>> Narrator: Live from Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. Covering mobile world congress 2017. Brought to you by Intel. >> Okay, welcome back everyone, we're here live in Palo Alto for day two of two days of Mobile World Congress special coverage here in Palo Alto, where we're bringing all the folks in Silicon Valley here in the studio to analyze all the news and commentary of which we've been watching heavily on the ground in Barcelona. We have reporters, we have analysts, and we have friends there, of course, Intel is there as well as SAP, and a variety of other companies we've been talking to on the phone and all those interviews are on YouTube.com/siliconANGLE. And we're here with Chuck Tato, who's the marketing director of the data center of communications with Intel around the FPGA, which is the programmable chips, formerly with the Alterra Group, now a part of Intel, welcome to theCUBE, and thanks for coming on. >> Thank you for having me. So, actually all the rage Mobile World Congress Intel, big splash, and you guys have been, I mean, Intel has always bene the bellweather. I was saying this earlier, Intel plays the long game. You have to in the chips games. You got to build the factories, build fabs. Most of all, have been the heartbeat of the industry, but now doing more of less chips, Most of all, making them smaller, faster, cheaper, or less expensive and just more power. The cloud does that. So you're in the cloud data center group. Take a second to talk about what you guys do within Intel, and why that's important for folks to understand. >> Sure. I'm part of the programmable solutions group. So the programmable solutions group primarily focuses on field programmable gate array technology that was acquired through the Alterra acquisition at Intel. So our focus in my particular group is around data center and Coms infrastructure. So there, what we're doing is we're taking the FPGAs and we're applying them to the data center as well as carrier infrastructure to accelerate things, make them faster, make them more repeatable, or more terministic in nature. >> And so, that how it works, as you were explaining beforehand, kind of, you can set stream of bits at it and it changes the functionality of the chip. >> Yes. So essentially, an FPGA, think of it as a malleable set of resources. When I say that, you know, you can create, it's basically a fabric with many resources in an array. So through the use of a bit stream, you can actually program that fabric to interconnect the different elements of the chip to create any function that you would like, for the most part. So think of it as you can create a switch, you can create a classification engine, and things like that. >> Any why would someone want that functionality versus just a purpose-built chip. >> Perfect question. So if you look at, there's two areas. So in the data center, as well as in carrier infrastructure, the workloads are changing constantly. And there's two problems. Number one you could create infrastructure that becomes stranded. You know, you think you're going to have so much traffic of a certain type and you don't. So you end up buying a lot of purpose-built equipment that's just wrong for what you need going forward. So by building infrastructure that is common, so it kind of COTS, you know, on servers, but adding FPGAs to the mix allows you to reconfigure the networking within the cloud, to allow you to address workloads that you care about at any given time. >> Adaptability seems to be the key thing. You know kind of trends based upon certain things, and certainly the first time you see things, you've got to figure it out. But this gives a lot of flexibility, it sounds like. >> Exactly. Adaptability is the key, as well as bandwidth, and determinism, right? So when you get a high bandwidth coming into the network, and you want to something very rapidly and consistently to provide a certain service level agreement you need to have circuits that are actually very, very deterministic in nature. >> Chuck, I want to get your thoughts on one of the key things. I talked with Sandra Reddy, Sandra Rivera, sorry, she was, I interviewed her this morning, as well as Dan Rodriguez, and Caroline Chan, Lyn Comp as well. Lot of different perspectives. I see 5G as big on one hand, have the devices out there announcing on Sunday. But what was missing, and I think Fortune was the really, the only one I saw pick up on this besides SiliconANGLE, on terms of the coverage was, there's a real end-to-end discussion here around not just the 5G as the connectivity piece that the carriers care about, but there's the under-the-hood work that's changing in the Data Center. And the car's a data center now, right? >> Yeah. >> So you have all these new things happening, IOT, people with sensors on them, and devices, and then you've got the cloud-ready compute available, right? And we love what's happening with cloud. Infinite compute is there and makes data work much better. How does the end-to-end story with Intel, and the group that you're in, impact that and what are some of the use cases that seem to be popping up in that area. >> Okay, so that's a great question, and I guess some of the examples that I could give of where we're creating end-to-end solutions would be in wireless infrastructure, as you just mentioned. As you move on to 5G infrastructure, the goal is to increase the bandwidth by 100X and reduce the latency by orders of magnitude. It's a very, very significant challenge. To do that is quite difficult, to do it just in software. FPGA is a perfect complement to a software-based solution to achieve these goals. For example, virtual switching. It's a significant load on the processors. By offloading virtual switching in an FPGA, you an create the virtual switch that you need for the particular workload that you need. Workloads change, depending on what type of services