Cisco expands partnership with Nvidia to drive enterprise AI adoption

Cisco Systems Inc. today expanded its partnership with Nvidia Corp. to help enterprises accelerate AI projects by making it easier to deploy a combined solution to modernize their data center in preparation for artificial intelligence.

The two companies have been partners for the better part of a decade. This five-year expansion is aimed at bringing flexibility to customers to meet the constantly changing demands that AI brings.

Cisco said it will work with Nvidia to create a cross-portfolio unified architecture to make building AI-ready data center networks easier. Cisco Silicon One will couple with Nvidia’s Spectrum-X Ethernet networking platform. This partnership is notable because Cisco’s Silicon One becomes the only third-party silicon included in Spectrum-X.

As part of the deal, Cisco will also build systems using Nvidia Spectrum silicon and Cisco operating system software. Customers will be able to standardize Cisco networking and Nvidia technology in their data centers simultaneously. The collaboration will create new market opportunities for Cisco by unifying the architectural model between front- and back-end networks and simplifying the management of a range of enterprise and cloud provider networks.

In a pre-announcement briefing, Kevin Wollenweber, Cisco’s senior vice president and general manager of data center and provider connectivity, told me the expanded partnership has two main objectives.

“We’re going to take our silicon technologies, our orchestration software, and a lot of the security infrastructure that Cisco brings to this space, and we’re going to embed it into the Spectrum-X platform,” he said. “We can now take our networking technologies — Silicon One, our network operating systems and our orchestration — and have them be part of that Spectrum-X architecture. So when the customer deploys the Spectrum-X platform, they’ll have the benefit of being able to choose between Nvidia silicon if they want to leverage that for the back end and Cisco if they want to leverage that for back-end or for the front-end networks that are being built around the GPU interconnects.”

Wollenweber added that other Nvidia network innovations, including adaptive routing, will run across the Spectrum-X platform, including Cisco silicon.

Customer benefits

The extended collaboration will open new opportunities for Cisco by unifying front-end and back-end architectural models. This will make it easier for organizations to manage disparate enterprise and cloud provider networks.

“The Spectrum X platform is the reference architecture,” Wollenweber said. “It’s the GPU, the smart NIC, the switching and all of the features and functionality, like adaptive routing, that run across that. We expect customers to be able to deploy that reference architecture, fully vetted and validated by Nvidia, but with the Cisco components inside.”

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 that they have on the back end as they already deployed on the front end, they can get consistency with what they’re already deploying, allowing them to more easily pull these AI infrastructure stacks, into their ecosystem.”

Joint solutions

Cisco said it will develop data center switches for the Nvidia Spectrum Ethernet platform. The open ecosystem will give customers greater choice and flexibility. Organizations can standardize on the Nvidia-X platform with both companies’ switch silicon-based architectures.

This will combine technologies from Cisco and Nvidia into a single management fabric. Cisco also will work with Nvidia to create and validate Nvidia Cloud Partner and Enterprise Reference Architectures based on Nvidia Spectrum-X with Cisco Silicon One, Hyperfabric and several other Cisco technologies. The companies also plan future collaborations and joint development of high-performance Ethernet solutions to enable customers to scale and secure AI deployments.

Wollenweber said the overarching goal is to provide customers with what they want. “Commonality and consistency is something we’ve been asked for by a lot of new customers deploying tons of system networking today and bringing some of these AI networking stacks into their ecosystem,” he said. “They’re asking for commonality and consistency with the networking they’re already deploying but with all the bells and whistles, and adaptive routing and efficiency gains that Nvidia has been driving into that Spectrum-X platform.”

For Nvidia, the association with Cisco brings an added level of credibility. Cisco is one of the most trusted data center companies, nearly ubiquitously deployed across the Fortune 500. Most customers prefer Ethernet rather than standing up a parallel technology such as InfiniBand. Recently, ZK Research and theCube Research conducted an AI networking study and found that 59% of respondents prefer Ethernet, since it’s a tried-and-true technology.

Though Nvidia does support its own Ethernet in Spectrum-X, it doesn’t have the same track record for reliability and performance that Cisco solutions have. The two companies partnering brings validated solutions to market, which speeds up adoption as customers do not have to go through the tweaking and tuning of the components.

I discussed the solution with Neil Anderson, vice president of cloud, infrastructure and AI solutions for World Wide Technology Holding Co., a global systems integrator. Given the volume of business WWT does with both companies, I wanted to get his perspective .

“Combining Cisco’s deep experience and track-record in networking with Nvidia’s advanced AI technology will only strengthen the outcome for our customers,,” he told me. “By partnering together on AI clusters, customers get the best of both worlds in a simplified and trusted architecture they can depend on for the Enterprise Data Center. We see this as a huge win for customers.”

Availability

Cisco will enhance its Silicon One switches to be compatible with Spectrum-X and Nvidia’s reference architecture. Updated products are expected to be available in the middle of this year. The updates will include a range of existing and new products, including Cisco Nexus and Nexus Hyperfabric and Cisco’s USC products. Cisco will announce the availability of new Spectrum switches at a later date.

Zeus Kerravala is a principal analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting. He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.

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