Why Intel buys Cray's interconnect business

What does Intel's takeover offer mean for the future of optical transceivers and copper companies? Intel in the optical transceiver business slightly test depth, first, and then through the acquisition slowly back to the interconnection field.

Intel is financing the high-speed interconnection network business that buys Cray. For the recent series of acquisitions on the large canvas added a heavy color-oclaro and Opnext merged; Sumitomo Electric Deviceinnovations American Inc. (sedu) buys Emcore parallel optical devices business. The acquisition is expected to be completed in June with a 140 million dollar deal. By investing in High-performance computer technology, this strengthens Intel's position in traditional data centers.

What does Intel's takeover offer mean for the future of optical transceivers and copper companies? Intel in the optical transceiver business slightly test depth, first, and then through the acquisition slowly back to the interconnection field. Their silicon Photon team and Thunderbolt business are at the consumer level. With the acquisition and introduction of new products, Intel's strategy has become increasingly clear.

Intel purchased the Cray Gemini Technology and Aries Interconnect products this time. This is developed for Cray's next generation Cascade supercomputer. This supercomputer uses the Intel Xeon microprocessor. Gemini is an interconnection solution that delivers tens of millions of messages per second and is designed for multi-core-the strength of Intel. Aries Chip is part of the new Cascade High-performance computer system set up for the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research programme High-performance Computing project. Aries allows hundreds of thousands of x86 cores and hundreds of floating-point operations to be aggregated into hundreds of server cabinets. This Aries interconnect does not use AMD Hyper-transfer, and does not use Intel's QuickPath Interconnect bus scheme, but instead uses the Pci-express bus, which is also developed by Intel. Lightcounting that 12-channel active optical Cable (AOC) products will be used in combination with this technology. Intel is rapidly readjusting its business strategy to the smartphone and tablet market. At present they have no market in this field. Arm microprocessors currently dominate the market. Low-power arm microprocessors sometimes rank up to 600 cores per microprocessor. This is a threat to Intel's business in the data center, although the threat is not great. Intel has recently been unusually aggressive in protecting its dominance of the data center. Their recent investment in High-performance computer technology is part of their strategy.

Why use InfiniBand?

Ethernet is a protocol that applies to data center transmission distance, long-distance telecommunication transmission and global transmission. InfiniBand is how to achieve a low latency when dealing with a stack of protocols. InfiniBand is primarily used to connect servers and storage systems, which requires very low latency on a short distance, just like inside a computer. The point-to-point latency of InfiniBand is less than 1us, and Ethernet is 2.5 to 4us, depending on which machine you communicate with and their vested interests. Connect computers, large memory subsystems, Pciexpressflashram, and SSD storage-all of which are included in Intel's technical strengths.

High-end processors, such as Xeon, are not less than $1000 trillion, with only a bit of competitive pressure from AMD. Therefore, it is not surprising that integrating mergers and acquisitions in InfiniBand related technologies is the most important strategy. Intel's top program is to maximize its micro-device and eliminate the reason that all customers from the individual to the company do not want to buy. If technology becomes a limiting factor, Intel invents or buys these technologies to take control of its lifeblood.

More reason

Intel's data center and Interconnect Systems Department is responsible for the microprocessors and chipsets needed for servers, storage devices, and network devices. The department has been acquiring the interconnect silicon photon business and software business from different companies over the past 18 months. In January, Intel purchased InfiniBand-related card software and silicon photon business from QLogic with 125 million USD. In July, Intel purchased the Fulcrummicrosystems and got their 10GbE and 40GbE silicon chips for switches and routers in the overhead switch. Now they have acquired high-speed interconnection from Cray.

While most server industries are content with more traditional large-capacity microprocessors, high-end data centers and High-performance computers (HPCs), or supercomputers, are the only profits. Here the high speed is much more important than the price sensitivity. The opposite is the case with traditional mainstream data centers.

High-tech development is usually funded by the government's $ billions of trillion budget. The top 10 on HPC proved to the world to see the national technology leader. China has recently implemented a major move to win the top 500 in 2010 years. Japan won the Laurel last year. This field plays a major role in the world economy.

The AOCs begins at HPCs. Now start slowly into the mainstream data center, applied to the infiniband,ethernet,fibrechannel,sasandpciexpress link. Another product that has been precipitated from the High-tech HPC field is the embedded optical module (EOM). It is widely used in IBM's Bluegene and BLUEWATERHPC. In the past two years, EOM technology from the Usconec and the high tech has often appeared at the show. Many system designers in switches, routers, and high-speed servers are optimistic about the prospects they are expected to apply to data centers and telecommunications services.

