Building AI/ML Networks with Cisco Silicon One

It’s evident from the amount of news coverage, articles, blogs, and water cooler stories that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are changing our society in fundamental ways—and that the industry is evolving quickly to try to keep up with the explosive growth.

Unfortunately, the network that we’ve used in the past for high-performance computing (HPC) cannot scale to meet the demands of AI/ML. As an industry, we must evolve our thinking and build a scalable and sustainable network for AI/ML.

Today, the industry is fragmented between AI/ML networks built around four unique architectures: InfiniBand, Ethernet, telemetry assisted Ethernet, and fully scheduled fabrics.

Each technology has its pros and cons, and various tier 1 web scalers view the trade-offs differently. This is why we see the industry moving in many directions simultaneously to meet the rapid large-scale buildouts occurring now.

This reality is ...