SCOPE Alliance Announces Middleware Portability Project and Releases CPU Benchmarking Recommendations

By Leslie Guth, SCOPE Alliance

In December, SCOPE Alliance announced the results of its Middleware Portability Project and released its CPU Benchmarking Recommendations technical note. These documents provide commercial off-the-shelf ecosystem vendors new insight into Network Equipment Providers’ (NEPs) requirements for middleware portability and CPU benchmarking.

The Middleware Portability Project addresses the middleware layer in a carrier-grade base platform (CGBP). The project was created to analyze middleware portability and interoperability issues that arise when the base platform is implemented in a system composed of building blocks from several vendors. As CGBP middleware must be able to interoperate across multiple dimensions, the project identifies scenarios that could impact building block interoperability and application portability. The results are outlined in a new whitepaper (Middleware Portability Use Cases), detailing several examples that address multi-vendor configurations and lifecycle and operating situations.

The CPU Benchmarking Recommendations technical note, developed to provide critical guidance to ecosystem vendors about the CPU benchmarks that matter the most to NEPs, provides recommendations to ecosystem suppliers regarding how to report results. The recommendations have been compiled in an effort to reduce the costs and overhead associated with benchmarking numerous configurations and running multiple benchmark suites. In accordance with SCOPE’s mission, the alliance addresses only open industry CPU benchmarks in its analysis. 

For more information about the SCOPE Alliance, please visit www.scope-alliance.org.

Leslie Guth (Alcatel-Lucent) is the 2010 Chair of the SCOPE Alliance. You can reach her via the Alliance’s press representative, Karen Riley of Nereus Worldwide, at kriley@nereus-worldwide.com.