) and Samsung in that effort. Intel has been working with Verizon on SDN and NFV for some time and it's getting even more entwined with the operator's efforts to prepare for the future.
Intel is also growing its Network Builders program, which now includes more than 180 companies, including service providers and OEMs and independent software vendors (ISVs) like Red Hat. Intel announced an expanded collaboration with Red Hat, which is the first ISV to actively contribute in all key focus areas of the Intel Builders Fast Track in order to accelerate the rollout of the new agile network.
For more:
- see this release
- see this product fact sheet
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