Silicon Shift Ahead in Comms

Service providers say sayonara to ASICs

Rick Merritt, SiliconValley Bureau Chief
3/14/2016 11:00 AM EDT

A leader of the movement to software-defined networks gives his view of its outlook and implications for semiconductors as an annual summit opens.

Guru Parulkar sees a sweeping change spreading through the communications industry over the next three to five years, and he has a call to action for chip makers.

Service providers will transform their networks to look more like the data centers today’s Web giants build. To make the shift, they need simple comms chips that are easy to program, and they want them yesterday.

The new networks will be more flexible, letting carriers and even their customers create new features using software tools similar to the ones IT departments use today. The so-called software — defined networks (SDNs) will essentially sweep away many of the relatively expensive and complex systems today’s networks use built on ASICs and proprietary APIs from companies that range from the former Alcatel-Lucent to ZTE.

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