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The XPliant® CNX880XX family of Ethernet switches provide unprecedented flexibility in protocol processing without compromising speed. XPliant Packet Architecture (XPA™) allows programming of every element of switch packet processing. Cavium™ / XPliant provides a complete set of networking protocols with the switch. However, as new protocols are required, the switch can be updated by software to add support for these new protocols, including changes to parsing, lookups, traffic scheduling, packet modification, scheduling, and traffic monitoring. The CNX880XX with XPA is the first switch that can do this – and it provides industry leading processing at up to 3.2 Terabits per second.

With the immense growth in mobile devices, video, and private and public clouds, the pace of networking innovation is increasing. Software Defined Networks (SDNs) and other innovations are rapidly evolving to meet this challenge, but require the introduction of new protocols. Traditional merchant switch silicon with FIXED architectures need to be re-engineered to support new protocols, resulting in switches that lag 3 to 4 years behind the requirements. XPA allows XPliant switch silicon to gain new features in place, without even removing the cables from the installed switch. An example of a new requirement is VXLAN – which became a requirement for SDN overlays. New switch silicon needed to be developed to support VXLAN – obsoleting existing switches and requiring the purchase new switches to implement the new feature. The latest feature required is GENEVE – which the XPliant team has already added to the CNX880XX.