AI calls for a elementary rethinking of how we design, construct, and safe knowledge facilities. Organizations are shifting previous the experimentation part and are deploying huge AI clusters that require unprecedented community bandwidth, energy, and safety controls. Constructing these giga-scale environments isn’t nearly including extra GPUs. It requires a holistic, deeply built-in structure that ensures each element—from the silicon to programs to software program and the working mannequin—works in excellent concord.
Cisco is delivering the foundational infrastructure wanted to make this a actuality. By combining our networking experience with superior silicon, programs, optics, software program, working fashions, and safety improvements, we’re offering enterprises, neoclouds, and sovereign cloud suppliers with the instruments they should deploy AI securely at scale. Cisco stands out as the one vendor able to delivering a real turnkey resolution, seamlessly tailor-made to fulfill the calls for of shoppers at each scale.
By means of our partnership with NVIDIA, we’re pushing the boundaries of what AI networks can obtain, specializing in three essential pillars: infrastructure, networking, and safety.
Constructed for AI factories
The transition to giga-scale AI requires {hardware} able to dealing with huge knowledge throughput with minimal latency. Constructing on the enlargement of the not too long ago introduced N9300 Silicon One G300 scale-out and 51.2T P200 scale-across programs, Cisco is elevating the bar to fulfill these intense calls for.
We’re thrilled to introduce the brand new Cisco N9100 Sequence Swap, N9164F-NS6, powered by NVIDIA Spectrum-6 silicon. This 102.4T swap delivers a large leap in knowledge heart capability to help next-generation safe AI factories. We’re additionally making the N9100 switches out there with NVIDIA Spectrum-4 silicon, giving enterprises, neoclouds, and sovereign cloud suppliers versatile, high-performance deployment choices.
We imagine within the energy of silicon variety. This technique lets you select the precise expertise that matches your particular efficiency and operational wants. To maintain implementation easy, we guarantee full reference structure compliance. This streamlines your deployment and ensures clean integration into complicated knowledge heart environments.
Cisco retains elevating the efficiency ceiling, making superior AI infrastructure quicker and simpler to deploy. We launched the N9100 switches, powered by NVIDIA Spectrum-6 Ethernet silicon, to handle the immense scale required by next-generation safe AI factories. This 100% liquid-cooled 102.4T swap represents a serious leap ahead in AI knowledge heart capability.
As well as, the N9100 swap, powered by NVIDIA Spectrum-4 silicon, can also be now out there, additional increasing deployment choices for enterprises, neoclouds, and sovereign cloud suppliers.
To make deploying these complicated programs simpler, we built-in Nexus One help with cloud-managed Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric. This creates a turnkey, full-stack AI resolution. AI builders not must piece collectively disparate parts and hope they operate effectively. Nexus Hyperfabric additionally now manages the newly out there Cisco N9164E-NS4-O, powered by NVIDIA Spectrum-4 Ethernet silicon. It affords pods of plug-and-play knowledge heart materials, managed solely via the cloud, dramatically decreasing the time it takes to go from procurement to full operation. Nexus One features a sturdy, on-premises managed Nexus dashboard that may be a confirmed operations, automation knowledge heart, and AI networking resolution.
Flexibility stays essential when designing these environments. Organizations have completely different wants based mostly on their dimension, safety necessities, and current infrastructure. To accommodate this, we provide sturdy reference architectures tailor-made to particular deployment sorts:
- Cisco Cloud Reference Structure (CRA): For enterprises and neoclouds deploying specialised AI servers with larger than 1000 GPUs and as much as 32,000 GPUs, the Cisco CRA gives a extremely optimized, scalable path ahead utilizing industry-leading Cisco Silicon One and Cisco N9300 Sequence Switches. For deployments of fewer than 1000 GPUs, we have now ready-to-consume Cisco Enterprise Reference Structure (ERA).