you're offering in a given area. So you can tailor it to exactly what you need. You may or may not need6 high levels of security, so things like IPsec, yo6u know, at full line rate, are the kind of things that FPGAs allow you to add ad hoc. You can add them where you need them, when you need them, and change them as the services change. >> It sounds like, I'd never thought about that, but it sounds like this is a real architectural advantage, because I'd never thought about offloading the processor, and we all know we all open up or build our PCs know that the heat syncs only get bigger and bigger, so that people want that horsepower for very processor-intensive things. >> Absolutely. So we do two things. One is we do create this flexible infrastructure, the second thing is we offload the processor for things that you know, free up cores to do more value-added things. >> Like gaming for, my kids love to see that gaming. >> Yes. There's gaming, virtual reality, augmented virtual reality, all of those things are very CPU intensive, but there's also a compute-intensive aspect. >> Okay, so I've got to get your take on this. This is kind of a cool conversation because that's, the virtual reality and augmented reality really are relevant. That is a key part of Mobile World Congress, beside the IOT, which I think is the biggest story this year, is IOT, and all the security aspects of it around, and all that good stuff. And that's really where the meat is, but the real sex appeal is the virtual reality and augmented reality. That's an example of the new things that have popped out of the woodwork, so the question for you is for all these new-use cases that I have found that emerge, there will be new things that pop out of the woodwork. "Oh, my God, I don't have to write software for that, There's an app for that now." So the new apps are going to start coming in, whether it's something new and cool on a car, Something new and cool on a sensor, something new and cool in the data center. How adaptive are you guys and how do you guys kind of fit into that kind of preparing for this unknown future. >> Well, that's a great question, too. I like to think about new services coming forward as being a unique blend of storage, compute, and networking, and depending on the application and the moment in that application, you may have to change that mix in a very flexible way. So again, the FPGA provides you the ability to change all of those to match the application needs. I'm surprised as we dig into applications, you know, how many different sets of needs there are. So each time you do that, you can envision, reprogramming your FPGA. So just like a processor, it's completely reprogrammable. You're not going to reprogram it in the same instantaneous way that you do in software, but you can reprogram it on the fly, whatever you would like. >> So, I'm kind of a neophyte here, so I want to ask some dumb questions, probably be dumb to you, but common to me, but would be like, okay, who writes bits? Is it the coders or is it someone on the firmware side, I'm trying to understand where the line is between that hardened top of kind of Intel goodness that goes on algorithmically or automatically, or what programmers do. So think full-stack developer, or a composer, a more artisan type who's maybe writing an app. Are there both access points to the coding, or is it, where's the coding come from? >> So there's multiple ways that this is happening. The traditional way of programming FPGA is the same way that you would design any ASIC in the industry, right? Somebody sits down and they write RTL, they're very specialized programmers However, going forward, there's multiple ways you an access it. For one, we're creating libraries of solutions that you can access through APIs that are built into DPDK, for example on Xeon. So you can very easily access accelerated applications and inline applications that are being developed by ourselves as well as third parties. So there's a rich eco system. >> So you guys are writing hooks that go beyond being the ASIC special type, specialist programming. >> Absolutely. So this makes it very accessible to programmers. The acceleration that's there from a library and purpose-built. >> Give me an example, if you can. >> Sure, virtual switch. So in our platform for NFE, we're building in a virtual switch solution, and you can program that just like you know, totally in software through DPDK. >> One of the things that coming up with NFE that's interesting, I don't know if this y6our wheelhouse or not, but I want to throw it out there because it's come up in multiple interviews and in the industry. You're seeing very cool ideas and solutions roll out, and I'll give, you know, I'll make one up off the top of my head, Openstack. Openstack is a great, great vision, but it's a lot of fumbling in the execution of it and the cost of ownership goes through the roof because there's a lot of operation, I'm overgeneralizing certain use-case, not all Openstack, but in generally speaking, I do have the same problem with big data where, great solution-- >> Uh-huh. >> But when you lay out the architect and then deploy it there's a lot of cost of ownership overhead in terms of resources. So is this kind of an area that you guys can help simplify, 'cause that seems to be a sticking point for people who want to stand up some infrastructure and do dev ops and then get into this API-like framework. >> Yes, from a hardware perspective, we're actually creating a platform, which includes a lot of software to tie into Openstack. So that's all preintegrated for you, if you will. So at least from a hardware interface perspective, I can say that that part of the equation gets neutralized. In terms of the rest of the ownership part, I'm not really qualified to answer that question. >> That's good media training, right there. Chuck just came back from Intel media training, which is