HPC designers have been trying to overcome the problem of computer architecture for a long time. They have developed many architectures that appear to be useful in traditional high-end data centers. (These technological developments may be of great interest to Intel) in Advanced computer institutions, interconnection programs play a critical role and become a constraint in system design. While several highly tailored hpcs have a budget of 200 million dollars, most of the top 10 HPC systems are just standard datacenter servers and storage systems, connected by InfiniBand overhead switches rather than Ethernet switches. Moreover, one of the newest and most popular high-speed computing methods is to use PC games, nvidia and AMD graphics chips with parallel compilers for parallel processing. China's Tianhe thru a large number of standard servers, plus nvidia, GPU and 35,000 AOC to earn 2010 years before the top 500 of the crown.

More and more hpcs are made with standard data centers and PC devices, so they are easy to upgrade, unlike HPCs. Intel has entered the market by buying interconnect services and is trying to dominate the HPC sector with high prices and standard products. These products will enter the next generation data center, targeting high-end systems, which is where the profits are. So Intel is doing the Li Yingcheng thing. Microprocessors, SSD technologies, plus InfiniBand and top-shelf switch chips are key, and are therefore the most important of the recent Intel acquisition and merger strategy. Lightcounting that mergers and acquisitions will continue to be a new chapter.

Today, most HPC uses Intel processors-some with AMD and the rest with tailored architectures. Each microprocessor costs more than 1000 dollars, and each advanced data center needs 50,000-100,000 processors. Intel's intention to implement its acquisition and merger strategy is at a glance. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States will spend 200 million of dollars to upgrade their HPC. On SC2011, Intel demonstrated their first operational samples of the 50 nuclear Knightscorner microprocessors.

Intel manufactures the best-selling 10gbase-t control chip. It connects the PCIExpress bus to the 10GBASE-T circuit. Intel and Aquantia have a certain partnership. The final 10gbase-tphy Gem Enterprise has not been acquired. (Bo Tong Company has its own products, Marvel bought Solarflare business; PLX bought Teranetics. ）

Intel has more details on the behind-the-scenes efforts to commercialize the Thunderbolt consumer interconnection technology. It was called Lightpeak before. Published in the 2010 Intel Developer Forum (IDF), Lightpeak has generated a backlash in the field of optical interconnection. Thunderbolt is a new improved version that is a core part of the Apple PC, display and notebook product line. Intel made router chip, located on the motherboard. The two 10Gbps channels can be concatenated and the transport interface protocol can be superimposed on the PCIExpress protocol. Because the transport interface is a video protocol, the chip is likely to put Ethernet,sata, SAS, and other high-speed protocols on the PCIExpress bus protocol. There are rumours that the AOC agreement will be produced in 2012.

Will Intel move Thunderbolt technology to the data center, connecting servers and overhead switches to compete with expensive and power-hungry 10gbast-t?

This will compete with the 10GBASE-T, affecting the direct-connected cable industry. When 10gbase-t efforts to develop 28-NM, low-power chips, direct-connected cable industry to fire up. Lightcounting that 28-NM10GBASE-T products can be produced in 2014. But will it be too late? 10gbase-t, one side is low power, low-cost direct-Link cable, the other side is Low-cost AOC, perhaps on the other side will also have Thunderbolt version of the opponents. Intel also has a huge ambition for silicon photon technology that has not yet been achieved.

Analysis of Lightcounting

Will intel introduce silicon circuitry into several key aspects of the server/switch rack? They have server microprocessors, SSD, FLASH, rack-top switch chips. 10GBASE-T controllers that interconnect servers and switches, not to mention their thunderbolt in the consumer product area. As Intel begins to involve Cisco, Dell, IBM and HP sites, a group of low-cost "white box" vendors thrive in the server and switch sectors. How will Cisco, Dell, IBM and HP respond?

Intel Yiu-Chung is clearly trying to occupy important sites in the next generation of data centres and interconnection. In 2000, they went into the optical transceiver and interconnect fields and then sold them to Emcore and other companies and withdrew from the business circle. When we use some of our only clues, plus speculation, we see the clue: that is the rise of a technological force that will change the pattern of copper, optical devices and optical transceivers in the field of interconnection.

The takeover appears to have started with high sales prices and High-tech commanding heights, with the consequent acquisition of large profits and the transfer of the technology to next-generation data centers, eliminating all competition and developing interconnection technologies. Finally, because of the high speed, optical interconnection must be embedded in the same package with the high speed microprocessor and other circuits. Intel's overall strategy is likely to affect the optical transceiver company in the future because the increasing speed will make the copper interconnect less viable and eventually move the transceiver to a large chip.