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In-Stat says custom ASICs an energy drain
Analyst firm In-Stat says that the practice of using custom ASICs by some equipment vendors is putting them at a disadvantage for energy efficiency.
In an Information Alert published last month entitled “Going Green - Network Equipment Vendors Address Energy Efficiency,” In-Stat says that:
Vendors who are already designing equipment with advanced off-the-shelf silicon solutions will have an advantage. These vendors will benefit from both favorable regulations and the technological know-how of large chip vendors like Broadcom, who offer solutions with significantly higher energy efficiency and processing capacity.
To quickly break down what that means - the term “off-the-shelf silicon solutions” refers to an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), which is basically a microchip that is designed for a specific use. For example, there are ASICs for cell phones, switches and routers, and many other needs.
As In-Stat highlights, there are chip vendors like Broadcom that specialize in ASIC design and manufacture, and their expertise enables them to create chips that offer “significantly higher energy efficiency and processing capacity.” We call these “off-the-shelf ASICs,” basically mass-produced customized microchips.
Not everyone uses off-the-shelf ASICs though. Some vendors - such as Cisco - create “Custom ASICs” to provide specialized functionality. While some may attempt to argue that there are benefits to custom ASICs, energy efficiency definitely isn’t on the list of possible advantages.
For a while now, Nortel has been highlighting the energy efficiency advantages of off-the-shelf ASICs (which we use in our enterprise data products). I talked to John Gray at Global Connect not long ago and he highlighted this. Phil Edholm (here) and Tony Ryb (here) made the same argument with posts on their blogs as well.
Now there’s an industry analyst firm that is making the argument too. By the way, the In-Stat report also gives Nortel’s recent energy efficiency efforts some praise, saying “To date, Nortel is the only vendor to offer the industry a network equipment efficiency metric and to demonstrate that some solutions are more energy efficient than others.”
To get more detail on off-the-shelf versus custom ASICs, take a look at the below video. Jean Turgeon (JT) is Nortel’s director of PLM for our enterprise data solutions, and a resident expert on ASICs and energy efficiency.
