Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced a major leap forward in AI infrastructure, unveiling the Cisco N9100 series switch and the first NVIDIA Cloud Partner-compliant reference architecture for neocloud and sovereign cloud deployments. The announcements, made at GTC, highlight Cisco’s partnership with NVIDIA to provide enterprises, service providers, and telecom operators with flexible, scalable, and secure AI-ready solutions.
The Cisco N9100 series switch, powered by NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet silicon, offers customers the choice of NX-OS or SONiC operating systems, supporting high-performance AI networking with unprecedented flexibility. Leveraging Cisco Silicon One-based switches and embedded NVIDIA capabilities, the N9100 enables a unified operating model and full compatibility with NVIDIA Cloud Partner design principles.
“We’re at the beginning of the largest data center build-out in history,” said Jeetu Patel, President and Chief Product Officer at Cisco. “The infrastructure powering next-generation AI applications requires new architectures that overcome today’s limitations in power, compute, and network performance. Together with NVIDIA, we’re defining the technologies for AI-ready data centers across enterprises, neoclouds, and global service providers.”
Gilad Shainer, SVP of Networking at NVIDIA, added, “Spectrum-X Ethernet delivers the performance required for accelerated AI networking. Cisco’s reference architectures enable customers to deploy open, high-performance networks tailored to AI workloads using Cisco N9100 and Silicon One-based switches.”
Cisco Cloud Reference Architecture: Flexible AI Infrastructure
Cisco’s new Cloud Reference Architecture is designed for neocloud and sovereign cloud customers, integrating Cisco Silicon One and Cloud-scale ASICs, NVIDIA BlueField-4 DPUs, and NVIDIA ConnectX-9 SuperNICs. Enterprises can deploy Cisco AI PODs and Nexus switching to optimize GPU-based AI workloads, including generative AI fine-tuning and inference.
The Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA strengthens security and observability for enterprise AI deployments. Cisco AI Defense integrates with NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails to protect sensitive AI data, while Splunk Observability Cloud provides real-time monitoring of AI workloads. Kubernetes-based solutions, including Cisco Isovalent and Nutanix platforms, enable seamless orchestration and containerized inference services.
Pioneering AI-Native Wireless Networks
Cisco, NVIDIA, and telecom partners also introduced the first AI-native wireless stack for 6G networks, enabling AI-infused connectivity from 5G advanced services to pre-6G applications. The stack integrates Cisco’s 5G core and user plane functions with NVIDIA AI Aerial platforms, creating a foundation for efficient, secure, and AI-driven mobile networks.
Driving AI Adoption Across Industries
Through these innovations, Cisco and NVIDIA provide a comprehensive AI ecosystem spanning neoclouds, enterprises, and telecom providers. With flexible switching solutions, secure AI infrastructure, and next-generation wireless capabilities, organizations can efficiently scale AI while maintaining control, performance, and security.
