Intel acquires Qlogic's Infiniband Assets - End of Infiniband?

So today, it was announced that Intel had acquired Qlogic's Infiniband assets for $125M.  My immediate reaction was, "uh oh, is the age of Infiniband in HPC over?"

Why would this be the end of Infiniband?  Here's my analysis and thinking on the topic.

In 2005 there were five early players in the Infiniband market worth mentioning: Topspin, Voltaire, Mellanox, Pathscale, and Silverstorm.

• Topspin was acquired by Cisco in 2005 for $250M. Cisco shut down their Infiniband R&D in 2009.
• Silverstorm and Pathscale were acquired by Qlogic in 2006 for $60M and $109M respectively (total $169M). Pathscale's compilers were sold for undisclosed amounts (or atleast I can't find the number online). Given they are undisclosed numbers, its unlikely the numbers were big.  So Qlogic likely couldn't sell their Infiniband assets for even the price they paid for them.
• Mellanox acquired Voltaire in 2010 for $218M.

So that takes us to the beginning of 2011. What was once 5 major players (or 4 if you count the merged Silverstorm/Pathscale as 1) became 2. The growth of Infiniband as a data center solution to replace Ethernet did not appear to be happening.  Naturally, consolidation occurred.

So no worries yet for Infiniband, there were still 2 major players left.  Well lets look at the financials.

• Mellanox has been profitable for awhile.  Last year (2010) they profited $13M on $154M in sales.  Analysts say that Mellanox had huge sales this year at $258M.  Going off old income statements, $50-$60M of that is from Voltaire, so that's some decent growth.  Of course, a non-trivial portion of this profit is not from Infiniband, but from Mellanox's Ethernet sales.  How much?  Unfortunately I can't find breakdowns.
• I couldn't find breakdowns in revenue/profit for Qlogic, but given the sale of their Infiniband divisions was for $125M, it indicates it wasn't much (Qlogic had a market cap of $1.6B starting today).
• As far as I can tell from data sheets, Voltaire never had a single profitable year.

I'm not some fancy financial analyst, but what I derive from this is that the total profitability of Infiniband is somewhere on the order of $25-$50 million globally. It's enough for there to be businesses out there and enough for there to be a market, but it's not a lot.

So the big question is, why did Intel buy Qlogic's Infiniband assets?

1. Were they interested in the ~$5M profit that Qlogic's Infiniband assets could net them?  I doubt it.  (I derived the ballpark $5M because this article puts Mellanox as owning about 85% of the Infiniband market.)
2. Perhaps Intel thinks they can do some bundling to increase the profitability of Infiniband.  Hypothetically, put them on Intel motherboards.  It's certainly possible.  But how much gain can they really get for a market that appears to not be interested in Infiniband?  Turn the $5M into $20-$30M in a few years?  It seems hardly worth it for an Intel.
3. Intel thinks they can turn Infiniband around as a data center/HPC solution and make it far more popular.  If this were 2005, I would be willing to believe it.  I think the lack of wider adoption of Infiniband is a bit cemented.  Newer/better Ethernet solutions are now catching up too, so it's not the same market as 2005.
4. Support Infiniband as a community service.  With Mellanox having 85% of the market, there was a decent chance Qlogic's Infiniband could eventually sink.  Without a competitor and decent prices, the HPC community could buy less Intel chips.  There is a good argument for this, although I think the odds of this are low.  Intel could completely ignore the HPC community and they would still buy tons of their chips.  Perhaps less overall, but is it enough of a difference for Intel to do a $125M community service for them?
5. This is an aqhire move, designed to give Intel the talent necessary to make the HPC networking product they really want to make.  While it could be based on Infiniband, it's unlikely to be standard Infiniband or standardized as Infiniband. There are very few companies/groups out there that know how to make HPC networking equipment, and the Infiniband group at Qlogic is one of them.  They could have bought Cray, but they'd be buying a lot of software assets they probably weren't interested in

My gut tells me its #5 above.  As an additional argument for this point, in 2011  Intel hired away a ton of HPC talent including Chief Architect of Blue Gene from IBM.  Did they hire a whole bunch of these elite HPC executives and architects to help push commodity Intel chips and hardware like they have in the past?  I doubt it.

