AI workloads are pushing the boundaries of conventional knowledge middle infrastructure, demanding new ranges of efficiency, scale, safety, and operational rigor. To satisfy these wants, Cisco and NVIDIA are delivering validated, enterprise-ready AI infrastructure—bringing collectively Cisco switching, compute, safety, and Silicon One improvements with NVIDIA accelerated computing, NVIDIA AI Enterprise software program, NVIDIA Spectrum-X, and NVIDIA BlueField applied sciences.
At NVIDIA GTC in March, leaders from each firms laid out the outcomes of this collaboration and the way it’s shaping the way forward for AI infrastructure throughout accelerated processing, networking, safety, and operations.
Spectrum-X + Cisco Silicon One: A cloth for AI at scale
On the core of the initiative is the mixing of NVIDIA Spectrum-X capabilities into Cisco Silicon One networking infrastructure. Along with promoting NVIDIA Spectrum-based switches, this supplies clients with flexibility in a unified operational mannequin.
Key takeaways:
- Cisco has developed new reference architectures (primarily based on NVIDIA Enterprise Reference Architectures), together with Cisco Silicon-based switches with NVIDIA SuperNICs in addition to Cisco Spectrum-based switches with NVIDIA SuperNICs.
- Integration with NVIDIA Ethernet SuperNICs (NVIDIA ConnectX and BlueField) enhances fabric-wide consciousness, optimizing visitors flows, managing congestion, and enhancing buffer utilization.
- Future updates will make telemetry-level integrations doable, enabling deep NIC-to-switch insights for optimization and fault isolation.
As introduced at Cisco Dwell 2025 San Diego, the important thing software-level integration between a Cisco NX-OS change and BlueField-3 was demonstrated, and a Spectrum-X license will quickly be obtainable so as to add to NX-OS switches. To study extra about this thrilling announcement, take a look at this video.
Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric AI: Finish-to-end full-stack AI infrastructure resolution
Nexus Hyperfabric AI is the Cisco platform for AI cluster design, deployment, and lifecycle operations. It goes far past switch-level configuration to ship a full-stack, cloud-managed deployment and ops mannequin, which incorporates Cisco and NVIDIA networking, accelerated computing, and NVIDIA AI Enterprise software program.
Core capabilities embody:
- Full-stack blueprinting: Design your topology before you purchase (together with processing, networking, and storage) with out provisioning {hardware}. Hyperfabric.cisco.com helps early modeling with reference architectures for Cisco clients.
- Cable plan + optics validation: Auto-generate actual bodily topologies, together with optics, cables, attain, and SKU-level BOMs, to stop expensive procurement errors.
- Serving to Arms Deployment Help characteristic: Validate bodily set up step-by-step at rack stage; flag miswires in actual time utilizing digital twin validation.
- Assertion-based monitoring: Determine the foundation explanation for any detected subject by leveraging cloth and useful resource monitoring that constantly verifies availability and reliability.
- Agent-based cloth intelligence: NIC-level brokers generate artificial visitors, run end-to-end well being checks, and floor anomalies through an built-in telemetry stack.
Nexus Hyperfabric AI ships in summer time 2025 with built-in help for BlueField-3 SuperNICs, AI-specific cloth telemetry, and automatic validation.
Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing facility additionally presents a modular method to the NVIDIA reference structure constructed on the Cisco Nexus Dashboard and Cisco Nexus 9000 Collection Switches.
Safety at scale: Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing facility with NVIDIA
As enterprises scale AI workloads, infrastructure safety turns into a main concern. NVIDIA envisions AI factories as built-in, purpose-built techniques with unified compute, networking, and software program to industrialize the AI lifecycle—from knowledge ingestion to inference—and has created reference architectures for companions to implement. The Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing facility builds on the NVIDIA AI Manufacturing facility imaginative and prescient, including native observability and enforcement throughout compute, networking, software program, and knowledge planes.
Sturdy safety for the AI infrastructure is delivered by way of two core Cisco options:
- Cisco AI Protection: Supplies runtime massive language mannequin (LLM) observability and risk detection throughout software programming interfaces (APIs), web-based inference endpoints, and hybrid deployments. At the moment in public beta.
- Cisco Hypershield: Affords knowledge processing unit (DPU)-based enforcement utilizing NVIDIA BlueField to create distributed, inline coverage enforcement with out including {hardware}; integrates with Prolonged Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) and helps uneven perimeter insurance policies.
The Cisco Safe AI Manufacturing facility structure avoids expensive hairpinning or {hardware} retooling and leverages current BlueField SuperNIC investments for inline enforcement and introspection.
Actual engineering depth
The collaboration will implement the pillars of the Safe AI Manufacturing facility and increase on them. This contains:
- Twin silicon technique: Cisco can deploy both Silicon One-based or NVIDIA Spectrum-based switches (operating NX-OS) in back-end materials. This provides clients optionality with a unified operational mannequin.
- Material + NIC synchronization: Co-engineering efforts be certain that Silicon One switches are totally supported by NVIDIA SuperNICs, thereby optimizing end-to-end habits.
- Expanded BlueField integration: Cisco will strengthen its integration with NVIDIA BlueField to help accelerated cybersecurity use circumstances, together with zero-trust safety and real-time risk detection.
AI infrastructure is now not about piecing collectively remoted parts. It’s about constructing built-in techniques that scale linearly, function intelligently, and safe dynamically. With Cisco and NVIDIA, enterprise clients get an structure that does all three—throughout accelerated computing, software program, networking cloth, and safety.
Whether or not clients are simply beginning to construct an AI manufacturing facility with dozens of accelerated computing clusters or planning for a large-scale deployment, this initiative units the stage for scalable, safe, and simple-to-operate AI clusters.
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