ASICs / SOCs / NPUs

References:
http://d2zmdbbm9feqrf.cloudfront.net/2016/usa/pdf/BRKSDN-2063.pdf
https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/01/20/flattening-networks-budgets-400g-ethernet/

Examples of ASICs/NPUs Used in Popular Hardware

7600 EX+ line cards use the Ezcip NP3C unit (supposedly a Cisco customised version of the NP3?) which has the Santa Cruz ASIC, as do the ASR9000 Trident line cards as they are beefed up EX+ cards (the first gen ASR9001 used a built in Trident card so they are also using NP3C units). They also use the NetLogic Microsystems NETL7 unit for layer 7 processing at 10Gbps.

The Ezchip/Mellanox NP4 units support 100Gbps: http://www.mellanox.com/related-docs/prod_npu/PB_NP-4.pdf

 

MX104 (Trio) and ASR9001 (EZchip)

Broadcom StrataDNX

Broadcom Tomahawk in ASR9K 3rd Gen line cards
http://www.mellanox.com/related-docs/products/tolly-report-performance-evaluation-2016-march.pdf

The BCM88670 (Jericho) is what powers the Cisco NCS5502/08 devices. The processor is linerate above around 100 bytes per packet without external TCAM, supports 256K IPv4 / 64K IPv6 FIB entries (or mixed amounts).  These chips are being used for high scale 100G, the initial NCS5508 linecard is a 36x100G QSFP28 card.

From BRKSDN-2063:
Broadcom DNX-based NPUs:
NCS5501 uses a single Broadcom Qumran-MX NPU with no off-chip TCAM but off-chip packet memory (the SE- version has both off-chip). The NSC5502 uses 8x Broadcom Jericho NPUs with no off-chip TCAM but off-chip packet memory (the SE- version has both off-chip). The NCS5508 is a modular chassis based system with all line cards using varying amounts of Broadcom Jericho NPUs.

NSC5001 and NCS5002 both use a single Broadcom Trident II+ NPU which doesn't use offchip TCAM or packet memory.

NCS5011 uses a single Broadcom Tomahawk NPU which doesn't use offchip TCAM or packet memory.

 

Broadcom TridenII

[Extreme] x670 is trident2; x670-G2 is trident2+. There is documentation to
suggest that control word is supported on the juniper qfx5100 and the
cisco ncs500x, both of which also use the t2+ chipset, but documentation
occasionally diverges from reality, so this shouldn't be taken as hard
evidence one way or another. 

Cisco Nexus 9500 and Triden2:
http://blog.ipspace.net/2014/06/trident-2-chipset-and-nexus-9500.html
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/switches/nexus-9000-series-switches/119032-nexus9k-tcam-00.html

Arista 7500R is based on Broadcom's "Jericho".

Juniper I-Chip in DCPs and Trio in MPCs.

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