Cisco has recently announced an expansion of its Secure AI Factory in collaboration with Nvidia, aimed at enabling businesses to develop the necessary infrastructure for deploying and securing artificial intelligence (AI) at scale. The update coincided with Nvidia’s GTC event, highlighting the ongoing partnership between the two companies.
The new offerings include the Cisco N9100 switch, which boasts a capacity of 102.4 Tbps and is powered by Nvidia’s Spectrum-6 Ethernet switch silicon. This switch complements the previously available 800G N9100, which uses Spectrum-4 technology. This initiative is designed to cater to a variety of clients through Nvidia Cloud Partner-compliant architectures or exclusively Cisco Cloud Reference Architectures based on their Silicon One Nexus environments.
Cisco’s Secure AI Factory now features key innovations such as Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric, which streamlines the incorporation of AI systems. Kevin Wollenweber, Cisco’s senior vice president, explained how the system allows customers to manage their AI workloads like traditional data center operations, facilitating seamless integration of AI technologies within existing IT infrastructures.
Wollenweber stressed the importance of a unified operating model to combat the complexities brought on by operationalizing AI. By embedding networking, security, and AI software in a cohesive manner, organizations can enhance performance while ensuring robust security standards.
The Secure AI Factory integrates Cisco’s Hypershield and AI Defense packages to provide security for AI model development and deployment. These tools utilize AI to dynamically create and enforce security policies tailored to application behaviors.
Enhancing security, Cisco will implement its Hybrid Mesh Firewall technology to ensure that security policies can be enforced at the server level within Nvidia’s GPU servers. This distributed security framework is built upon a zero-trust model, aimed at micro-segmenting AI systems and enhancing application-level security.
Furthermore, Cisco has extended its AI Defense by supporting Nvidia’s NeMo Guardrails, which provides developers with mechanisms to govern AI behavior more effectively. The partnership aims to deliver a comprehensive security solution for AI agents and applications, reinforcing the integrity of AI operations in enterprise environments.
Adding to its capabilities, Cisco is also set to support Nvidia’s RTX Pro 4500 Blackwell server in its Unified Computing System (UCS) portfolio, catering particularly to clients needing to implement AI workloads at the edge of their data center environments. The Unified Edge package will further support various AI applications through its integrated features.
For more information on Cisco’s Secure AI Factory and Nvidia’s contributions, you can explore related resources here:
