Arris Technologies pays $800 million in cash to buy the Ruckus network edge portfolio from Broadcom, a deal to take place once the latter closes its acquisition of Brocade.

Also covered by the Arris deal is the Broadcom ICX campus switching line, part of what Brocade used to pitch as "next generation" IP networks. Post-acquisition the Broadcom assets will form a business unit with a focus on "innovative wireless networking and wired switching technology" lead by current Ruckus COO Dan Rabinovistj.

Broadcom bought Brocade for $5.9 billion back in November 2016, and shareholders approved of the deal earlier last month. According to Reuters the Ruckus unit is "the first sale of assets that Broadcom is aiming to complete." It is also probably the most valuable.

Cisco sets to manage the needs of digital buildings with the Catalyst Digital Building Switch-- an ethernet switch designed to run things such as lights and cameras while collecting data on said devices.

Described as "[the] milestone at the heart of the smart building vision Cisco is defining," the Digital Building Switch handles disparate systems like lighting, HVAC and badging through a key IoT protocol dubbed the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP). It supports 60W per-port Universal POE technology to deliver twice the power of current PoE+, allowing for bigger and brighter lighting fixtures as well as a variety of devices.

Installation and deployment promises to be fairly simple via Bluetooth and smartphone app, while the fanless design ensures it runs noise-free.

It is a fact older technologies are either forgotten or remain in use by industry. Two examples are the I2C (Inter Integrated Circuits) and SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) communication buses, which only now are receiving an update in the shape of the I3C protocol.

I2C was created in 1982, while the older SPI was born in 1979. The two buses drive short-range communications between circuits and microcontrollers, and remain the key interfaces for sensor-related communication in smart devices, wearables and computers. But such buses cannot handle the requirements of today's bandwidth-hungry sensors, bringing about the need for an update. Enter I3C, a bus combining I2C and SPI created by body in charge of interface specifications for mobile and mobile-influenced interfaces, the MIPI Alliance.

High performance computing (HPC) servers bring growth, IDC reports-- global Q3 2016 revenues total $2.8 billion, a 3.9% Y-o-Y increase on Q3 2015 revenues worth $2.7bn.

The year 2016 is also on a positive track, as revenues for the first 3 quarters total $8.1bn, up by 3.4% over the same period last year.

"In Q3 2016, HPC was a bright spot in the overall worldwide server market, which IDC previously reported declined 7.0% year over year to $12.5bn in the quarter," the analyst says. "Higher-priced systems led the way with year-over-year growth exceeding 22%, while lower-priced system revenue declined."