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The “second half of the chessboard” parable is a becoming metaphor for the business to which I’ve devoted my profession. Should you’re unfamiliar with the parable, right here’s the gist of it: The sport of chess was launched to a king. The king was so delighted, he supplied the inventor any reward she desired. The inventor requested for a single grain of rice to be positioned on the primary sq. of the chessboard and to double the quantity of rice every week, for every sq. on the chessboard. The king foolishly agreed, and by the point they crossed the primary half of the chessboard, the dominion was depleted of rice. If that they had reached the final sq., the rice would have amounted to the scale of Mount Everest!
Why does this matter to networking and why share this now? After over thirty years of exponential site visitors progress, networks at the moment are crossing the second half of the chessboard. Vigorous progress continues without end, and the scale and scale of the biggest networks in the present day dwarf these from simply 5 years in the past.
Consequently, new (and larger) issues have emerged. For instance, how can networks develop to colossal sizes and concurrently enhance agility? How can the economics of networking be redefined to decrease the price of possession? At this time, for each greenback spent on networking tools, operators are spending 5 {dollars} or extra yearly, on operational prices. Energy effectivity, local weather affect, and greenhouse gasoline emissions have risen to the highest. And projections present, that by 2025, the Web could devour 20% of the world’s energy. If it was its personal nation, the Web could be the fifth-largest vitality shopper on the earth.
The chess-enamored king was short-sighted. Expertise leaders should repeatedly anticipate future issues and decide to improvements years prematurely. Cisco Silicon One is a type of improvements. Designed particularly to handle the challenges that emerge within the second half of the chessboard, Cisco Silicon One is the engine for our Cisco 8000 collection routers. These platforms are already over twice as dense (12.8Tbps per NPU with 19.2Tbps forthcoming in platforms quickly) and over 3 times extra power-efficient (2.25 Watts/100G) than some other system accessible in the present day.
But, being king of the mountain over the remainder of the business isn’t essentially the most thrilling half. We’re most excited concerning the velocity and acceleration that Cisco Silicon One structure allows for the long run. Traditionally, new silicon has been launched each 3-5 years. Completely different platforms usually used completely different silicon relying on measurement, function, and performance. Further time was wanted for the working software program to finally present characteristic parity and high quality throughout platforms. Paradoxically, improvements at all times appeared to come back with delays. That’s altering.
Within the two years since Cisco Silicon One was launched, we’ve launched 11 new units that vary from 3.2Tbps to 25.6Tbps. Prospects can simplify operations, pace time to worth, and scale back prices utilizing a single silicon technique that spans community platforms from a 3.2Tbps top-of-rack swap (TOR) to a 259.2Tbps modular core router.
And we at the moment are delivery these applied sciences in quantity. Already, among the world’s largest, future-ready community operators are embracing the worth. Meta, Microsoft, and Deutsche Telekom are simply among the clients who’ve publicly shared their enthusiasm.
Lately, one other vendor made some noise a couple of head-to-head efficiency check with our Cisco 8000 collection router. It was a bit like a soccer match the place the host workforce made the principles, employed the referees, put a Cisco uniform on a model, after which declared themselves victorious. It was notably cringe-worthy as a result of I consider most technical decision-makers would simply see by the misdirection. Sadly, you may’t repair engineering points with advertising and marketing. Prospects know instantly when assessments are designed to make the seller look good as an alternative of doing the shopper nicely.
To be trustworthy, I get somewhat bemused when different distributors concentrate on legacy benchmarks which have little relevance to future deployments. For instance, only a few situations determine 4 million routes is important. When clients do want it, Cisco has different platforms designed to help ten million routes. And hitting legendary line charges of sustained 64-byte packets throughout a complete system? Everybody already is aware of this by no means occurs in an actual community, as a result of video (massive payloads) is the dominant site visitors. Buying and selling off density or energy effectivity to fulfill some fantasy metrics has unfavorable implications and leads to actual prices to clients.
New occasions. New issues. New options. Cisco is constructing the Web for the Future. Verify.
Large scale, energy effectivity, agility, and longevity. Sooner or later, these are the metrics that matter most as a result of they instantly affect the economics of networking. Checkmate.
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