The “second half of the chessboard” parable is a becoming metaphor for the trade to which I’ve devoted my profession. If you happen to’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 provided 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 they’d 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 visitors progress, networks are actually crossing the second half of the chessboard. Vigorous progress continues endlessly, and the scale and scale of the biggest networks right now dwarf these from simply 5 years in the past.

Consequently, new (and greater) 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 present, 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 eat 20% of the world’s energy. If it was its personal nation, the Web can be the fifth-largest power shopper on the planet.

The chess-enamored king was short-sighted. Know-how leaders should repeatedly anticipate future issues and decide to improvements years upfront. Cisco Silicon One is a kind of improvements. Designed particularly to deal with the challenges that emerge within the second half of the chessboard, Cisco Silicon One is the engine for our Cisco 8000 sequence 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 right now.

But, being king of the mountain over the remainder of the trade isn’t probably the most thrilling half. We’re most excited in regards to the velocity and acceleration that Cisco Silicon One structure permits 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, position, and performance. Extra time was wanted for the working software program to finally present characteristic parity and high quality throughout platforms. Sarcastically, improvements at all times appeared to return with delays. That’s altering.

Within the two years since Cisco Silicon One was launched, we’ve launched 11 new gadgets 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 are actually transport these applied sciences in quantity. Already, a number of the world’s largest, future-ready community operators are embracing the worth. Meta, Microsoft, and Deutsche Telekom are simply a number of the prospects who’ve publicly shared their enthusiasm.

Just lately, one other vendor made some noise a couple of head-to-head efficiency check with our Cisco 8000 sequence router. It was a bit like a soccer match the place the host crew made the foundations, employed the referees, put a Cisco uniform on a model, after which declared themselves victorious. It was significantly cringe-worthy as a result of I consider most technical decision-makers would simply see by the misdirection. Sadly, you’ll be able to’t repair engineering points with advertising and marketing. Prospects know instantly when assessments are designed to make the seller look good as a substitute of doing the client effectively.

To be trustworthy, I get a little bit bemused when different distributors deal with legacy benchmarks which have little relevance to future deployments. For instance, only a few situations establish 4 million routes is important. When prospects 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 (giant payloads) is the dominant visitors. Buying and selling off density or energy effectivity to satisfy some fantasy metrics has damaging implications and ends in actual prices to prospects.

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 immediately affect the economics of networking. Checkmate.

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