- Compliant with NVIDIA Cloud Companion Reference Design: For giant-scale AI infrastructures starting from 1000 to 32,000 GPUs, the Cisco N9100 Sequence Switches totally adjust to the NVIDIA Cloud Companion (NCP) Reference Structure. This ensures final efficiency for sovereign and neocloud deployments, using scale-out materials powered by Spectrum-X Ethernet swap silicon.
By providing a alternative between NCP Reference Design and Cisco CRA architectures, we be sure that each buyer has a confirmed, validated blueprint for fulfillment, whether or not they’re constructing a large sovereign cloud or a extremely focused enterprise AI cluster.
Securing the AI workload on the edge
As AI clusters develop in energy and complexity, they develop into extremely engaging targets for malicious actors. Conventional perimeter safety fashions fail in these environments. Unprotected east-west visitors throughout the AI cloth permits lateral threats to unfold quickly. A compromised AI workload might result in GPU useful resource hijacking or huge knowledge exfiltration, leading to a full lateral blast radius. Nevertheless, working conventional safety brokers straight on the AI servers taxes the CPU and GPU, draining the very compute assets you’re making an attempt to maximise.
To resolve this, we’re essentially shifting the place and the way safety is enforced. We prolonged Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall help on to NVIDIA BlueField DPUs.
This innovation brings safety as near the workload as doable with out compromising efficiency. By embedding the firewall on the DPU, we ship built-in inline safety with high-performance scalability. Directors can outline safety insurance policies as soon as and implement them in every single place, isolating digital public clouds (VPCs) and blocking lateral assaults in actual time. This gives choke-point-free enforcement, defending front-end cloth servers whereas leaving the host CPU and GPU solely devoted to processing AI workloads.
To study extra about how we’re defending AI environments from lateral threats with out sacrificing efficiency, learn our detailed technical breakdown: Cisco secures AI infrastructure with NVIDIA BlueField DPUs.
Advancing AI networking for peak efficiency
Even probably the most highly effective GPUs will sit idle if the community can’t feed them knowledge quick sufficient. Maximizing GPU utilization and optimizing the key-value (KV) cache efficiency requires clever, high-speed connectivity throughout the whole cloth. That is the place Cisco Nexus One essentially modifications the sport for AI networking.
Nexus One gives a unified administration aircraft throughout each NX-OS and SONiC environments with an on-premises managed Nexus Dashboard and cloud-managed Nexus Hyperfabric as operational fashions.
Nexus Dashboard delivers unprecedented visibility into the full-stack AI atmosphere with Cisco N9000 Sequence Switches. Directors acquire entry to deep AI job-monitoring capabilities with Nexus Dashboard 4.2. Observe precisely how knowledge strikes via the material, figuring out bottlenecks earlier than they impression coaching occasions. The system options clever, auto-adjusting load balancing and telemetry-based congestion management. As an alternative of counting on static routing protocols that break down beneath the distinctive, elephant-flow visitors patterns of AI workloads, the community dynamically adjusts to make sure optimum knowledge supply.
Moreover, Nexus Dashboard allows real-time GPU well being monitoring. Community operators can see straight into the efficiency metrics of the compute layer, guaranteeing that each costly GPU useful resource operates at most effectivity. Whether or not you’re constructing a scale-out community inside a single knowledge heart or a scale-across community connecting a number of amenities with high-performance, low-latency hyperlinks, Nexus Dashboard ensures the community acts as a strong accelerator relatively than a bottleneck.
Empowering the following technology of innovation
The AI revolution requires extra than simply uncooked processing energy. It calls for a totally built-in ecosystem the place infrastructure, networking, and safety are designed to function as a single, cohesive unit.
By means of our continued improvements with the Spectrum-X-powered Cisco N9100 Sequence Switches, the clever administration of Nexus One, and the edge-enforced safety of the Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall on BlueField DPUs, Cisco gives the inspiration that enterprises, neoclouds, and sovereign clouds have to scale their AI ambitions. We’re constructing the networks that may energy the following decade of discovery, guaranteeing they’re quick, dependable, and essentially safe.
