[j-nsp] MX304 Port Layout

[Mark Tinka]

On 6/9/23 16:12, Saku Ytti wrote:

> I expect many people in this list have no need for more performance
> than single Trio YT in any pop at all, yet they need ports. And they
> are not adequately addressed by vendors. But they do need the deep
> features of NPU.

This.

There is sufficient performance in Trio today (even a single Trio chip 
on the board) that people are willing to take an oversubscribed box or 
line card because in real life, they will run out of ports long before 
they run out of aggregate forwarding capacity.

The MX204, even though it's a pizza box, is a good example of how it 
could do with 8x 100Gbps ports, even though Trio on it will only forward 
400Gbps. Most use-cases will require another MX204 chassis, just for 
ports, before the existing one has hit anywhere close to capacity.

Really, folk are just chasing the Trio capability, otherwise they'd have 
long solved their port-count problems by choosing any Broadcom-based box 
on the market. Juniper know this, and they are using it against their 
customers, knowingly or otherwise. Cisco was good at this back in the 
day, over-subscribing line cards on their switches and routers. Juniper 
have always been a little more purist, but the market can't handle it 
because the rate of traffic growth is being out-paced by what a single 
Trio chip can do for a couple of ports, in the edge.


> I keep hoping that someone is so disruptive that they take the
> nvidia/gpu approach to npu. That is, you can buy Trio PCI from newegg
> for 2 grand, and can program it as you wish. I think this market
> remains unidentified and even adjusting to cannibalization would
> increase market size.
> I can't understand why JNPR is not trying this, they've lost for 20
> years to inflation in valuation, what do they have to lose?

Well, the story is that Cisco are doing this with Meta and Microsoft on 
their C8000 platform, and apparently, doing billions of US$ in business 
on the back of that.

Mark.