A conversation with John Healy, General Manager, Software Defined Network Division, Datacenter Group, Intel
Intel is working on multiple fronts to ensure a smooth transition to SDN/NFV, but its unifying and paramount goal is to ensure that COTS x86 servers can support carrier-grade performance in networks running many demanding applications with widely differing requirements. I talked to John Healy, General Manager, Software Defined Network Division, Datacenter Group at Intel to get the latest vision on virtualization and learn more about what Intel is working on in this area.
At Intel, John said, “we have made modifications within the micro architecture and optimized the software that we run on top of it, which we call our Data Plan Development Kit. We have acceleration libraries to ensure the algorithms that are required to support packet processing functions can really operate at their best.”
“In five years’ time, I think we’ll be living in a world that has become much more NFV, more virtualized, than it is today. We’ll still have a distance to travel before it’s truly become the network of choice or the network of the future, but we’ll be well on that journey in five years,” John added. Intel’s future efforts will focus on bringing more and more enhancements to the open source community, enhance open standards, and doubling down and continuing to invest in technology development to continue to improve performance.
Read or watch the full interview to get additional insight into Intel’s approach to virtualization and into its efforts to strengthen the SDN/NFV ecosystem.
This conversation will be included in the Senza Fili report “The emergence of the NFV ecosystem: Laying the foundation for a new way to run mobile networks” that will be published on October 6, 2014. If you would like to receive a complimentary copy of the report, please click here and you will be the first to receive the report when it is finalized.
