News summary:
- Cisco’s new 28.8T / 36 x 800G line card, powered by the Cisco Silicon One P100 ASIC, is up to 6 times more space efficient compared to current 400G solutions and supports up to 15 Tbps per rack unit.
- By using Cisco 8000 series routers with the new line card, service providers and cloud providers can achieve up to 83% space savings and up to 68% energy savings by migrating from 400G to 800G for IP backbone, metro core and data center supporting AI/ML workloads.
- New software innovations such as IOS XR Path Tracing and Crosswork Network Automation improve network visibility, insights and actions to simplify operations and improve connected experiences.
SAN JOSE, California, March 30, 2023 — Cisco today announced 800G innovations that continue to transform the economics and sustainability of the Internet for the future, helping its customers connect the nearly 40% of the world’s population that remain unconnected or underserved.
The Rise of IoT, AI/ML
As IoT devices grow from billions to trillions, demand for bandwidth increases not only from connecting devices with 5G and Wi-Fi, but also from the AI/ML workloads required to derive insights from IoT. Applications such as generative AI, search, language processing and recommendation engines are driving the rapid growth of AI/ML clusters in data center environments that require more bandwidth compared to traditional workloads. AI/ML fabrics need to be scaled with denser backbones which are essential to support the huge number of processors with low latency, in addition to capacity expansion in the Data Center Interconnect.
Leading the 800G transition to denser networks
Although bandwidth growth seems unlimited, space and power are limited. Dense and energy-efficient platforms are required. Cisco doubles the capacity of communications service providers and Webscale customers, metro core and data center networks compared to 400G/100G modular solutions. Powered by Cisco Silicon One, the new 28.8 Tbps / 36 x 800G line card for Cisco 8000 Series routers lowers operating costs while protecting investments as communications service providers and cloud operators transform networks from 100G to 400G and 800G capabilities. Customers can benefit from carbon savings by using less hardware to scale and reuse equipment.
“We continue to expand 800G into more use cases, from AI/ML fabrics to the core, to help our customers meet their performance and sustainability goals,” said Kevin Wollenweber, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Networking, Data Center and Provider Connectivity options. “With our dense core and backbone solutions using new dual-density line cards with Cisco Silicon One, we’ve accelerated the transition to 800G anywhere.”
Key benefits of Modular Cisco 8000 Series Router System Powered by Cisco Silicon One P100:
- Economy: With up to 83% space savings, customers can build denser networks with much of the same infrastructure to support use cases such as 5G, IoT, broadband and AI/ML. Other benefits include:
- By doubling the capacity in the same chassis footprint, the Cisco 8000 Series router platform has up to twice the space efficiency of 400G single chassis systems.
- These 800G single chassis systems can now support equivalent traffic loads with up to 6 times more space efficiency compared to current 400G distributed chassis solutions, delivering up to 15 Tbps per rack unit.
- New 800G modular systems can also provide equivalent bandwidth capacity with up to an estimated 68% energy savings compared to 400G solutions to help reduce operating costs.
- Sustainability: With up to 68% energy savings, the 800G systems can help customers achieve their sustainability goals.
- Assuming a single 800G system is used 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the potential energy savings compared to 400G systems would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 215,838 CO2e per year.
- This amount of carbon savings is estimated to be equivalent to reducing carbon emissions from charging 40 million smartphones or burning 366,923 pounds of carbon a year (1)
- Customers can also reuse common equipment when upgrading to 800G systems to reduce e-waste.
- Architectural innovations: Powered by the Cisco Silicon One P100 ASIC and Cisco pluggable optics, the new line card offers massive throughput for the Cisco 8800 Series modular system. Key features include:
- Advanced 100G SerDes technology enables customers to double current 400G port densities and increase 8x current 100G port densities in the same form factor, supporting 72 x 400G and 288 x 100G ports per slot.
- Ability to scale up to 800G to support increasing traffic demands with four, eight, twelve and 18-seat chassis. Customers can scale up to 518 Tbps of capacity with a single 18-slot modular 800G system.
- The flexible pay-as-you-grow consumption model helps customers future-proof their deployments by right-sizing the network and adding capacity over time to better align with business outcomes.
- Cisco’s new generation of pluggable optics provides investment protection through backward compatibility with existing QSFP pluggable transceivers.
- Operational Simplicity: With advanced visualization dashboards, service monitoring with actionable insights, and closed-loop network optimization, customers can ensure consistent quality of service experiences.
- With recent improvements in Crosswork Network Automation, the speed at which network elements and services can be added has greatly improved.
- New IOS XR Path Tracing provides hop-by-hop visibility of the packet’s path through the network.
Industry response:
“Based on our extensive market research and traffic analysis, we predict continued growth of data traffic with fixed and mobile services, including for 5G, broadband, IoT and cloud. These trends put networks under increasing pressure, which is why scaling to 800G throughput in the future with solutions like the Cisco 8000 will be in demand, while helping service providers and cloud providers improve operational efficiency, sustainability and user experience.” — Simon Sherrington, Head of Research, Analysys Mason
“Together with Cisco, we are seeking new approaches to drive market differentiation and deliver business outcomes through agile, secure infrastructure at every stage of the technology journey. As a key enabler of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030, we must ensure our technology is at the forefront of technological innovation. With modular 800G innovations and Silicon One P100 on the Cisco 8000 series, we continue to push towards new levels of cloud connectivity and digital transformation while benefiting from operational efficiencies that allow stc group to continue to provide a high-performance, lower cost-per-bit service to our customers.” — Bader Allhieb – stc Infrastructure, stc
“Colt works towards ESG By Design, which means that our strong commitment to sustainability spans every part of our business. It is imperative that we work with partners who share our values and strive to build a better, cleaner planet. Cisco’s latest routing innovation demonstrates its commitment to finding powerful and efficient ways to scale capacity, while mitigating environmental impact. It marks an exciting next step in the future of sustainable digital infrastructure.” — Kelsey Hopkinson, VP-ESG, Colt Technology Services
“With the implementation of Florida LambdaRail’s new FLRnet4 400G backbone, space becomes one of our primary concerns as we had exhausted our existing footprint at many of our facilities. The combination of incredible forwarding capacity, operational efficiency and the reliable IOS XR network operating system made the Cisco 8000 Series the the obvious choice for our new network. We couldn’t be happier with our choice. Not only do we have a state-of-the-art network, but the Cisco 8000 Series solution ensures there are enough operational savings to scale our network for years to come.” — Chris Griffin, Chief Network Architect, Florida LambdaRail
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