Strong cloud service will let the set-top box gradually disappear?

The above solution is the latest achievement of the "set-top box slimming" that has been in development for a long period of time. It captures a foothold in the field of business computing and has the opportunity to obtain a so-called OTT (over-the-top) that is currently competing with traditional cable operators and has recently emerged. ) Internet video service providers are favored; although this is an interesting application of cloud services, it was not the focus of most of the attendees at the recent NFV World Congres seminar held in Silicon Valley in the United States.


The issue of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) began to attract the attention of major European network operators about two years ago, trying to find a way to solve the problem of overloaded network traffic due to the explosion of mobile data. So far, these companies have developed a series of technical specifications to transfer network functions to software that can be executed on x86 servers, but Christos Kolias, a senior fellow at the European telecom giant Orang’s Silicon Valley Lab, said that most of the relevant results are still Not yet out of the laboratory or still field testing, in addition there are still many related technical specifications development work to be completed.

"I hope that the work can be completed in 2 to 3 years, so that the relevant suppliers can say that their products are in compliance with the NFV specifications; however, we do not have a certification plan;" Kolias pointed out: "There are still many changes, but we have achieved remarkable results. The industry has always been very supportive.” Telecom operators and their suppliers including ATT, Alcatel-Lucent, and Orange, ZTE are all participating in this seminar, as well as CableLabs, a research and development consortium of cable companies in the United States; In these days, the line between TV, Internet and mobile network service providers has become increasingly blurred.


The previously mentioned Netzyn is actually a news item published by ARM. The latter used it as one of the examples of the company's response to the NFV trend; Netzyn's software demonstration was performed using an Applied Micro X-Gene processor server using the ARM core. There is also a micro server with Samsung Exynos 5422 processor. Karthik Ranjan, Director of ARM Carrier Accounts, said: "Transferring set-top box functionality from a stand-alone box to a remote server that communicates directly with the TV can significantly reduce costs, energy, and materials without compromising the performance of the user interface (UI). ""

Ranjan emphasized that the virtual set-top box: "Enables operators to provide new services on TV faster and increase the average revenue per user. It can also lower their overall operating expenses through cloud computing and low-latency networks." "The presentation of Netzyn products is one of dozens of practical examples of NFV specifications developed by the working groups of the European Telecom Standards Institute (ETSI).


Set-top box will disappear?

Intel is also an early supporter of NFV, even before the development of ETSI specifications, the main reason is optimistic about the relevant solutions to help sales of x86 processors; ARM before the publication of Netzyn news in the NFV field is relatively low-key, but the company and the number Home processor SoC partners all posted relevant news at this seminar. Like Intel, Broadcom was active in the NFV and software-defined networking areas earlier and also delivered many speeches at the seminar.



The development of NFV and software-defined network related solutions may increase the competition between the x86 and ARM processor camps, because operators will choose to perform services on x86 server ASICs or ARM core commercial SoCs, but operators also It said that they do not think that there will be a large number of telecom services from the current ASICs and commercial SoCs of telecommunications equipment such as switches and routers.

Orange's Kolias said: "That doesn't seem like hardware is going to disappear, it's more like a shift; for example, we're seeing some hardware-based devices that specialize in providing certain NFV features, such as security applications, we might need something like That kind of thing."