Cisco Silicon One powered by Cisco IOS-XE

Cisco announced in 2019 a new ASIC from the Silicon One team (former Leaba Semiconductor, that got acquired by Cisco in 2016) called Q100.

“The first Cisco Silicon One ‘Q100’ model surpasses the 10 Tbps routing milestone for network bandwidth without sacrificing programmability, buffering, power efficiency, scale or feature flexibility.”

Since then the Silicon One team has released a variety of ASICs that is part of the Silicon One Family to address several networking use cases, primarily for Service Providers and Web Scale Providers (bandwidth, features, and scale requirements).

(Cisco Silicon One Family)

This week Cisco has announced the new Catalyst 9500X and Catalyst 9600X, that uses Silicon One Q200 and is powered by Cisco IOS-XE.

Purpose-built 400, 200, 100, and 40 Gigabit Ethernet switches targeted for the enterprise campus. Using 100 Gigabit Ethernet Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable (QSFP28) and 400 Gigabit Ethernet Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable Double Density (QSFP-DD) ports.

The Silicon One is now extending it’s uses cases in to the Enterprise Networks. Offering the the possibility of one architecture across Service Providers, Web Scale Providers and Enterprise Networks.

(Cisco Silicon One Q200 ASIC)

Cisco Silicon One Q200

• 12.8-Tbps, full-duplex, standalone routing processor with deep buffers
• 7nm fabrication technology, capable of high performance while maintaining a low power footprint
• 256x 56G SerDes; each can be configured independently to operate in 10G/25G/50G using PAM4 modulation
• Flexible port configuration supporting 10/25/40/50/100/200/400 Gbps
• Large, fully shared, on-die packet buffer
• On-chip, high-performance, P4-programmable host NPU for high-bandwidth offline packet processing (for example, OAM processing, MAC learning)

Source: Cisco Silicon One Q200 and Q200L Processors Data Sheet

(Cisco Catalyst 9500X)

Cisco Catalyst 9500X

• Up to 12.0 Tbps switching capacity with 8 Bpps forwarding rate, using Cisco Silicon One Q200
• 80MB of dedicated low-latency buffer, with up to 8GB of HBM buffer
• Intel® 2.43-GHz x86 CPU with 8 cores and 32-GB of DDR4 memory
• Up to 960 GB of SSD local storage for container-based application hosting (2x 10G KR ports)
• Flexible routing (IPv4, IPv6, and multicast) tables, Layer 2 tables, ACL tables, and QoS tables
• ASIC tables for switching scale up to 256K MAC addresses and routing scale up to 2M routes
• Dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 and dynamic hardware forwarding table allocations, for ease of IPv4-to-IPv6 migration
• Hardware support for Application Hosting (e.g. with Cisco ThousandEyes Enterprise Agent)
• Hardware support for Precision Time Protocol (PTP, IEEE 1588v2) with accurate clock synchronization and sub- microsecond accuracy, suitable for distribution and synchronization of time and frequency
• Hardware support for line-rate 256-bit 802.1ae MACsec and WAN-MACsec data encryption
• Field-replaceable fan-tray units, with an added flexibility to choose the direction of airflow
• Platinum-rated (90% efficient) 1500 Watt AC and/or DC power supplies
• Up to 28 nonblocking 40/100 Gigabit Ethernet QSFP28 ports
• Up to 8 nonblocking 40/100/200/400 Gigabit Ethernet QSFPDD ports

Source: Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches Data Sheet

(Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Supervisor Engine 2)

Cisco Catalyst 9600X

• Cisco Catalyst 9606R chassis is hardware ready to support up to 25.6 Tbps in wired switching capacity, with up to 6.4 Tbps bandwidth per slot.
  . Up to 25.6 Tbps wired switching capacity, with 8 Bpps of forwarding performance is unleashed with Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Supervisor Engine 2, using Cisco Silicon One Q200
• 80MB of dedicated low-latency buffer, with up to 8GB of HBM buffer
• Intel® 2.7-GHz x86 CPU with 8 cores and 32GB of DDR4 memory
• Up to 960 GB of SATA SSD local storage for container-based application hosting (2x 10G SFP+ management ports)
• Flexible routing (IPv4, IPv6, and multicast) tables, Layer 2 tables, ACL tables, and QoS tables
• ASIC tables for switching scale up to 256K MAC addresses and routing scale up to 2M routes
• Dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 and dynamic hardware forwarding table allocations, for ease of IPv4-to-IPv6 migration
• Hardware support for Application Hosting
• Hardware support for Precision Time Protocol (PTP, IEEE 1588v2) with accurate clock synchronization and sub-microsecond accuracy, suitable for distribution and synchronization of time and frequency
• Hardware support for line-rate 256-bit 802.1ae MACsec and WAN-MACsec data encryption
• Field-replaceable fan-tray, which can be serviced from the front or rear of the chassis
• Platinum-rated (90% efficient) 2000 Watt AC and/or DC power supplies
• Up to 8 non-blocking 400 Gigabit Ethernet QSFP-DD ports
• Up to 128 non-blocking 100 Gigabit Ethernet QSPF28 ports
• Up to 128 non-blocking 40 Gigabit Ethernet QSPF28 ports
• Up to 256 non-blocking 50G/25G/10G Gigabit Ethernet SPF28 ports
• Up to 192 non-blocking 10 Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 copper ports

Source: Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series Supervisor
Engine Data Sheet

For more information

• Cisco Silicon One Powers the Next-Generation Enterprise Switches
• The Network. Powering Hybrid Work.
• Reimagining Hybrid Work: Create, Manage, Collaborate with the Network for the Future
• Turn Router Power into Cash Savings with Better Silicon
• Cisco Silicon One Product Family (white paper)

Disclaimer: I work for Cisco as a Product Manager
These articles are my own and not Cisco’s