[c-nsp] Dynamic TCAM allocation/optimization? (was Re: N7K tcam handling)

[Chris Woodfield]

Can you elaborate (or point me to docs) on how this dynamic allocation works? Is the TCAM populated on demand based on traffic? I imagine the old horror of the Sup1A's flow-based forwarding every time I hear this...

And while we're on the subject, are there any reasons why Cisco (or any other vendor AFAIK) has seriously looked into methods of "optimizing" the TCAM? I'm thinking in terms of "If 10.0.0.0/16 and 10.0.1.0/24 both have the same next hop, why do you need two TCAM slots?"

Oh wait, that might mean your customers might not need to upgrade as often. Never mind.

-C

On Mar 9, 2010, at 3:16 PM, Tim Stevenson wrote:

> Hi Tony,
> The FIB TCAM is already dynamically allocated as of 4.2 (ie, no static/fixed allocation, blocks of various width entries grow/shrink as necessary). At the control plane, you can control the max prefixes for each, which naturally limits the h/w consumption to those numbers as well.
> 
> Hope that helps,
> Tim
> 
> 
> At 11:28 AM 3/9/2010, Tony Varriale clamored:
>> <snip>
>> And I believe you are going to allow configurable allocation between ipv4
>> and ipv6 space.
>> 
>> tv
>> 
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> 
> Tim Stevenson, tstevens at cisco.com
> Routing & Switching CCIE #5561
> Technical Marketing Engineer, Cisco Nexus 7000
> Cisco - http://www.cisco.com
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