Ahead of the OCP Global Summit, Cisco briefed analysts on AI-infrastructure plans, with the headline being USFP, a pluggable optics form factor developed with NVIDIA. It is designed for 400G SerDes lanes rather than today's common 200G lanes, allowing 1.6Tbps networking on four lanes and scaling to 6.4T across 16 and 12.8T across 32 lanes. The two companies are jointly drafting a multi-source specification so other vendors can build to it.
Cisco also detailed switch silicon. The Silicon One G300 appears in first systems with 102.4T of capacity across 1.6T ports. A G302 front-end top-of-rack switch is coming in Q4 2026, driving 51.2T using 200G SerDes. The A100L is aimed at lower-cost 10G/1G out-of-band management switches; the source notes this is notable because custom AI silicon usually targets high-performance fabric, not commoditized management boxes.
On software, Cisco announced Live Protect for Cisco SONiC on Nexus, adding runtime vulnerability shielding to N9000 switches, with availability slated for Q2 2027 in Cisco-validated SONiC environments. Cisco also plans to offer both community/custom SONiC and a Cisco-validated distribution. The source adds that Cisco's support for NVIDIA Spectrum-X continues, and that with both companies behind USFP, it is likely to become an industry standard.