Cisco 8102-DPU 12.8T Switch with AMD Pensando

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Here is the Cisco 8102-DPU. This is far from the fastest switch out there since current generation switches are more like the 51.2T switch that we recently looked at. Still, this is designed with another feature: built-in DPU cards.

Cisco 8102 DPU 12.8T Switch 1

Cisco 8102 DPU 12.8T Switch 1

The idea is that instead of having DPUs on each server, many networking policies and so forth can be implemented at the switch level. That way, DPUs can live along the switch.

Cisco DPU Offload SDN Service

Cisco DPU Offload SDN Service

Cisco, Microsoft, and AMD had a case study at Cisco Live! 2024 and they said that using the accelerated infrastructure can save up to 22 cores while providing other benefits like reducing jitter.

Cisco Live Microsoft Azure AMD Pensando DPU Switch

Cisco Live Microsoft Azure AMD Pensando DPU Switch

Something that was really neat was seeing the AMD DPU “Elba” generation against the AWS NITROv5 and v4. AMD’s performance looks very good here.

AMD Pensando Elba DPU Vs AWS Nitrov5

AMD Pensando Elba DPU Vs AWS Nitrov5

We looked at the VMware AMD Pensando solution in our Hands-on with an AMD Pensando DSC2-100G Elba DPU in AMD’s Secret Lab piece last year.

As for specs of the Cisco 8102-28FH-DPU, the switch is based on the Cisco Silicon One Q200L and has 28x 400G QSFP-DD56 ports on the front. Cisco is supporting SONiC as well as RDMA for higher-performance workloads.

Cisco 8102 28FH DPU Overview Slide

Cisco 8102 28FH DPU Overview Slide

On top, the switch has four DPU sleds. These take up to 8x AMD Elba generation DPUs in two DPUs per sled for up to 1.6Tbps of DPU services.

Cisco 8102 28FH DPU Overview

Cisco 8102 28FH DPU Overview

At Cisco Live! 2024, Microsoft Azure discussed how it is accelerating services with the DPUs.

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Putting high end DPUs in network switches is a thing? How prevalent is this? Seems like extreme overkill but I’m not exactly sure what switches really do. :blush:

EDIT: ok, I guess I didn’t know that DPUs are meant to be integrated with network hardware! D’oh!

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They use switches to segregate networks. It is cheaper than using a router and switches do not have to be able to do everything a router does. So lets say in your business you have accounting. hardware engineers, software engineers etc. Each one of them would have their own IP addresses with in their network. The switches would separate each work group with their own addresses. They also act like a repeater, cleaning up the data signal and boosting it further. Each of these switches have outgoing ports to the computers in their group and have a incoming port from the router. The router has the companies IP address that connect to the world. The switches are smarter than hubs so they are able to send packets within the companies networks, relieving the router of that job.

That is a simplistic overview.

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Ok, but why wouldn’t an 8086 -strength processor be able to handle this seemingly simple task? Why does it now need a high-powered DPU?

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Throughput, throughput, throughput. Think in terms of handling all the traffic flowing along dozens or hundreds (or more) of 10GBit (or faster) fairly well saturated Ethernet connections. Note that the article represented that 20 or so cores of capacity per server were being consumed by this activity before the introduction of this kind of DPU-enabled switch.

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It’s not simple GO it’s just more simple than a router. You remember the 80’s right? Where we all thought the 386 was the end all be all? Everything gets bigger and faster.

Edit: I should have said 90’s dang how time flies.

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Ok, I suppose. So presumably the architecture of a DPU is considerably different from that of an APU, and is tailor made for network “stuff”?

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This is yet another market where NVIDIA was the visionary leader and INTC and AMD (via Pensando) are playing catchup.