Fulcrum Microsystems Blog

Congratulations to Arista Networks and Blade Network Technologies, whose switches performed best under a recent Network World Clear Choice data center top-of-rack Ethernet switch test!  The magazine summarized the value of TOR switches like this:

“As data center managers consolidate and virtualize their servers, the next order of business becomes moving all that traffic. Enter top-of-rack data center switches that offer speed, scalability, redundancy, virtualization support and other features not available in garden-variety Ethernet switches.”

This intensive evaluation that included six switches that feature at least 24 10-Gigabit ports, resulted in Arista’s DCS-7124S and Blade’s G8124 switches being deemed the top choices for the data center. The testing was summarized as follows:

“With the best combination of features and performance – especially in the areas of latency and jitter – both switches earn Clear Choice awards”

The detailed test results can be found here.  The general consensus was that the Arista and BNT switches offered the best overall performance, with list prices that are about one-third that of the competing solutions.  This price advantage can be attributed to the switches’ use of merchant silicon like FocalPoint, which has the functionality and low latency required in the data center.

Comments welcome: feedback@fulcrummicro.com

As we look forward to the coming year, the market for 10GE switches is expected to heat up—driven primarily by increased competition in the data center.  This article in Network World notes an increase in large vendors like Avaya, IBM and HP that are challenging the current Cisco-centric paradigm, and they’re doing so by developing cost-effective data center bridging (DCB) switch fabric solutions.

To compete with Cisco on cost, these vendors will not be able to justify the large internal chip development model made famous by Cisco, and the result will be a heavier reliance on merchant silicon to keep costs down.  However, for these fabric-based architectures to have the necessary performance, it is vitally important that the switches have extremely low-latency and high bandwidth along with advanced DCB features.

FocalPoint provides the combination of features necessary for large DCB fabrics designed for scaled out data centers that require cost-effective Ethernet switching solutions.  With Fulcrum at the center of the switching architecture, vendors now have the merchant silicon solution they need to break through Cisco’s stranglehold on the data center market and legitimately shift the course of the data center evolution.

Comments welcome: feedback@fulcrummicro.com