So how is this the end for Infiniband?  Well, if my guess above occurs, you'll only have Mellanox as the player in the Infiniband market.  While I have respect for Mellanox, I have a hard time believing they are going to care about standardizing their hardware or pushing changes to standards groups if they are the only ones manufacturing it.  Eventually, Infiniband would become synonymous with whatever Mellanox produces, and Infiniband itself will be gone.

Update (4/26/12):

Heh, from #5 above:

They could have bought Cray, but they'd be buying a lot of software assets they probably weren't interested in 

and what do ya know, Intel bought Cray's interconnect assets earlier this week.

With that acquisition, that's a lot of networking HPC expertise to be buying up and absorbing.  Perhaps this enhances my argument that Intel is gathering forces to create a new HPC interconnect technology?

One colleague suggested that Intel might be trying to have a "portfolio" of different products.  It's certainly possible that they are, but it doesn't seem like something they would want to do.  Having a portfolio of products is more up the alley of an HP or an IBM.  It'll be interesting to see what Intel does, but the full manifestation of this will probably not be seen for years.

Hiding on LinkedIn

I ran into an article today on BusinessInsider titled GET HIRED: What 6 Hot Tech Companies Want To See In Your LinkedIn Profile. There are other similar articles out there that discuss how to use LinkedIn effectively to find a job.

I used to use LinkedIn pretty heavily, subscribing to a lot of groups, following the messages, and answering some questions from time to time. My profile was pretty filled with info. I even used to add links to my blog and other relevant sites.

One day I gave up on LinkedIn. I quit every group that wasn't exclusive (for example, my research group from grad school is exclusive to alumni members). I removed everything from my profile except for previous employers and schools. I even generalized my job titles to remove keywords.

Why? Headhunters and recruiters were getting really annoying. I was getting atleast 1-2 e-mails and phone calls a day. If I got job postings that were atleast somewhat relevant to my skills, experience, and interests, I wouldn't mind. However, it appeared most head hunters simply spam job postings to as many people as they can. Headhunters/recruiters seemed to scour groups to find people to contact and would e-mail people based on specific keywords in their profile.

For example, my job title at one point was listed as "Linux System Software Engineer". What job postings would I get? I would get job postings for "System Administrator", "System Engineer", "Linux Field Engineer", etc. Basically anything that matched any keyword in my job title. When I was unsubscribing to groups, I realized that one of the groups was even started by a recruiter.

So, I now hide on LinkedIn, keeping a shell of a profile so only ex-coworkers and friends can find me.

SOPA/PIPA Blackout vs. EFF Blue Ribbon Campaign

When I was in highschool, a bill was passed in congress called the "Communications Decency Act". I don't remember all the details, but basically it required ISPs and websites to block "indecent" material from minors on the internet. Eventually the bill was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Before it the bill was defeated, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) organized a blue ribbon campaign, asking people to post a picture of a blue ribbon and to "darken" websites in protest. (Darken here meant just making the background of your website black instead of white.) I remember virtually every major player in the internet participated in this protest. I remember atleast Yahoo and Netscape.com did, and they were probably the two most visited websites in the US at the time.

While the blackout protest by Reddit and Wikipedia is on the extreme end, I would have expected most major players to protest SOPA/PIPA in a similar small way. For example, Google's protest with their black-box doodle was tasteful and simple. (It is interesting that Google only did this on Google.com. They chose not to do this on Youtube.) Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Ebay, Twitter, etc. could have done something very similar.

It got me thinking. Could it be the internet has changed so much, it's just hard to do something like this nowadays? Fifteen years ago a simple HTML color change was all that was necessary to change Yahoo's homepage. But nowadays, it might take a huge engineering undertaking. You have to make sure the change will appear correct on gajillions of browsers and mobile devices. Perhaps Google was able to protest only b/c they had a "doodle-change" option already engineered in place?

Cookie Monster's Comedic Depths

Sometime back, I was reading a chapter in a book (I think it was The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell) describing the comedic depth of the writers on Sesame Street. At first, I was a little surprised by the comments. How in the world is Sesame Street sophisticated comedy? The chapter describes how the writers of Sesame Street added a lot of humor into the show to make sure adults would like it too. Back when Sesame Street first came out, most families only had one TV, and it was believed that parents wouldn't let their kids watch Sesame Street if it wasn't entertaining for adults.

