It’s a good time to be a niche chip maker and Cavium Networks is spring boarding off its recent major growth spurt by releasing a new line of embedded multi core processors – the OCTEON II CN68XX line – for the next generation of routers, as Internet data skyrockets.
According to Cisco Systems’ Visual Networking Index forecast, the Internet will have quadrupled in size between 2009 and 2013.
Packets of Internet data and content get blasted through the networks daily, through routers which help the packets reach their destination as quickly and as easily as possible. And pure-play networking chipmaker Cavium’s new architecture is allegedly optimized for controlling this Internet Protocol traffic.
The Mountain View based firm says it has put much effort into creating this new family of processors, geared at the compute performance and application acceleration needed to drive the ever demanding mobile internet.
The processors will be embedded into a whole host of data center and service provider equipment products including routers, switches, appliances, 3G/4G wireless base stations, RNCs, xGSNs, evolved packet core, services gateways, DPI equipment, storage switches and intelligent server adapters.
So what’s special about the new offerings? Well, the OCTEON II CN68XX/67XX processor families integrate eight to 32 enhanced MIPS64 cores with up to 48GHz of 64 bit compute power in a single chip combined with over 85 L3-L7 application and security acceleration engines, virtualization features, 100Gbps of connectivity, and Cavium’s own real time power optimizer. This optimizer also apparently adjusts the power depending upon the application-level processing requirement.
The firm claims the CN68XX’s level of compute is some three times greater than alternative processors on the market and the chips are apparently also extremely low latency at up to 40Gbps using a single OCTEON II chip and up to 100Gbps using multiple chips.
They also offer some 4x higher performance than Cavium’s previous OCTEON Plus processors, with the added advantage of being compatible with all the same software, in the event any customers feel the urge to upgrade.
Security, Cavium’s marketing director for embedded processing Steve Klinger told RCR, is a “pervasive feature across everything,” with security indeed being the key, driving requirement. To that end, Cavium boasts its new processors have 40+ Gbps IPsec, SSL Security performance.
OCTEON II, says the firm, also adds WAPI support in encryption/ decryption engines to support China-specific WLAN deployments and also includes Snow3G hardware acceleration, to address security requirements of 4G mobile networks.
Cavium already counts Cisco as its largest customer, with no less than 24% of its revenue coming from the networking giant to date. The company also works with other industry heavyweights like Juniper Networks Inc and Alcatel Lucent.
The firm is said to be one of the quickest growing public tech companies in the US and its shares have more than doubled in the past year as analysts continue to predict Cavium will grow faster than its much larger competitors like PMC Sierra, Marvell Technology, Freescale Semiconductor, Broadcom Corp and Intel.
Of course, this burgeoning success is being given a helping hand by a network equipment market recovery, with analysts at Gartner predicting a compound annual growth rate of 5.5% from 2009 through 2014.
With the increasing demand for multi-media/video and real-time, interactive content to boot, it doesn’t look like Cavium’s successful streak is due to run out any time soon.
