[c-nsp] LSR platforms

[adamv0025 at netconsultings.com]

> From: Saku Ytti <saku at ytti.fi>
> Sent: Friday, December 11, 2020 9:15 AM
> 
> On Fri, 11 Dec 2020 at 11:02, <adamv0025 at netconsultings.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'm hesitant to recommend Broadcom based platform (NCS5k/Arista/ACX)
> for platform certification testing in a worry that it will bite us in a long run,
> though less so for a P role (as opposed to PE role).
> 
> You will struggle to use data to state why Broadcom has fundamentally
> different risk profile than Spitfire and BT/paradise. Now I understand for
> Cisco, clearly their focus will be Spitfire going forward. But that argument
> can't be used to discriminate against Arista. Jericho and Spitfire were literally
> designed under the same leadership.
> 
Fair point,
I guess one might argue that merchant silicon is cheaper compared to vendor silicon cause merchant silicon is less capable compared to vendor silicon (in other words sacrifices have been made).
And if that logic is applied to the Cisco's new "Silicon One Q100" -positioned as a merchant silicon, one has to ask how different will it be from comparable Broadcom chips.

But another view point might be,
With merchant silicon it's all about who has the biggest buying power (bigger lobby) right? 
For example: cisco says we need the capability to implement feature X in a single pass through the new chip, while juniper and arista says we need it in two passes via recirc. to spare chip resources for feature Z. -well in this example it's tough luck for cisco.
And similarly I imagine this applies to all levels of the stack from actual chip architecture all the way to SDKs. 
If Cisco says screw this I'm going to design my own chip and always going o prioritize my own needs then consider needs of others (to an extent obviously), then I could see how Cisco box for role A powered by Cisco's own merchant silicon chip will either perform better or have richer feature set than a Cisco box for the same role A but powered by a comparable Broadcom chip.


adam