I had not seen an episode of Sesame Street since I was a child, but had to confirm the argument. Sure enough, now as an adult, I can see a lot of the subtle humor in Sesame Stret that I never would have seen before. Here are some hilarious ones I found for Cookie Monster.



Clearly, tons of parody of the Today Show. I love Cookie Monster's line of, "Where this guy come from?"



I don't think this last one is from Sesame Street, but I imagine the writers setup the interview responses and the lines are hilarious.



Cookie Monster also has a hilarious breaking of the 4th wall in the beginning of this video:



Here's a hilarious interview w/ NPR



And I can't forget about Cookie Monster's classic Stephen Colbert interview

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/174545/june-19-2008/cookie-monster

3 Nights in August

After going through the thrilling St. Louis Cardinals World Series ride and sadly seeing Tony Larussa retire, I was compelled to read this book. I needed something to feed my Cardinals high. I remember hearing about the book after the Cardinals won the World Series in 2006, so it's sort of fitting I read it now.

WARNING: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THE BOOK HERE

For anyone who loves Moneyball, it's a great follow up. Tony Larussa is famed for his deep use of statistics for managing situations and creating matchups. However, unlike (as Buzz Bissinger calls them) Moneyballistas, Larussa feels that the statistics can only take you so far. He believes that there is a deeper component beyond it that can't be measured, things like confidence, focus, or stubbornness.

As an example, most sabermetrics fans believe that saves and the use of a specific 9th inning closers is completely overrated. It would be no less effective to have a rotating group of relievers pitch the 9th inning. However, Larussa feels that the a 9th inning closer is necessary for a confident bullpen and morale. Nothing can demoralize a team or bullpen more than losing in the ninth.

I love the individual tales of baseball plays and players told in the book. While the managerial problems are discussed in the context of baseball, they are good examples of how to manage (or not manage) in any profession.

My favorite tale is how Tony Larussa once yelled and took out his frustrations for a loss on Cardinals utility man John Mabry. While Tony later apologized to Mabry, he believes Mabry lost confidence in him, leading him to perform poorly. It's a parable that could mapped to virtually any environment. How many times does an employee become scared or bothered by a superior? So much so that the employee begins to watch their back or just wish to avoid trouble, rather then doing what is best?

There are tons of parables in the book that could mapped to regular jobs: building up the confidence of younger players, getting players on board with a plan, making your players trust you, defending your players, motivating players, etc. There are tales of jealousy between players, players being stubborn, and emotion or lack of focus that everyone can relate to.

Unlike Moneyball, I'm unsure how much non-baseball fans would like this book. It is clearly a baseball book. As a Cardinals fan, there is also a soft spot in this book for me that non-Cardinals fans may not appreciate. I know most of the players described in this book from articles and TV. I knew most of the stories in it at a high level (death of Darryl Kile, issues of Rick Ankiel), so it was very interesting for me to learn the subplots and details.

Where will Albert Pujols go and how much can he get?

The question that's on everyone's mind is where Albert Pujols will go and how much he can get.

I think there are a few contracts to look at to really get a gauge of the type of contract Pujols can get.

Alex Rodriguez, Age 32, 10 year $275 million
Adrian Gonzalez, Age 28, 7 year $154 million
Mark Teixeira, Age 28, 8 year $180 million
Ryan Howard, Age 30, 5 year $125 million extension

Ryan Howard's extension was given to him after he had completed 1 year of a 3 year contract. So to some extent, the extension is really a contract for Ryan Howard at age 32, not 30.

First, lets look at the Adrian Gonzalez, Mark Teixeira, and Ryan Howard contracts. Together the three average about $23 million a year, with Ryan's howards $25 million/year the highest. I suppose we can use this as a measurement for what an elite first basemen has been able to obtain over the last few years. Albert Pujols is certainly in a class above these first basemen, so one can reason that he can obtain a premium above these players.

However, there are a few differences between Albert Pujols and these first basemen. Albert Pujols turns 32 in January 2012. Mark Teixeira and Adrian Gonzalez were able to obtain their lengthy contracts at an age 3-4 years younger than Albert Pujols. Ryan Howard's 4 year extension perhaps gives an indication of the hesitation teams may have in giving an older first baseman a 7-8 year contract.

