6WIND

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6WIND
Industry Software
Founded 2000
Founder(s) Eric Carmès
Headquarters Montigny-le-Bretonneux, France
Products 6WINDGate Software
Services Design consultation
Website www.6wind.com

6WIND is a privately held company that provides packet processing software used by OEM companies for software-defined networking (SDN). It is based in Montigny-le-Bretonneux, a suburb of Paris, France, with a U.S. subsidiary, sales and support offices in Japan and South Korea, and an R&D center in China.[1]

History

6WIND, founded in 2000, was created as a spin-out from Thales Group (previously Thomson-CSF), a provider of electronics products for the aerospace, defense and security markets.

The company started with people experienced in IPv6 R&D, which led to the March 2001 introduction of the 6WINDGate 6200 Series of Smart IPv6 Migration Routers. Initially a hardware and software solution, early 6WINDGate products were designed to ease IP network services deployment as companies migrated from IPv4 to IPv6 and when ISPs set up new IPv6-based services.

The company has an intellectual property portfolio of eight patents.[2]

Since its inception, 6WIND has received backing[3] from investors and shareholders, including Sofinnova Partners,[4] Innovation Capital, TechFund Europe[5] and US, ACE Management, and Thales.

Operations

6WIND has partnerships with the processor vendors Broadcom,[6] Cavium,[7] Freescale Semiconductor, [8] Intel,[9] LSI,[10] Texas Instruments[11] and Tilera[12] to port and integrate its networking protocols with the partner's multicore processor. 6WIND also works with other software vendors who offer complementary products including Mentor Graphics,[13] Metaswitch Networks,[14] MontaVista, Qosmos,[15] Red Hat, VMware and Wind River.[16]

Equipment vendors that provide boards and systems utilizing 6WIND software include Advantech,[17] Emerson Network Power,[18] GE Intelligent Platforms,[19][20] Interphase,[21] JumpGen Systems, Lanner, Narinet and RadiSys.[22]

Products

The company’s 6WINDGate software is available on multiple multicore processor architectures, and uses on-chip accelerators for tasks such as security offload for mobile and cloud infrastructure environments.

It is designed to be a software-only, drop-in replacement for standard operating system networking stacks. The company claims it provides up to 10x the packet processing performance[9] of a standard networking stack, improving the price-performance and power-performance ratios of networking equipment.

The 6WINDGate software acts as a framework between a multicore processor's execution environment and the application software that provides network services. It is compliant with the standard APIs of operating systems such as Linux, and as of 2012 supports over 250 IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) network protocol standards.[23]

6WIND introduced optimized support for the Intel Data Plane Development Kit in September 2011,[24] and in early 2013 announced an open-source software project for it.[25]

In early 2012, 6WIND introduced 6WINDGate Mobile Edition and 6WINDGate Cloud Edition, for the 4G mobile infrastructure and cloud computing markets.[26] The company also announced support for software-defined networking technology and protocols such as OpenFlow.[27] 6WIND is a member of the Open Networking Foundation.[28]

Processors supported include:

  • Broadcom XLR, XLS and XLP832[6]
  • Cavium Networks OCTEON Plus and OCTEON II[7]
  • Freescale QorIQ P4080[8]
  • Intel Xeon processor E5300 Series, Intel Xeon processor E5500 Series and Intel Xeon processor E5600 Series[9]
  • LSI Axxia Communications Processor Family.[10]
  • Texas Instruments Keystone II Architecture[11]
  • Tilera’s TILEPro64[12]

Awards

The company was one of 20 prize winners at the IST 2003 conference in Milan.[29] It also received the 4GWE Wireless LTE Visionary Award in 2010 for its product 6WINDGate[30]

