Re:Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch
by es09 on Wednesday February 11, 2015 @04:35PM
(#9035868)
Good points. I doubt if they are aiming at any competition. Their stated goal is to reduce the cost of the hardware for themselves by standardizing it. Their hope is that the other big guys (amazon, google etc) will pick this solution up driving up adoption and lowering the cost. If this happens, Cisco, Juniper et al gets disrupted and that's just a side effect.
Re:Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch
by gonzo on Wednesday February 11, 2015 @05:00PM
(#9036001)
> Individual chips used in the hardware can cost multiple thousands of dollars each.
and 10 years ago, the compute power of a QC i7 would have tens of thousands of dollars.
Re:Introducing “6-pack”: the first open hardware modular switch
by AceJohnny2 on Wednesday February 11, 2015 @05:45PM
(#9036194)
Right, but we don't care about past chips. Moore's law applies to the whole market at the same time, so today's special network chips are still much better at what they do than today's general-purpose chips.
It's kind of stupid to say that today's general-purpose hardware can do what yesterday's special hardware could do at a faction of the cost, because the specialist market has also moved on and wants the performance of today's special hardware.
I currently work in the network hardware industry (think Cisco, Juniper, etc). Our boxes sell in the 6-figure price range, each [1]. We sell to your ISP, wireless carrier, datacenter constructor. We're the competition this kind of box is aiming at.
[1] it's highly specific hardware and software for a low-volume market. Individual chips used in the hardware can cost multiple thousands of dollars each.