The network edge provides a dramatic opportunity for NFV deployment, as communications service providers rapidly convert their existing edge infrastructure to mini virtualized data centers, and as cloud providers extend their reach closer to end users. This presentation will describe this burgeoning market, explain the fundamental challenges, and review the various open source and standardization projects in this area. We will then introduce Smart NICs and show how Smart NICs using FPGAs that offer affordable, programmable, hardware-based acceleration, provide an ideal solution for this growing market segment. On this Light Reading webinar, we will address the following:
- What is the virtualized edge, and what are telcos and cloud providers doing in this space?
- The unique requirements of the virtualized edge
- Lessons learned from Microsoft Azure’s experience with Smart NICs
- How Smart NICs accelerate both NFVi and various VNFs at the edge using SR-IOV
- aWhy FPGA-based Smart NICs are best suited to address the challenges of the virtualized edge