Given the explosive growth in data traffic, is not enough to keep pace with demand for higher network speeds. A smarter silicon and software approach is needed.

Among the best ways to accelerate the performance of mobile and networks is to combine general-purpose processors with smart silicon accelerator engines that significantly streamline the way bits are prioritized and moved to optimize network performance and cloud-based services.

THE NEXT BIG THINGS:

One of the fundamental challenges facing the industry is the data deluge gap -- the disparity between the 30% to 50% annual growth in network and storage capacity requirements and the 5% to 7% annual increase in IT budgets. The growing adoption of cloud-based services and soaring generation and consumption of are driving exponential growth in the crossing the network to and from the cloud. With the growth in data traffic far outstripping the infrastructure build-out required to support it, network managers are under pressure to find smarter ways to improve performance.

Cloud data center networks were built with existing technologies and have thus far succeeded in improving performance through brute force -- adding more hardware such as servers, switches, processor cores and memory. This approach, however, is costly and unsustainable, increasing hardware costs along with floor space, cooling and power requirements, and falls well short of solving the problem of network latency.