RAD Unwraps Arm-Powered Thin CPE with Edge Computing

RAD, the industry enabler in Edge Virtualization solutions, has announced the commercial release of its programmable CPE (pCPE) platform, the ETX-1p.

RAD’s programmable pCPE is based on a 64-bit dual-core Arm® Cortex®-A53 processor, delivering superior performance with extremely low power consumption for better cost savings and lower environmental footprint.

It is designed to run third-party containers and micro-services hosted at the edge, performing computations closer to the source of the data to support responsive and real-time applications in smart cities, agriculture, healthcare, retail, hospitality, finance, and many other industries.

Description automatically generated with low confidence Available in non-ruggedized and ruggedized forms (ETX-1p and SecFlow-1p, respectively), it also accommodates access to XaaS and a variety of network services in data centers and in public or private clouds, as well as industrial IoT backhaul across multiple verticals. RAD is part of the active and growing community of Arm partners building and integrating silicon, systems, and software for the edge through Arm’s Project Cassini initiative.

“The ETX-1p and SecFlow-1p are fine examples of taking the disaggregation approach one step forward,” said Ilan Tevet, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at RAD. “Whether delivering multi-link cloud access, or combining IoT functionalities with networking through edge computing, they are optimized to bring the highest value at the lowest cost.

“Through our partnership with Arm and participation in its growing ecosystem we are able to offer customers agile design and deployment of their desired solutions with greater flexibility and efficiency.”

“Compute power and efficiency are increasingly vital as data processing moves closer to the edge,” said Imran Yusuf, director of hardware ecosystem, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm. “RAD’s leadership in accessibility and disaggregated architecture is an important addition to the Arm edge ecosystem, and we are proud to be selected to power RAD’s versatile thin CPEs to take on real-time applications across many industries from agriculture to finance.”

RAD’s solution has been chosen by a Tier-1 communications service provider (CSP) in Africa. The CSP needed to migrate business customers in areas where fiber isn’t available, from WiMAX access to LTE. To do so, it deployed RAD’s ETX-1p for branch routing and edge access to the cloud with an LTE uplink.

“We are proud to be able to provide this important carrier with the cost-effective solution they needed for this project,” said Tevet, “There’s a clear value in our extremely economical platform. In addition to advanced embedded router and next-gen firewall for secure tunneling, it was also easily integrated with the CSP’s existing SD-WAN solution, which is also supplied by RAD.”

Driven by RAD’s vCPE-OS operating system, the ETX-1p is deployed at remote branches and works opposite the ETX-2v 10G universal CPE installed at data center sites. The disaggregated programmable pCPE and its ability to host LXD containers also supports the carrier’s future plans to offer new value-added services to its customers.