On the other hand, Alex Rodriguez was able to receive his 10 year contract at the age of 32, the same age as Albert Pujols. At the time he received the contract, Alex Rodriguez was arguably the best player of his generation and had just won his 3rd MVP. So perhaps its Albert Pujols could get a similar contract?

I have scepticism Albert Pujols can obtain a contract of such magnitude. The baseball marketplace will be much different for Albert Pujols than it was for Alex Rodriguez. First, the two highest spending teams, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, have already secured long term contracts to elite first basemen (Mark Teixeira and Adrian Gonzalez respectively). While its always possible those teams may attempt to move those players or attempt to sign Albert Pujols as a DH, the odds are low. With the Yankees and Red Sox presumably out of the picture, it takes two big spending teams off the market in the Albert Pujols sweepstakes.

In addition, the marketplace may not be willing to suffer giving a player in his early 30s a 10 year contract after baseball saw how injuries have affected Alex Rodriguez. In 2011, we saw Alex Rodriguez hit only 16 home runs over 99 games and eek out a measly .823 OPS. Certainly not the production you expect from a player you're paying $27.5 million for.

So taking into account the current "market rate" for elite first basemen, Albert Pujols' success, age, and the removal of the Yankees & Red Sox, it stands to reason that Albert Pujols can get a contract that is better than the other elite first basemen, but less than the Alex Rodriguez contract. If I had to guess, Albert Pujols will get a 8 year contract in the range of $210-$230 million. (As a note, it is rumored the Cardinals offer during the 2011 spring training was 9 years for about $190-$200 million.)

Naturally, that's a conclusion is based on some amount of logic and reason. What can't be determined is if some team will go crazy with a contract. That's the one thing that will be difficult to determine.

So where will Albert Pujols go? Well presumably, the team that signs him will:

A) Need a first basemen or could move their current first basemen
B) Has the financial resources to sign Albert Pujols
C) Has the organizational fortitude to offer such a contract

Based on these criteria, which are the teams that I think have the best shot?

California Angels - Could use a big upgrade over Trumbo. Have signed Torii Hunter and Vladimir Guerrero in past big moves.

Chicago Cubs - New ownership might like to make a splash and take away Albert Pujols from their rivals. Theo Epstein and crew are not shy to big signings. An issue for the Cubs is the lingering big contracts on their roster.

Los Angeles Dodgers - Assuming the financial issues of the owners is settled (it apparently is), could make a run.

San Francisco Giants - A team badly in need of offense. Their signings of Barry Bonds and Barry Zito show the willingness to make a big move.

St. Louis Cardinals - The question is how high will the rest of the league go. If Albert Pujols gets something crazy, its unlikely the Cardinals will bite.

Washington Nationals - When I was first told they could make a run at Pujols, I laughed. But now that I think of it, there's a decent chance. They have shown the willingness to spend money, and while the team isn't a serious contender now, they were 80-81 last year and have a good group of young players.

Teams I don't think it could happen with despite chatter on the topic:

New York Mets - With all their financial issues related to Madoff, my feeling is the Mets can't make a run at Pujols like they normally might try to go after big free agents.

Atlanta Braves - Financially have the resources, but traditionally this organization doesn't go crazy and try to make huge moves.

Baltimore Orioles - Financially good resources, probably organizationally could make the move, but I have a funny feeling Albert Pujols wouldn't want to go to the AL East. The odds of making it to the playoffs ever again are just that much worse when the Yankees and Red Sox are in your division.

Texas Rangers - The fit is good, they could use an upgrade to first base, and they've shown the willingness to throw around money (Cliff Lee). However, I would assume they will go after pitching instead. They got so many good bats in that lineup that more offense isn't a concern.

Well, it'll be an interesting off-season. I'll update this post when we figure out the answer.

Update 12/8/11:

Well, my guesses were pretty on spot on. The push by the Miami Marlins was a tad unexpected, but the players involved were pretty well known. Albert Pujols got a little more many than my guesses, $254 million.

John Kruk Interviews

Was wandering through YouTube looking at random baseball related videos when I came upon these two hilarious John Kruk interviews on Letterman. Classic Kruk ...