[c-nsp] ISR G2 "multicore"?

[Lincoln Dale]

On 29/10/2009, at 9:58 AM, David Hughes wrote:

>
> On 28/10/2009, at 11:18 PM, Roland Dobbins wrote:
>
>> The smartest/sanest thing to do, IMHO, would be to work at  
>> migrating to NX-OS, feature-set by feature-set.  It's by far the  
>> cleanest and best-designed OS platform Cisco have come out with to  
>> date.
>
> Couldn't agree more.  NX-OS looks like a great platform that could  
> "easily" become the basis for all things in the future.  And lets  
> face it, it's designed to use high-performance, low-cost CPUs for  
> the control plane.   Would we ever need to think about cpu usage of  
> the BGP scanner again if there was a quad core i7 sitting under the  
> hood?

although i'm obviously biased (<grin>), no disagreement with your  
sentiments.  there's a lot of x86 xeon dual core control-plane  
available on Sup1 on N7K today.
with the RIB/FIB architecture used, there is also no "bgp scanner"  
process either. :)

one of the luxuries we have with NX-OS is since we have complete  
separation of control-plane and data-plane there really isn't anything  
that drops you into software forwarding.
that in itself is a major benefit - but it does come with the cost  
that the platform is only capable of implementing features that the  
underlying hardware (ASIC) forwarding path supports.

for where Nexus and NX-OS is targeted that works out well but isn't  
for example, a luxury that a platform like ISR G2 could necessarily  
use where its more a 'swiss army' "all things to all people" kind of  
platform.



On 29/10/2009, at 12:35 PM, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> People write crap code for fast CPU's all the time David. They also
> get paid for it and it somehow gets into production. :)

no disagreement, the ability to get away with crappy code is more so  
for faster processors.
however, in this case, i don't think that applies in this case.  the  
folks that wrote said code are the same folks that have written a lot  
of code, and there isn't likely multiple IP hops of everyone's  
internet connection today, across core router platforms (even non  
Cisco ones) that said folks have been involved with.

in the specific case of NX-OS, its very modular code which itself  
means one cannot tend to get away with 'crap code' because modularity  
doesn't come for free.


cheers,

lincoln.