SAN JOSE, Calif. – A Google executive called for a common API to swap Ethernet switches in and out of networks as easily as a new server. The interface could pave the way for an emerging crop of Ethernet chips that aim to disrupt Broadcom’s dominance in the sector.
“Right now there’s no standard API for switches so when plug in a new switch, we do that work ourselves,” said Amin Vahdat, technical lead for networking at Google, in an interview with EE Times at the Open Networking Summit.
The interface is just one of many missing puzzle pieces for Web giants and network operators migrating to software-defined networks (SDN). Google and AT&T both reported progress on their decade-long shift from networks based on ASICs and vendor-specific protocols to ones running functions in software on generic servers and switches.
The effort to plug a new switch into a data center network is “dramatically different” than inserting a new server, Vahdat told EE Times. “That really holds back the market,” he said, adding he hopes to rally a group of chip vendors and customers to define the new interface within a year.
Today, Broadcom’s chips are used in more than 90 percent of Ethernet switches. Cavium’s XPliant has gained design wins at Arista and Brocade, and AT&T announced it tested chips from startup Barefoot Networks among others. Meanwhile startup Innovium and Mediatek spin-out Nephos are vying for a slice of the market with established players including China’s Centec Networks, Marvell and Mellanox.
The rising competition is expected to drive down switch prices from recent highs of $60 per 100-Gbit/s port, or almost $2,000 per chip in 2016. But big users such as Google need a common API and test suite for qualifying the new switches.
“We want to support a range of switches, [but] now we have to do a fair amount of work to integrate [them],” Vahdat said.
In addition, the new chips need to provide hardware support for detecting and routing around network faults. Although the new chips do a good job “pushing the envelope of speed, [they] take a single-switch view of the world,” he said, calling for chips that cooperate across a network of many switches from multiple vendors.
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