uCPE processor chips revenue to rise

By Pradeep Chakraborty

Universal customer premises equipment (uCPE) is a new breed of network infrastructure gear. It is now undergoing rapid expansion. uCPE processor chips, will see revenue rise to $327 million in 2023, up from $7 million in 2019. uCPE devices are also employing sophisticated application-specific logic co-processors and powerful 64-bit microprocessors as their main compute processors.

uCPE is also a strong candidate for higher performance processors and co-processors that may include support for greater analytics capabilities. These include general-purpose graphics processing units (GP-GPUs), which will see shipments rise to 1.3 million units in 2023, up from negligible levels in 2019.

How are uCPE pico-clouds changing the scenario? Especially, virtualization.

Kelson Astley, research analyst at IHS Markit said they have the ability to deploy virtual network functions (NFV) like DDoS mitigation, DPI, vRouter, etc., on a small form-factor appliances. Intel Atom/Xeon are the most popular GP MPUs. This is because of the close partnerships Intel has with OEMs to help with development and support.

Is there a move to GP-GPUs imminent? By when?

He added: “In this specific market, GP-GPUs could be seen when focusing security applications. Currently, we see this coming into play by 2020, but will be outpaced by specialized machine learning/deep learning accelerator ASICs/ASSPs.

How are suppliers likely to find opportunity in a burgeoning market? What is its future?

He said: “If they can pair with OEMs that are looking to enter the market within the ML/DL co-processor space they would have the most opportunity for continued revenue growth. This market has a double-edged sword problem — the market is taking off, which is great for revenues, but with so many suppliers entering the market, we are predicting a profit erosion as there is a race to communization.”