Compass-EOS adds eXtremeDB in r10004 router

McObject, developer of the eXtremeDB in-memory database system (IMDS) product family, has revealed that Compass-EOS has included eXtremeDB High Availability in the Compass-EOS r10004 core router. According to the firm, this is the first shipping product to use optical communication between line cards using silicon-to-photonics technology.

This breakthrough approach, termed "radical" by industry analysts, lends the device dramatically greater speed and scalability, lower power consumption, a smaller footprint and other benefits for network operators whose hardware provides the Internet's backbone.

Fault-tolerance is a critical requirement for these big carriers, which is where McObject's database system comes in. In the r10004 router's architecture, eXtremeDB High Availability resides on the control plane. The Compass-EOS r10004 router relies on eXtremeDB High Availability's replication features to maintain two fully synchronised copies of the control plane database, on active and standby controller cards. If the main database instance becomes inoperable due to hardware or software failure, its responsibilities are immediately assumed by the standby. This enables Compass-EOS' core router to offer non-stop forwarding (NSF), protecting users against unplanned downtime.

The Compass-EOS r10004 core router targets telecom carriers, content distribution networks and other service provider companies that seek to scale their networks while reducing complexity and minimising operating costs. Chief among Compass-EOS' technical accomplishments is its silicon-to-photonics-based interconnect, an idea much-discussed but never before realised in a product.

This "silicon-to-photonics" processing, made possible by its icPhotonics technology, enables Compass-EOS to eliminate the standard router midplane and switching fabric in the r10004 in favour of a passive optical mesh. The result is higher bandwidth with lower power requirements and a smaller device footprint. In addition to optical chip-to-chip communication within the router, the product offers photonics-based connections between r10004 devices, making it a modular building block that can scale to address different-sized networking challenges. The router design using icPhotonics also facilitates software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualisation (NFV), Compass-EOS noted.

For infrastructure vendors such as Compass-EOS, the eXtremeDB database system's efficiency delivers economic as well as performance and fault-tolerance benefits. The database system's tiny code size (about 150K) and minimal CPU demands reduce hardware requirements.