Intel unveils next-gen communications platform

Platform will handle data processing across the network more efficiently, securely, while addressing the specialised needs for handling cloud connectivity and content processing

Intel Corporation on Thursday announced several significant features for the company’s next-generation communications platform, codenamed “Crystal Forest.” 

Building upon Intel’s presence in communications infrastructure, the platform will handle data processing across the network more efficiently and securely, while addressing the specialised needs for handling cloud connectivity and content processing, the company said at the launch event.

Intel designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices.

Each minute of the day, 30 hours of video are uploaded across the network, and by 2015 it is estimated to take 5 years to watch all the video crossing IP networks each second. As these numbers continue to climb, the burden will be on equipment manufacturers and service providers to deliver platform solutions that can cost-effectively manage rapidly increasing traffic without compromising performance and security, the company said.

Currently, equipment manufacturers must combine a variety of highly specialised silicon co-processors with different software programming models to handle multiple communications workloads when building platforms for a scalable network – a very complex and expensive endeavor.

With Crystal Forest, equipment manufacturers will be able to consolidate three communications workloads – application, control and packet processing – on multi-core Intel architecture processors to deliver better performance and accelerate time to market. They can also develop a scalable product line based on multiple Intel processor options to plan for future performance increases, the company said.

“As broadband penetration in India increases through wired and wireless technologies during next few years, more smart devices would need to connect to the Internet every day causing demand for increased network performance,” S Natarajan, Country Business Manager – Embedded Markets, Intel South Asia said.

“And, Intel’s next generation communication platform provides the flexibility, scalability and efficiency to address the challenges of Service providers,” he added.

Intel’s next-generation communications platform, Crystal Forest, is expected to deliver up to 160 million packets per second performance for Layer 3 packet forwarding, making it possible to send thousands of high-definition videos across each network node.  Previously, only ASIC or specialised processors were capable of sending more than 100 million packets per second.