Intel Announces New Tools to Enhance Data Center Networking Performance

Intel (News - Alert) announced several hardware and software tools designed to improve the efficiency and performance of data center networking.  Some of those new tools include the Intel Open Network Platform Switch, Intel Open Network Platform Server reference designs and Intel Data Plane Development Kit Accelerated Open vSwitch.

The company is also stated to have enabled the transformation of the telecom network with the release of these new reference architectures. Several ISVs, OEMs and service providers including Big Switch Network, HP, NEC, NTT Data, Quanta, Super Micro, VMware and Vyatta (News - Alert) are supposedly using these new architectures to design and develop new innovative solutions.

Designed for telecommunications, cloud data center and enterprise data center infrastructure market segments, these reference architectures blend open standards for SDN and NFV with Intel software and hardware.

Rose Schooler, vice president of Intel Architecture Group and general manager of Intel’s Communications and Storage Infrastructure Group said, “SDN and NFV are critical elements of Intel’s vision to transform the expensive, complex networks of today to a virtualized, programmable, standards-based architecture running commercial off-the-shelf hardware. The reference designs announced today enable a new phase in the evolution of the network and represent Intel’s commitment to driving an open environment that fosters business agility and smart economics.”

The purpose of these architectures is to boost Intel’s efforts to push the industry to move toward open, standards-based technologies such as SDN and NFV. It is Intel’s firm belief that these technologies are capable of changing how networks are designed, deployed and managed across data center and telecom infrastructure environments.

Allwyn Sequeira, vice president of networking and security at VMware added, “By decoupling the network from underlying hardware and enabling a new network architecture based on industry-standard x86 technology, network virtualization can transform the operational model of networking to help customers dramatically lower operational and capital expenses. VMware and Intel have built a strong relationship driving server virtualization on x86 platforms, and we are pleased to be working together to continue this transformation through network virtualization to enable the software-defined data center.”