Juniper Networks unveils new silicon with breakthrough '3D Scaling' technology

NEW YORK, USA: Juniper Networks announced a new Junos One family of processors that represent an unprecedented integration of silicon and software to push the boundaries of high-performance networking.

The Junos One family combines Juniper’s experience and investments in silicon, software, systems and architecture to deliver industry-first “network instruction sets” that are purpose-built to meet the needs of networking at massive scale in multiple dimensions. Junos One chipsets will be embedded into a broad array of Juniper’s future routing, switching and security products.

Kicking off the new family, Juniper introduced the Junos Trio chipset with revolutionary 3D Scaling technology that enables networks to scale dynamically for more bandwidth, subscribers and services – all at the same time without compromise.

Junos Trio also yields breakthroughs for delivering rich business, residential and mobile services at massive scale – all while using half as much power per gigabit.i The new chipset includes more than 30 patent-pending innovations in silicon architecture, packet processing, quality of service and energy efficiency.

“Junos Trio with 3D Scaling is the only chipset of its kind on the planet,” said Pradeep Sindhu, Juniper’s founder, vice chairman and CTO. “We invested more than $80 million over the last five years to develop Junos Trio, yielding a fundamental advance in performance, flexibility and power efficiency to meet the Internet’s massive three-dimensional scaling needs. This will dramatically change the economics for our customers, while helping them create new and better experiences for their customers. This is the platform for the next decade.”

Junos Trio represents Juniper’s fourth generation of purpose-built silicon, and is the industry’s first “network instruction set” – a new silicon architecture unlike traditional application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and network processing units (NPUs).

The new architecture leverages customized “network instructions” that are designed into silicon to maximize performance and functionality, while working closely with Junos software to ensure programmability of network resources. The new Junos One family thus combines the performance benefits of ASICs and the flexibility of network processors to break the standard trade-offs between the two.

Built in 65-nanometer technology, Junos Trio includes four chips with a total of 1.5 billion transistors and 320 simultaneous processes, yielding total router throughput up to 2.6 terabits per second and up to 2.3 million subscribers per rackii – far exceeding the performance and scale possible through off-the-shelf silicon.

Junos Trio includes advanced forwarding, queuing, scheduling, synchronization and end-to-end resiliency features, helping customers provide service-level guarantees for voice, video, and data delivery. Junos Trio also incorporates significant power efficiency features to enable more environmentally conscious data center and service provider networks.

“From its start, Juniper has been a silicon technology leader with an impressive set of innovations through the years,” said Michael Howard, co-founder and principal analyst, Infonetics Research. “It is always exciting to see technology leaps such as those embedded in the Junos Trio chipset, which anticipates carrier edge and aggregation requirements across multiple dimensions for the next several years.”

Starting immediately, Junos Trio will be delivered in Juniper’s new MX 3D products that provide “universal edge” routing for business, residential and mobile services at massive scale on a single network. The new products include new modular line cards, new applications and new metro aggregation routers for Juniper’s MX Series routers.

The MX 3D products directly address enterprise and service provider needs for more flexible technology and business models, providing them with unprecedented dynamic control, open application platforms and revolutionary economics validated through a commissioned study conducted by an independent third party.