It was pretty amazing to learn that IOS XR, Cisco's ultra reliable OS, lets them run 92 Terabits per second and uses hundreds of parallel processors is based on a straight, unmodified QNX kernel and QNX Transparent Distributed Processing. Now a Terabit is a lot, and 92 Tbps is hard for a mere mortal like me to understand, so I converted it into some more meaningful measurements. That's equivalent to squirting out 2,600 DVDs per second, or 18,000 CDs per second. Wow.
CRS-1 and QNX were responsible for delivering North American coverage of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. The High Def video feeds were all being pumped over the Pacific; HD video in real-time like this was a first. The video went through CRS-1 equipment first highly compressed, had local advertising inserted for each market, then re-integrated with the real-time video feed and shipped back out to their individual markets. With a high of 107 million people in just North America watching the games, that's a lot of pressure for failproof, glitch-free, real-time delivery.
Dozens of world-wide mega-corporation telecommunication carriers rely on CRS-1 for POTS, mobile phone, video, cable, and Internet feeds. There are a whole whack of countries that can run just one CRS-1 for the entire country. Cisco's CSR-1 telecom customers aren't public, but the majority of them are household names. There's a very good chance that your voice or video touches QNX every day.
People like my Mom don't care--she can barely operate a cell phone, let alone wonder about all the miles of cable, crates of equipment, and crowded server farms that make the modern world work. But for someone who's even only a part-time geek like me, it's pretty cool to find out what makes things tick. Especially when it's ticking to the beat of your company's software.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment