In a fairly exciting announcement today, NVIDIA did something that we have not seen it do previously, it has invited Cisco into its networking ecosystem. With the announcement today, NVIDIA is bringing Cisco Silicon One into Spectrum-X, making it an alternative to NVIDIA’s own Mellanox-lineage switch silicon.
Cisco Silicon One Joins NVIDIA Spectrum-X
Here is a quick summary of the announcement on what NVIDIA is doing and Cisco:
- NVIDIA will enable Cisco Silicon One coupled with NVIDIA SuperNICs to become part of the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform. Cisco would be the only partner silicon included in NVIDIA Spectrum-X. This is not only [a] massive validation for Silicon One, but it also highlights the centrality of Cisco technologies — including silicon, optics, and software — in the AI technology landscape.
- Cisco will be building systems that combine NVIDIA Spectrum silicon with Cisco OS software, allowing customers to simultaneously standardize on both Cisco networking and NVIDIA technology in the data center. Every enterprise will have a huge variety of use cases and applications for AI in their business. By enabling customers to leverage Nvidia Spectrum Silicon that[ i]s specialized for back-end connectivity or Cisco Silicon One, both under a common Nexus software stack (NX-OS and Nexus Dashboard), we will enable an exciting new level of interoperability in the industry. (Source: Cisco)
On the one hand, NVIDIA still retains the NIC side of the equation. With today’s 51.2T switch silicon and 400GbE NICs, that usually means about 64 NICs per switch if there is one NIC port per switch uplink port, and more if the switch is oversubscribed. For every switch sold, that is a lot of NVIDIA BlueField SuperNIC revenue.
For Cisco, the company has been pushing for an AI story as competitors have been doing very well in AI switch silicon. We have seen Cisco also pushing outside its traditional Cisco-centric networks with its inclusion in the Meta Minipack3 at OCP Summit 2024 announcement.
This is a great story.
Final Words
For those who run Cisco networks in the enterprise, the idea of being able to use familiar tooling and Cisco switching to also run an AI network is welcome. Many of the hyper-scale and large AI shops today will be happy to use other vendors, but if you are already Cisco, this makes a lot of sense. Although we have seen many north-south networks in large AI clusters use other switch vendors, NVIDIA Spectrum-X is used by some for the bigger east-west traffic doing transfers between GPUs.
I assume this is to dodge the antitrust allegations with Nvidia going back on promises made during their Mellanox acquisition.
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Although we have seen many north-south networks in large AI clusters use other switch vendors, NVIDIA Spectrum-X is used by some for the bigger east-west traffic doing transfers between GPUs.