Category: News digest

AMD demos 6 cores Istanbul chips

AMD demonstrate it’s first working models of Istanbul chips, the company’s line of server processors with six cores.  The AMD blog says: “As a city, Istanbul is the only city that sits on two continents, Asia and Europe. As a processor, Istanbul also bridges two worlds, the socket 1207 that has been such a strong platform in the past, and a 6-core Direct Connect architecture, with 12, 24 or 48 cores per server for the future.
Despite putting more cores in the processor, we managed to keep it in the same power and thermal ranges as our existing “Shanghai” processors. And since it fits into the same socket, our OEM customers should be able to bring products to the market quickly. End users will be able to quickly qualify and deploy these servers because the overall platform is the same as what they are using. In today’s challenging economic times, that’s music to the ears of IT departments both near, and as far away as Turkey. ”

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WLAN product blitz shows 802.11n getting more affordable, useable

WLANA slew of new WLAN hardware and software suggests that 802.11n high-throughput WLANs are fast becoming more affordable and manageable across all industry segments.

Enterasys debuted its first 802.11n access point and a new high-end WLAN controller for large-scale deployments, while D-Link has a new $180 11n AP aimed at small and midsize businesses. Meraki introduced its first 11n product for municipal and multi-tenant Wi-Fi hot zones.

On the software side, Motorola’s AirDefense unit has added a WLAN troubleshooting application to its flagship wireless intrusion prevention suite, and radio frequency (RF) monitoring and configuration management to its WLAN controller software. Rival AirMagnet has created a version of its RF analysis and site survey applications and introduced a simplified troubleshooting tool, both aimed at improving WLAN performance and management for SMB customers.

Please read the full article on NetworkWorld.com…

Juniper’s answer to Cisco in the data center: Stratus Project

Cisco vs. Juniper

Juniper said Tuesday it is partnering with server, storage and software companies to develop a converged data center fabric under a multiyear project that will compete with Cisco’s largely solo effort.

Juniper’s Stratus Project is a year old and comprises six elements: a data center manager, storage, compute, Layer 4-7 switching, appliances and networking. It is intended to be a flat, non-blocking, lossless fabric supporting tens of thousands of Gigabit Ethernet ports, an order of magnitude reduction in latency, no single point of failure, and with security tightly integrated and virtualized.

Stratus is expected to support the Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) data center fabric specifications being defined and endorsed by several vendors.

Read the full article on NetworkWorld.com…

Check Point overhauls its security software architecture

Check point

 

Check Point is in the midst of a major overhaul of its security software architecture so customers can pick and choose the applications they want and dedicate computing resources to each depending on the performance they want to guarantee.

The company has taken the first step with the latest R70 version of its software that separates its various applications – firewall, VPN, Web filtering, intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS) – into software blades that are available to customers a la carte or in pre-packaged bundles.

And Check Point is working toward being able to dedicate part of the computing power of multi-core processors to a single application, starting with its IDS/IPS platform. This capability will be expanded to the company’s other security platforms over time.

Read the full article on NetworkWorld.com…