Tencent Ali teamed up with Beacon SDN chip company to force Broadcom to go the road

Recently, Software Defined Network (SDN) chip company Barefoot announced that it has received $23 million in financing. It is understood that the company developed the world's first programmable chip Tofino. According to them, this chip is twice as fast as any other chip on the market today and can process network packets at 6.5T per second.

In addition, the company also introduced that this is a revolutionary innovation that can change the internal operations of Internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft and LinkedIn, affect operators, and also allow hardware giants such as Cisco and Intel to feel pressure. In the financing of Barefoot Networks in June this year, it also received a $57 million financing from Goldman Sachs and Google.

It is worth mentioning that the financing list was led by Chinese Internet companies Alibaba and Tencent. This can't help but make Xiaobian curious, what kind of chip is this at the same time attracting Alibaba, Tencent and Google? In this financing, which companies will affect Alibaba and Tencent?

What is the magic of this programmable chip?

The network device can control and forward traffic, and the SDN technology can separate the two, let the SDN controller complete the flow control, and the network device is only responsible for traffic forwarding. With SDN controllers, enterprises can program specific scenarios, allowing organizations to prioritize faster and more secure routes to more important applications, returning to the usual low-cost connections after the transfer is complete. The core part of the SDN controller is the chip, and Barefoot is a company that provides SDN chips.

In mid-June this year, Barefoot launched its first chip Tofino, which in addition to supporting the high speed of 6.5Tb/S, more importantly, it can support users fully programmable. This means that switch owners can specify how this packet processing device operates within their network. Provides greater configuration flexibility while meeting them.

The user can then write the code in reference to the open source programming language P4 and burn it to the chip to run. Since this is an open source language, developers don't need to be proficient in the program to easily compile it.

According to Nick McKeown, Barefoot co-founder and chief scientist, their company empowers network operators and architects to design, optimize and innovate on demand.

According to the official, their technology has a direct impact on "cloud" operators and OEMs, and even promotes the revolution in these two areas. Because of this technology, the "cloud" can be optimized for different mothers; in addition, specific code allows OEMs to better serve customers and truly deliver the network to developers.

In short: Barefoot's Tofino is a new type of chip used in network switches. Tofino's biggest selling point is programmable. The early OpenFlow protocol of SDN requires network operators to fill out forms and instruct the switch how to handle certain types of traffic. But PISA does not force the converter to use existing protocols such as TCP/IP, but instead uses the P4 programming language to let the enterprise program the switch directly. In other words, developers can write programs and change the functionality of the chip at any time, which is a bit like we write an app to change the purpose of the iPhone.

John Burke, an analyst at research firm Nemertes, said that although protocols such as TCP/IP have not been completely eliminated, they are aging. With the advent of big data and the Internet of Things era, the infrastructure of the Internet has reached a point of change, and the emerging IT architecture based on SDN technology will become a breakthrough.

Last year, Cao Jie, a network planning expert at Alibaba's Technical Support Department, said that "SDN is a collection of concepts and is our judgment on the direction of network evolution. We believe that the future network must be application-oriented, not like Today, relying on switch vendors to lead hardware and functions to guide the evolutionary rhythm and technology direction of the network." In October this year, Tencent senior network architect Lu Sujian said in a speech that Tencent began to do SDN research in 2012, and the current Internet export SDN solution has been Online operation of the online network. The investment in Barefoot is also a major move by the two giants in the SDN layout.

In addition, it is understood that the current domestic services based on SDN technology are Pica8, Spruce Network, Lingrui Blue Letter and other companies. Yang Yongtao, director of business development at Pica8, once said: "The most important development of SDN technology is that there are already clear controller solutions and chips supporting SDN features, which means that the underlying ecosystem has matured."

Barefoot's technology will force hardware giants to fight back?

In the past few years, Google and Facebook’s online business has grown so much, spanning so many machines, and a lot of data is moving through it. At this rate of growth, without new network hardware, the two companies will not really To cope with so much data. "The growth rate of their bandwidth requirements is different from the growth we have seen in the past," said Bob Wheeler, an analyst at research firm Linley Group. “The pace of change has increased dramatically.” These companies are starting to design their own switches because they require more control over the way the network is built and rebuilt. But these switches still have their limitations, they do not provide complete control. Because of its internal chips, it is encoded into specific protocols and tasks. Barefoot Networks is making a change.

“Today, these big data center operators have a higher level of insight into network operations than chip designers.” McKeown, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, said the technology used in new web technologies, Google and Facebook, has risen. It has reached a significant role. "We gave them weapons and let them fight with their expertise."

Other chips also guarantee similar functionality, but they are all different. According to Barefoot Networks, their design allows more programmers to program them, not just network hardware geeks.

"Barefoot Networks is using its chips to create a new competitive environment," said Yuval Bachar, lead engineer at LinkedIn, a veteran who has worked in the networking industry for 25 years, previously worked at Cisco and helped Facebook build network devices. “This gives us the opportunity to innovate in new dimensions.”