See also

References

  1. ↑ All Business. "6WIND Announces R&D Partnership with China Academy of Science.", November 2000.
  2. ↑ European Patent Office. "Patent registration - 6WIND", May, 2013.
  3. ↑ clubic. "6WIND lève 6.5 millions d’euros", January 22, 2002.
  4. ↑ Sofinnova Partners. "Sofinnova Partners announces a €5 million second investment round to support the development of 6WIND", November 2, 2004.
  5. ↑ Tornado Insider. "6WIND Secures First Round of Financing", November 2000.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 NetLogic Microsystems. " 6WIND Releases Packet Processing Software Optimized for NetLogic Microsystems' Industry-Leading XLP832 Processor", July 11, 2011.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Cavium. "6WIND Announces Support for Cavium Networks OCTEON(TM) II Multicore MIPS64 Processor", April 14, 2009.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Freescale Semiconductors. "6WIND Offers 6WINDGate™ Networking Embedded Software to Simplify, Expedite Application Development for Freescale’s QorIQ™ P4080 Multicore Processor", October 7, 2008.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Embedded Intel. " 6WIND Releases Software that Enables Best-In-Class Networking Products Based on Intel Multicore Platforms", March 16, 2010.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 LSI. "LSI and 6WIND Team Up to Accelerate Mobile Infrastructure and Datacenter Network Performance ", October 16, 2012.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Texas Instruments. " Texas Instruments and 6WIND announce packet processing software optimized for TI's KeyStone II multicore processors", March 13, 2012.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Tilera. " 6WIND Releases Packet Processing Software Optimized for Tileras TILEPro64 Processor", September 26, 2011.
  13. ↑ Mentor Graphics. " Mentor Graphics Selects 6WINDGate Packet Processing Software for Optimized Multicore Development", January 5, 2011.
  14. ↑ Metaswitch. " 6WIND and Metaswitch Partner to Deliver Integrated Software for High-Performance Networks", November 15, 2010.
  15. ↑ QOSMOS. " Qosmos and 6WIND Partner on High-Performance Real-Time Network Intelligence Solutions", August 26, 2011.
  16. ↑ EETimes. " Wind River, 6Wind partner on multicore CPUs", January 14, 2008.
  17. ↑ Advantech. "6WIND and Advantech Announce Strategic Product Integration", September 21, 2010.
  18. ↑ Anne-Francoise Pele. "6Wind joins Emerson's partnership program", November 18, 2008.
  19. ↑ Ashton and Juknevicius. "Adopting Multicore Processors for 40G Telecom Equipment", May 27, 2011.
  20. ↑ GE Intelligent Platforms. "6WIND Releases Software that Enables Best-In-Class Networking Products Based on Intel Multicore Platforms", October 26, 2007.
  21. ↑ Interphase. "Interphase and 6WIND Form a Strategic Partnership", April 22, 2008.
  22. ↑ RadiSys. "RadiSys To Deliver "LTE-Ready" Integrated ATCA Platform Solution", October 22, 2009.
  23. ↑ http://www.6wind.com/wp-content/uploads/PDF/prod/6WINDGate-RFC-Compliance-List.pdf
  24. ↑ PRWeb, 6WIND Extends Portable Packet Processing Software to Support Intel® Data Plane Development Kit, September 2011.
  25. ↑ PRWeb, , 6WIND Announces dpdk.org Open-Source Project to Accelerate Development of Intel Architecture-Based Networking Products, April 2013
  26. ↑ TMCnet. " 6WIND Releases Cloud Software for Data Center Operators", March 26, 2012.
  27. ↑ 6WIND. "6WIND Announces Support for Software-Defined Networking Based on Next-Generation Communications Platform from Intel", February 15, 2012.
  28. ↑ 6WIND. "6WIND Joins Open Networking Foundation as Leading Commercial Supplier of High-Performance Data Plane Solutions for Software Defined Networks", September 5, 2012.
  29. ↑ The IPV6 Portal. "6WIND wins prize at IST2003 event", November 5, 2003.
  30. ↑ Fierce Wireless. "6WIND Wins 4GWE Wireless LTE Visionary Award", November 29, 2010.

External links

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