Tag Archives: mlnx

Nvidia Conference: Virtual Reality, Smart Cars, Bartender Robots

Robot bartenders, a drone racetrack and liquid nitrogen-concocted food? Silicon Valley geeks know how to get down — and that’s just after-hours. Next week, graphics-chipmaker Nvidia ( NVDA ) is slated to host its annual GPU Technology Conference at the San Jose McEnery Conference Center where virtual reality, artificial intelligence and self-driving cars will take center stage. In conjunction, Nvidia will hold its analyst day Tuesday, when CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is scheduled to deliver a keynote talk. RBC Capital analyst Mitch Steves expects Nvidia to offer an update on its Pascal GPU architecture, virtual-reality offerings and automotive efforts. Steves upped his price target to 36 from 32 on Nvidia stock, which he rates a sector perform. “Overall, we are positive on the VR opportunity and believe that growth rates will remain robust,” he wrote in a research report. Virtual reality is getting a big splash this year, and tech names  Apple ( AAPL ), IBM ( IBM ), Alphabet ( GOOGL ) and Tesla Motors ( TSLA ) are on deck to attend the GTC alongside myriad startups like BriSky, a maker of industrial drones, and Lucid, which makes 3D cameras. Under the GTC umbrella, BriSky, Lucid and 10 others will compete Wednesday for $100,000 during the Emerging Companies Summit. Another eight are slated to present their VR tech in an eight-minute elevator pitch for a chance at $15,000. There’s no denying the summit’s success, which helped launch VR headset-maker Oculus and video game-streaming service Gaikai into worldwide recognition. Facebook ( FB ) later acquired Oculus for $2 billion, and Sony ( SNE ) paid $380 million for Gaikai. Mellanox Technology ( MLNX ) and Xilinx ( XLNX ) will present during the OpenPower Summit, Tuesday through Friday. Moore’s Law physics make power a challenge within the industry. Data centers need faster chips, but those chips overheat quicker. Other splashy GTC events include keynotes from IBM Watson Chief Technology Officer Rob High and Toyota Research Institute (under Toyota Motors ( TM )) CEO Gill Pratt on Wednesday and Thursday. Separately, GTC will feature speakers from Nvidia, Twitter ( TWTR ), IBM, Baidu ( BIDU ), Google and Disney ’s ( DIS ) Pixar.

Apple Supplier Broadcom, Tech Giant Cisco Pitted In Data Center War

Tech giant Cisco Systems ‘ ( CSCO ) 16-nanometer data center semiconductor could slug Apple ( AAPL ) supplier Broadcom ( AVGO ), which is ramping its 28-nm Tomahawk technology, an RBC analyst said Monday. Broadcom’s Tomahawk will go for $600-$700 per chip, replacing the outmoded Trident chip that costs less than $500, on average. Unlike Trident, however, Tomahawk won’t win across-the-board vs. Cisco, RBC’s Amit Daryanani wrote. Cisco recently unveiled its CloudScale application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), in direct competition with data center chipmakers Broadcom, Cavium ( CAVM ), Intel ( INTC ), Marvell Technology Group ( MRVL ) and Mellanox Technologies ( MLNX ). In the past, Broadcom’s Trident won “across the board” at Cisco. This time, Cisco is likely to use its own CloudScale ASIC in its Nexus 9000, 9200 and 9300 platforms, leaving the 9500 to hold the Tomahawk silicon, Daryanani said. Other users include Hewlett-Packard Enterprise ( HPE ), Arista Networks ( ANET ) and Juniper Networks ( JNPR ), which had a two-year head start to begin ramping Tomahawk-based solution, Daryanani wrote. He sees a five- to six-year lifespan for the product. Still, “we believe Cisco encroachment into the merchant silicon market needs to be monitored by Broadcom investors,” he wrote. “For now, we continue to believe Broadcom’s solutions are the market-leaders for cloud/data center spenders.” Daryanani maintained his 180 price target and top performer rating on Broadcom stock. Shares rose a fraction Monday, to 152.89, on a day when Apple released new products that didn’t represent huge advances and were expected. Cisco stock fell a fraction on Wall Street Monday, while Apple was flat.

Microsoft SONiC Souring Arista’s ‘Secret Sauce,’ Sending Stock Down

Arista Networks’ stock plummeted Monday after Jefferies lowered its price target, questioning the outlook for future sales to its No. 1 customer, Microsoft. Analyst George Notter, writing in a research report, reiterated Jefferies’ underperform rating on Arista ( ANET ) and sharply lowered his price target to 40.25 from 52.50. He said Microsoft’s SONiC “announcements are troubling for Arista,” referring to that company’s software for open networking in the cloud. Arista stock was down more than 10%, near 56.50, in early afternoon trading in the stock market today , 35% off of a 16-month high hit in June. Arista shares — which went public in June 2014 at 43 — touched an all-time low of 52.59 on Feb. 9 of this year. Switching rival Juniper Networks ( JNPR ) was down 1.5% Monday afternoon, and and bigger competitor  Cisco Systems ( CSCO ) was off a fraction, as Notter said they have less exposure than Arista to an anticipated decline in switching revenue with Internet content provider customers, though they too are exposed. In his research note Monday, Notter said last Wednesday’s Linux-based Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit in San Jose, Calif., made Jefferies “much more concerned about Arista’s business at major customers such as Microsoft ( MSFT ), Facebook ( FB ) and Apple ( AAPL ).” That’s because Microsoft had just demonstrated SONiC, free software-defined networking (SDN) that makes high-speed switches unneeded. Cisco, Juniper and Arista all make such switches, but “in Arista’s case, the Web scale operators account for roughly 25% (or about $200 million) of the company’s revenue stream — all in switching,” said Notter. He cited Cisco as saying “several quarters ago” that about 5% of its overall switching business, or “roughly” $700 million annually, comes from Internet content providers. For Juniper, it’s about 20% (or $970 million) of total sales, Notter noted. “For us, the big ‘wow’ moment at the (OCP) show was our trip through Microsoft’s SONiC-themed booth,” Notter wrote. “We saw the operator demonstrating SONiC running on switch hardware from Arista, Juniper, Centec, Mellanox ( MLNX ) and Dell — with different ASICs  (application-specific integrated circuits )  including Broadcom ( AVGO ), Barefoot Networks and Mellanox. The development of SONiC/ACS (Azure Cloud Switch) and SAI (switch abstraction interface) software now allows buyers to mix and match these components. “More pointedly, Arista is allowing Microsoft to use a hardware-only solution (i.e. without EOS, Arista’s extensible operating system). Based on all the activity at Microsoft, it’s our view that — over time — all (or nearly all) of their switch deployments will migrate to white box hardware + SONiC.” He said Microsoft accounted for 12% of Arista’s 2015 sales of $838 million. Wait, it gets worse: “Microsoft noted that they are now running SONiC in their production environment (although we presume the extent of the deployment is still small). We understand that Microsoft plans to expand the software platform quite rapidly across all of their data centers,” Jefferies’ Notter said. What’s bad for Arista may be good for Mellanox, however. “Separately, a number of industry contacts are saying that Microsoft is very interested in using Mellanox’s Spectrum switching ASIC,” Notter said. Mellanox stock was up a fraction Monday afternoon. Jefferies maintains hold ratings on Juniper and Mellanox and an underperform on Microsoft, but it rates Facebook stock a buy. Image provided by Shutterstock .