Thursday, January 31st 2019
Intel Looking to Buy Out Mellanox to Challenge Huawei in the 5G Infrastructure Gold Rush
Intel is in the fray to acquire Israeli networking infrastructure manufacturer Mellanox Technology for $6 billion in cash and shares, which constitute a 35 percent premium over its most recent valuation. Mellanox designs and manufactures infrastructure-scale networking hardware, such as high-bandwidth switches, adapters, and other data-center networking hardware, and when acquired by Intel, could give the company sufficient IP and manpower to take on Chinese networking equipment giant Huawei, in the gold-rush to bring 5G to the world, in addition to sustaining the cloud-computing boom. Huawei has been banned in several western nations (particularly NATO member states) for political or strategic reasons, and a large vacuum has been built that's being approached by other "Kosher" players such as Mellanox, Cisco, etc.
Source:
Irish Times
23 Comments on Intel Looking to Buy Out Mellanox to Challenge Huawei in the 5G Infrastructure Gold Rush
In an appeal to the European Union, more than 180 scientists and doctors from 36 countries warn about the danger of 5G, which will lead to a massive increase in involuntary exposure to electromagnetic radiation. The scientists urge the EU to follow Resolution 1815 of the Council of Europe, asking for an independent task force to reassess the health effects.
4G sounds good to me
It won't be difficult to take on Huawei with the governments helping, crazy arrests etc smack of lobbying by big tech companies afraid of the competition.
Mellanox is focused on ultra-low-latency or long range high bandwidth WIRED networking, not wireless networking.
I've use their Infiniband networking (40Gb/s, 56Gb/s, 100Gb/s) for years; it's the de facto networking for supercomputers.
But... Intel already bought Infiniband product lines from Qlogic for several years, which became the base of their Omni-path technology.
Maybe Omni-path lacks the long-range capability that 5G infrastructure requires?
Go to semiaccurate and read up on it.
also FYI its not just the US that has banned Huawei
many other western countries have done the same
www.ft.com/content/e90c3800-aad3-11e8-94bd-cba20d67390c
Norway is about to do the same didn't they warn about the same or similar health risks when GSM and later on 3G networks were introduced?
Groundhog Day again?
For sure Intel already has some IB-networking due to the acquisition of Q-Logic's network business division on Infinity-Band from back in 2012 by Intel.
However, the fact that Intel is about to get their hands on Mellanox shall be due to Huawei's competition? On 5G? Nothing could be further from the truth!
Calling all stations: Red alert
I firmly believe the real reason why Intel wants to swallow Mellanox is their fear in the shape of three capital letters: AMD!
By buying Mellanox – which is virtually the only remaining provider of InfiniBand-hardware and/or network-infrastructure (bar Intel itself here, Omni-Path …) – they're literally completely blocking AMD from gaining any significant market-share. As everyone who wants to use AMD in a HPC needs to rely on Mellanox' InfiniBand network-hardware.
So Intel most likely is fundamentally and straight-up just about to completely seal off and shield AMD from the whole Enterprise-, HPC- and/or Server-market by becoming the only legitimate provider of InfiniBand-hardware. → Without Mellanox' Interconnects like InfiniBand, there's no chance in hell any·one can build up any reliable HPC-hardware provided by and featuring AMD's Epycs here.
Huawei?
Thus, this move from Intel here is literally fully strategic on its core!
They now they're fucked against AMDs Epyc, so they're trying to eventually lock up the server-market as a whole and transform the enterprise- and server-market into their own Intel-only Omni-Path-compatible eco-system here … That move has no·thing to do with Huwaei or China (even if it seems to be en vouge to shit on Huawei and alike theses days …), this is straight up bullshit! The whole thing is prepared to hit AMD here and literally no-one else. Even IBM would hit that hard too with their POWER-mainframes too.
Omnipath™-compatible or: How to invent G-Sync on architecture-level
Just think about it for a moment! No-one will be able to build or offer any serious AMD-based servers without Mellanox InfiniBand. Since Intel is about to (or at least tries to) becoming the only legit provider of InfiniBand-hardware what·so·ever. So the fate of AMD within the server-space would lie within Intel's hands – and they could (and will be for sure!) trying to kill AMDs attemps to gain any market-share within the HPC-space by most likely making Mellanox' IB-hardware disappear after the buy-in. … and Omni-Path is virtually incompatible to AMDs Epyc, no?
5G? Bullshit!
Mellanox doesn't even provide any serious 5G-stuff but Ethernet- and InfiniBand-switches and given host bus-adapters respectively.
This is a truly devasting move if this is going to happen, as Intel literally will be able to transform the whole Server-market into their own OmniPath™-exclusive eco-system – which of course will be 100% incompatible towards anything from AMDs Epyc.
tl;dr: Intel does what it always did, playing dirty by swallowing Mellanox' InfiniBand, making themselves the only provider of InfiniBand-hardware + -infrastructure – and thus, eventually lock up the whole server-space against and from AMD with their highly competitive Epyc-prozessors (as OmniPath will be the only remaining InfiniBand-infrastructure) while converting it into another Intel-only eco-system, just like the mobile-/ portable-space already is with gagged OEMs/ODMs. The red herring calling it a move towards and against Huwaei and 5G is finest BS and another false-flag operation here.
Smartcom
And with the death of Xeon Phi, now Intel only has the Xeon Scalables that has Omni-path packaged with CPU (and in a way make it unique).
I'd really love to see Mellanox stay out of Intel's hand; although I doubt AMD will build Infiniband-integrated Epyc or like, especially with the coming of PCIe 4.0.
Blinkers definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary
It's also a fact that as science progresses, it could find ways that low band EMR is dangerous, ways that we can't detect today. Let's not forget that cancer is skyrocketing while everything in the world is absolutely safe. Food is safe, electronic equipment is safe, water is safe, wireless signals are safe, well, everything is safe, but cancer is having a party. What? A yes, tin hat.
The RF ranges 5G tech will operate on are safe. Intel and everyone else need only follow basic safety guidelines and they will have nothing to worry about. Fearmongering about a known safe science is a waste of effort and energy. Do let it go.