Cisco Launches 102.4Tbps Chip, AI Agents Drive Network Super Cycle
2026-06-03 09:43
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en.Wedoany.com Reported - At Cisco Live, Cisco stated that autonomous AI agents will become a key catalyst for driving network infrastructure upgrades, with the continuous traffic demand they generate prompting a comprehensive overhaul of data center architectures, campus networks, and security systems.

Cisco President and Chief Product Officer Jeetu Patel pointed out that the industry is shifting from chatbot-based AI to Agentic AI. In this model, digital colleagues can autonomously execute tasks, interact with other agents, access enterprise tools, and operate continuously. Patel emphasized that unlike the sporadic, human-driven workloads generated by chatbots, agents create persistent demands on networks, data centers, and security systems, fundamentally changing infrastructure requirements. He described that every agent action simultaneously constitutes a routing challenge, a trust decision, and a telemetry event, making network, security, and observability central to enterprise AI deployment. Patel believes AI agents generate approximately 450% more network traffic than humans when performing the same tasks. Cisco defines this transformation as a network super cycle impacting data centers, enterprise campuses, branch networks, and service providers.

To this end, Cisco is investing in network chips, optics, security, observability, and operations platforms to support AI deployment. The company has launched the Cloud Control platform as a unified management portal covering networking, security, observability, collaboration, and AI operations. The platform supports natural language interaction and AI-assisted troubleshooting, and features dedicated AI models for networking, security, and time-series telemetry. Cloud Control has been launched in the US with controlled availability, initially involving 52 ecosystem partners and including a marketplace for third-party applications and integrations. In a live demonstration, Cloud Control tracked wireless connectivity issues across access points, controllers, and firewalls, identified a VPN configuration problem, and automatically generated a remediation workflow. In terms of security, Cisco focuses on protecting agents from external threats, protecting organizations from malicious agent behavior, and enabling machine-speed detection and response. Meanwhile, observability has expanded from infrastructure to include AI models, applications, agents, and token consumption. Cisco highlighted AI-ready infrastructure for three AI architectures: scale-up, scale-out, and scale-connect.

On the product roadmap, Cisco highlighted the Silicon One portfolio. The newly launched Silicon One G300 Ethernet switching chip is manufactured using a 3nm process, features 246 billion transistors, and delivers 102.4 Tbps throughput. Cisco offers new Nexus 9300 systems for enterprises and the Cisco 8100 system for hyperscale deployments. The new Silicon One P200 routing chip provides 51.2 Tbps throughput and supports the deep buffering required for remote AI networks. Designed for the "scale-connect" architecture, it can connect multiple AI data centers into a single logical computing environment. Additionally, Cisco introduced new 1.6 Tbps and 800G pluggable optical modules for AI cluster connectivity and emphasized collaborations with NVIDIA on the Secure AI Factory, Spectrum-X integration, and chip-level cooperation.

Cisco also comprehensively updated its enterprise network infrastructure, including campus, branch, firewall, Wi-Fi, and industrial networking product portfolios. New platforms include the Cisco 9550, which Patel called the company's most powerful campus core switch. Cisco is integrating quantum-safe capabilities into future infrastructure designs and believes AI-driven traffic growth will expand from data centers to campus and branch environments.

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