That's right, this idea is much bigger than Barefoot Networks. The language P4 used to program these chips is open source, which means anyone can modify it or use it to build their own chips. McKeown said that Barefoot Networks will eventually open up the source code design for Tofino's switches. In other words, anyone will be able to build and use it for free, equipped with hardware for these chips or similar chips. This includes Google and Facebook, as well as Cisco, the world's largest network hardware vendor.

All of this is part of a larger change than a network switch. When their empire expands, Google and Facebook don't just need new network devices. They need a new variety of computer servers. They require a new variety of data storage. They even need new varieties of chips that run deep neural networks, a form of artificial intelligence that distinguishes between photos and recognizes speech content. Now, all of these ideas permeate the rest of the world's large network operations, in large part because Facebook has open sourced many of its designs. Facebook wants as many people as possible to modify and use these designs. This increased them and ultimately lowered costs.

Barefoot Networks knows that the same thing can happen with its P4 chip. It takes open source as a way to speed up the adoption of its technology. If more companies use the technology, companies can make money by building software and providing consulting services, as well as selling the chips themselves.

Barefoot Networks' big ideas will change the way many companies build computer networks, such as the impact of LinkedIn operations and the AT&T telecom giant. But it will also change the global hardware market. In the past, most companies purchased servers from HP, IBM and Dell. They buy storage devices from EMC. They bought network equipment from Cisco and Juniper. However, Internet giants such as Google and Facebook are challenging such arrangements. These giants are designing their own equipment and making it through little-known hardware manufacturers, and because of the open source design of Facebook and other companies, the hardware manufacturer's group is growing. The market is no longer dominated by a few big brands.

Therefore, some media claimed that his appearance will change the internal operations of Google, Facebook, Microsoft and LinkedIn. This will force hardware giants such as Cisco and big chip makers such as Intel and Broadcom to consider how to counterattack. It will also change the telecommunications empire such as AT&T.

Is Broadcom prepared?

We know that network chips are a big market, including traditional vendors such as Cisco and Huawei, and emerging network vendors such as Google and Microsoft, which purchase Ethernet converter chips from chip vendors every year. And Broadcom has occupied 90% of the market. For Broadcom, this is a business involving $2 billion.

And the latest data from Broadcom shows that the wireless infrastructure contributes 58% of its revenue. So the question is, will Barefoot's new programmable chips directly threaten Broadcom?

But analysts' view is that Barefoot's products are directly plugged into Broadcom's market and will pose a huge threat to Broadcom. He believes that the fourth quarter is the key, because Barefoot will be able to mass-produce chips at that time.

In fact, from now on, Broadcom is prepared.

It is observed that Broadcom's Tomahawk series of Ethernet conversion chips dominate the big data center market, they also launched a series of chips, but to be honest, compared with Barefoot, its 3.2 Tbps speed, and non-programmable products, seem competitive not enough. Fortunately, Broadcom has a range of product matrix coverage markets, and Barefoot's current practice is a direction that has been stagnant for decades.

Now that the fixed conversion architecture has been fixed since 1996, it has not changed in the past 20 years, the ecology has been improved, and many large players have been trained. Because not only hardware is provided in these terminals, more are the latter software services. This is enough for many big data vendors, and they can save trouble. This is a great news for Broadcom.

But with the insertion of giants such as Google and Facebook, there are still possible open source threats. For Broadcom, it is also necessary to consider a more sophisticated approach to face this challenge.

Tencent/Ali wants to join forces to shake up a $600 million market?

The market for network chips is not small. According to analyst Wheeler, Internet giants such as Google and Facebook designed their own network devices, and hardware manufacturers such as Cisco and Arista sold devices on the open market every year, and bought more than $60 billion in Ethernet switch chips. And Broadcom controls about 90% of this market.

The move to programmable chips does not mean that Broadcom's huge market share will disappear. Barefoot Networks' first chip sample will be unveiled before the end of the year. Broadcom declined to comment on the Barefoot Networks chip, but it will certainly develop similar chips, whether using open source P4 or some other architecture. More importantly, the market is diversified. Barefoot Networks is a new member. With the rise of open source programmable chips, other companies can also challenge Broadcom's dominance. Most notably, Intel is also involved in the P4 project.

This has also changed the network industry more broadly. Currently, Cisco buys a large number of chips from Broadcom for placement in its switches. But as big Internet companies start using P4 chips, Cisco will accept this new way of doing things. Cisco researcher Navindra Yadav said he contributed to the original design of the P4, and he believes that the network chip should have "this flexibility." But he also said that there are problems to be solved.

Traditionally, building a chip that is both programmable and extremely fast is not feasible. Although Barefoot Networks seems to have overcome this obstacle, Yadav says designers must also ensure that chips are less expensive and do not consume too much power. When you consider that companies like Google and Facebook run their business through tens of thousands of network switches, both are huge factors. Barefoot Networks doesn't say how much the chip will cost, or how much power it consumes, but it says Tofino will be similar to existing chips.

What do you think?

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