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May 24, 2018
3 min

Would You Like HAL to Help You Deploy New Technologies Faster and Accelerate Your Time to Market?

“I need a way to simply add new services and technologies into my back-office systems without the costly and time-consuming integration efforts HAL."

"OK Dave, I can help you with that."

Well, the good news is that there is a solution that will provide Dave what he is looking for. And no, the HAL that is referenced is not the infamous artificial intelligence entity from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the context above, HAL is defined as the Hardware Abstraction Layer, and it basically bridges the gap between physical hardware and software. It represents a subset of low-level software routines that emulate the hardware, providing high-performance applications direct access to hardware resources through simple, portable APIs. Benefits that arise from HAL include enabling the OS to perform regardless of the underlying hardware architecture as well as providing direct access to hardware devices that allow programs to be truly device-independent.

It all starts with the right architecture---one that embraces the capabilities of new technologies and services while maintaining the differences of the new technologies and services at the lower layers of the architecture.  

 

In the diagram above, the hardware abstraction layer separates the physical infrastructure layer at the bottom from the applications and capabilities above it. An example of HAL at work, not the 2001 version, has to do with your very own smartphone. Today, the iOS and Android operating systems run on many different hardware types while enabling new capabilities from that hardware without a significant impact on the upper layer applications. When new hardware is adopted, there are standard API's to enable the applications to take advantage of the new capabilities.

So, what if you had a platform that accelerated your time to market with its software and hardware abstraction? The Calix AXOS platform utilizes this same architecture. It supports a hardware abstraction layer that hides the differences of GPON, 10G EPON, NG-PON2, or Gfast yet isolates the new capabilities such that the upper layer applications can take advantage of them. This architecture significantly simplifies the process of integrating new services and capabilities into a back-office system, because the differences are managed very low in the architecture. For service providers, the AXOS HAL allows you to rapidly adopt and deploy new technologies faster through the reuse of existing MOPs, capitalize on the benefits of simple and consistent software operations regardless of the physical infrastructure layer, and experience an Always On system performance.

Go here to learn more about AXOS and the disruptive innovations Calix has planned for the world of Unified Access.

Director, Product Marketing, Revenue EDGE Systems, Calix

Kevin Kuo is the director, product marketing, Revenue EDGE Systems at Calix. Kevin has over 25 years of experience in the telecommunications, manufacturing, broadband, and wireless industries, working for AT&T, AT&T Mobility, Motorola, and Nokia.

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