Cisco has just launched a powerful new networking chip designed to address one of the biggest challenges of the AI era: connecting massive, power-hungry data centers that span vast distances. The new P200 chip already has some notable customers, including Microsoft and Alibaba, who have signed on to use it.
The P200 is designed to be the heart of a new kind of router that can link multiple data centers together, essentially turning them into one giant computer. This is a critical need for companies building AI, which often have to put their data centers wherever they can find enough electricity, sometimes thousands of miles apart. “The training job is so large, I need multiple data centers to connect,” said a Cisco executive.
Inside these data centers, companies are connecting tens of thousands of powerful AI chips to act as a single brain. Cisco’s new chip is designed to do the same thing, but on a much larger scale, connecting the data centers themselves.
Cisco says the new P200 chip is a major leap in technology, replacing what used to take 92 separate chips with just one. This makes the new router, which uses it, 65% more power-efficient than older models, a significant advantage in the energy-intensive world of AI. A key challenge in connecting data centers over long distances is maintaining data synchronization without losing any data, a problem that Cisco says its decades of experience have helped it address.
