Cisco introduced a 36 x 800G line card with a capacity 28.8 Tbps for use in its Cisco 8000 Series Routers. The line card offers double the density of the previous generation, with support for 2x400G-FR4 and 8x100G-FR interfaces.
The high density solution is aimed at IP backbone, metro core, and data centers supporting AI/ML workloads.
The new 28.8Tbps / 36 x 800G line card is powered by Cisco Silicon One P100 chip, which is implemented in 7nm. The silicon design packs 192 x112G SerDes in single chip. It features on-chip SRAM/TCAM memory with high-capacity HBM for buffering and LPM scale. The new chip also brings advanced traffic management, load balancing, instrumentation and telemetry. Cisco is also introducing an IOS XR Path Tracing capability that provides hop-by-hop visibility of the packet’s path through the network.
“We continue to expand 800G to 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. “With our dense core and spine solutions using new double density line cards with Cisco Silicon One, we have accelerated the transition to 800G anywhere.”
The line card could be populated with Cisco’s forthcoming 800G pluggable transceivers. Because it supports industry standards, the line card could also accept third party optics conforming to MSA specs.
