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Cisco Advances Scalability and Openness at OCP 2026

PR Newswire•12/10/2026•11:00 ET
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Key Highlights

  • ➤Cisco, NVIDIA plan open specification for 400G-per-lane USFP optical modules
  • ➤USFP targets 4x bandwidth density and 1.3x power efficiency versus 200G optics
  • ➤Cisco 102.4T G300 available for sampling; first powered systems shipping to customers
  • ➤Cisco 51.2T P200 systems deployed in production at Microsoft and Alibaba
  • ➤Cisco 51.2T G302 ToR silicon planned to begin customer shipments before end-2026

Expert Statements

Kevin Wollenweber, SVP and General Manager of Data Center and Internet Infrastructure, Cisco

“AI is redefining what it means to scale infrastructure. It's no longer just about individual data centers or clusters, but how we connect compute at massive scale without compromising performance or resilience. Cisco's strength across silicon, networking, optics,systems and security puts us in a unique position to deliver the open infrastructure customers need as AI continues to evolve,”

Anand Ramakrishna, Corporate Vice President, Engineering, Microsoft

“Microsoft and Cisco share a longstanding partnership rooted in engineering collaboration and innovation. We are pleased to announce that today, Microsoft has moved into production on systems powered by the Cisco Silicon One P200. As our infrastructure demands grow, the P200's robust architecture provides the speed and enhanced buffering capabilities necessary to address the increasing scale of our cloud and high-performance services. This milestone reflects the next stage in our long-term collaboration, ensuring we continue to deliver the performance and reliability required for the modern digital era,”

Dennis Cai, Vice President, Head of Network Infrastructure, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group

“Alibaba is proud to announce a major milestone for our next-generation backbone network, eCORE. We have deployed our in-house Quantum Cat router at massive scale, powered by the Cisco Silicon One P200. These routers bring 51.2 Tbps of routing capacity to our infrastructure. They feature a fully shared deep-buffer architecture, high programmability, and excellent power efficiency. This setup provides the exact performance and scale needed for today's heavy cloud and AI workloads. We paired Cisco's silicon with Alibaba's custom systems and the SONiC operating system. This combination proves the true value of open networking. It delivers the flexibility and operational power required for some of the world's most demanding networks. We look forward to deepening our work with Cisco, the Open Compute Project (OCP), and the SONiC community. Together, we will continue to advance open, high-performance networking for the AI era,”

Cisco Advances Scalability and Openness at OCP 2026 PR Newswire

Delivers the resilient, open Ethernet foundations required to connect and scale massive, distributed AI factories

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