CISCO extends the partnership with NVIDIA to lead to the adoption of the company

Cisco Systems Inc. today EXTENDED His partnership with Nvidia body. To help enterprises accelerate AI projects, making it easier to implement a combined solution to modernize its data center in preparing artificial intelligence.

The two companies were partners for a better part of a decade. This five -year expansion aims to bring customer flexibility to respond to the constantly changing requirements you bring.

Cisco said it will work with Nvidia to create a unified transverse portfolio architecture to facilitate the construction of AI data data networks. Cisco One of silicon will couple with NVIDIA-X’s spectrum Ethernet network platform. This partnership is notable, because Cisco’s silica becomes the only third party silicon included in Spectrum-X.

As part of the transaction, Cisco will also build systems using silicone software and Cisco Nvidia Spectrum operating system. Customers will be able to standardize Cisco Networking and Nvidia simultaneously in their databases. The collaboration will create new market opportunities for Cisco by unifying the architectural model between the front and rear networks and simplifying the management of a series of company suppliers and cloud suppliers.

In a pre-Anunț Information, Kevin Wollenweber, the main vice-president of Cisco and the general manager of the data center and the connective connectivity, told me that the extended partnership has two main objectives.

“We will take our silicon technologies, our orchestration software and a lot of security infrastructures that Cisco brings to this space and we will incorporate into the Specter-X platform,” he said. “Now we can take our network One technologies, our network operating systems and our orchestration can be part of that Spectrum-X architecture. So, when the customer implements the Spectrum-X platform, he will have the benefit of being able to choose between Nvidia Silicon, if they want to use it for the back and Cisco, if they want to use it for back-end or for front-end networks that are built. around GPU interconnection. “

Wollenweber has added that other NVIDIA network innovations, including adaptive routing, will run on the Specterum-X platform, including Silicon Cisco.

The benefits of customers

The extended collaboration will open new opportunities for Cisco by unifying the front-end and back-end architectural models. This will facilitate organizations to manage the networks of company and cloud suppliers.

“The Spectrum X platform is the reference architecture,” Wollenweber said. “It is GPU, intelligent NIC, switching and all features and functionality, such as adaptive routing. We expect customers to be able to implement that reference architecture, completely verified and validated by NVIDIA, but with the CISCO components. “

On the operational side, he added: “If they want to use their nexus dashboard to manage their clusters or they want to use the same management on the back, as already on the front, they can It achieves consistency with what is already carried out, allowing them to draw these infrastructure stacks more easily, in their ecosystem. “

Common solutions

Cisco said it will develop data centers for the Ethernet Nvidia Spectrum platform. The open ecosystem will give customers a higher choice and flexibility. Organizations can standardize on the NVIDIA-X platform with architects in both Switch Silicon companies.

This will combine the technologies from Cisco and Nvidia in a single management fabric. Cisco will also work with nvidia to create and valid Nvidia Cloud Partner and Reference architects for the enterprise Based on Nvidia Spectrum-X with Cisco Silicon One, Hyperfabric and a few other Cisco technologies. Also, companies are planning future collaborations and the common development of high performance Ethernet solutions to allow customers to scroll and ensure AI implementations.

Wollenweber said the general goal is to give customers what they want. “The community and consistency is something that has been asked for a lot of new customers who implement tons of system networks today and bring some of these network stacks to their ecosystem,” he said. “They demand ordinary and consistent with the networks they already implement, but with all the bells and whistles, as well as the adaptive routing and efficiency earnings that NVIDIA has led to that Spectrum-X platform.”

For NVIDIA, the association with Cisco brings an additional level of credibility. Cisco is one of the most reliable data centers, implemented almost omnipresent in Fortune 500. Most customers prefer Ethernet, rather than growing a parallel technology, such as infiniband. Recent, Zk research and Thecube research He conducted a network study and found that 59% of respondents prefer Ethernet, because it is an attempted and true technology.

Although Nvidia supports her own Ethernet in Spectrum-X, she does not have the same record for reliability and performance that Cisco Solutions have. The two partner companies bring validated solutions on the market, which accelerates the adoption, because customers should not go through the modification and regulation of the components.

We discussed the solution with Neil Anderson, Vice President of Cloud, Infrastructure and AI solutions for World Wide Technology Holding Co.an integrator of global systems. Given the volume of WWT business with both companies, I wanted to get its perspective.

“The combination of the profound experience of Cisco and the registration of network routes with the advanced NVIDIA technology will strengthen the result for our customers,” he told me. “Through the partnership together in AI groups, customers get the best of both worlds in a simplified and reliable architecture that they can depend on the Enterprise Data Center. We see this as a huge earnings for customers. “

Availability

Cisco will improve its silicon switches to be compatible with the reference architecture of Spectrum-X and NVIDIA. It is expected that the updated products will be available in the middle of this year. The updates will include a number of existing and new products, including Cisco Nexus and Nexus Hyperfabric and CISCO USC products. Cisco will announce the availability of new spectrum switches at a later date.

Zeus Kerravala is the main analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting. He wrote this article for Siliconangle.

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