good. We got you fresh. Network transformation, and at the, also points to some really cool exciting areas that are going on that are really important. The network layer you see, EDFE, and SDN, for instance, that's really important areas that people are innovating on, and they're super important because, again, this is where the action is. You have virtualization, you have new capabilities, you've got some security things going down lower in the stack. What's the impact there from an Intel perspective, helping this end-to-end architecture be seamless? >> Sure. So what we are doing right now is creating a layer on top of our FPGA-based SmartNIC solutions, which ties together all of that into a single platform, and it cuts across multiple Intel products. We have, you know, Xeon processors integrated with FPGAs, we have discreet FPGAs built onto cards that we are in the process of developing. So from a SmartNIC through to a fully-integrated FPGA plus Xeon processor is one common framework. One common way of programming the FPGA, so IP can move from one to the other. So there's a lot of very neat end-to-end and seamless capabilities. >> So the final question is the customer environment. I would say you guys have a lot of customers out there. The edge computing is a huge thing right now. We're seeing that as a big part of this, kind of, the clarity coming out of Mobile World Congress, at least from the telco standpoints, it's kind of not new in the data center area. The edge now is redefined. Certainly with IOT-- >> Yes. >> And IOTP, which we're calling IOTP app for people having devices. What are the customer challenges right now, that you are addressing. Specifically, what's the pain points and what's the current state-of-the-art relative to the customer's expectations now, that they're focused on that you guys are solving. >> Yeah, that's a great question, too. We have a lot of customers now that are taking transmission equipment, for example, mobile backhaul types of equipment, and they want to add mobile edge computing and NFE-type capabilities to that equipment. The beauty of what we're doing is that the same solution that we have for the cloud works just as well in that same piece of equipment. FPGAs come in all different sizes, so you can fit within your power envelope or processors come in all different sizes. So you can tailor your solution-- >> That's super important on the telco side. I mean, power is huge. >> Yes, yes, and FPGAs allow you to tailor the power equation as much as possible. >> So the question, I think is the next question is, does this make it cloud-ready, because that's term that we've been hearing a lot of. Cloud-ready. Cause that sounds like what you're offering is the ability to kind of tie into the same stuff that the cloud has, or the data center. >> Yes, exactly. In fact, you know, there's been very high profile press around the use of FPGAs in cloud infrastructure. So we're seeing a huge uptick there. So it is getting cloud-ready. I wouldn't say it's perfectly there, but we're getting very close. >> Well the thing that's exciting to me, I think, is the cloud native movement really talks about again, you know, these abstractions with micro services, and you mentioned the APIs, really fits well into some of the agilenesss that needs to happen at the network layer, to be more dynamic. I mean, just think about the provisioning of IOT. >> Chuck: Yeah. >> I mean, I'm a telco, I got to provision a phone, that's get a phone number, connect on the network, and then have sessions go to the base station, and then back to the cloud. Imagine having to provision up and down zillions of times those devices that may get provision once and go away in an hour. >> Right. >> That's still challenging, give you the network fabric. >> Yes. It is going to be a challenge, but I think as common as we can make the physical infrastructure, the better and the easier that's going to be, and as we create more common-- >> Chuck, final question, what's your take from Mobile World Congress? What are you hearing, what's your analysis, commentary, any kind of input you've heard? Obviously, Intel's got a big presence there, your thoughts on what's happening at Mobile World Congress. >> Well, see I'm not at Mobile World Congress, I'm here in Silicon Valley right now, but-- >> John: What have you heard? >> Things are very exciting. I'm mostly focused on the NFE world myself, and there's been just lots and lots of-- >> It's been high profile. >> Yes, and there's been lots of activity, and you know, we've been doing demos and really cool stuff in that area. We haven't announced much of that on the FPGA side, but I think you'll be seeing more-- >> But you're involved, so what's the coolest thing in NFE that you're seeing, because it seems to be crunch time for NFE right now. This is a catalyst point where at least, from my covering NFE, and looking at it, the iterations of it, it's primetime right now for NFE, true? >> Yeah, it's perfect timing, and it's actually perfect timing for FPGA. I'm not trying to just give it a plug. When you look at it, trials have gone on, very significant, lots of learnings from those trials. What we've done is we've identified the bottlenecks, and my group has been working very hard to resolve those bottlenecks, so we can scale and roll out in the next couple of years, and be ready for 5G when it comes. >> Software definer, Chuck Tato, here from Intel, inside theCUBE, breaking down the coverage from Mobile World Congress, as we wind down our day in California, the folks in Spain are just going out. It should be like at 12:00 o'clock at night there, and are going to bed, depending on how beat they are. Again, it's in Barcelona, Spain, it's where it's at. We're covering from here and also talking to folks in Barcelona. We'll have more commentary here in Silicon Valley on the Mobile World Congress after this short break. (techno music)