CONFIRMED: Cisco announced these products and customer deployments on 12 October 2026 at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit. “First” and “most” claims are COMPANY CLAIMS. Shipping dates are plans.
Cisco used the Open Compute Project Global Summit 2026 to announce a new switching chip, the Silicon One G302, and to say that two hyperscalers, Microsoft and Alibaba, are now running systems built on its Silicon One P200 in production. It also said the first systems using its larger G300 chip are shipping [1].
The G302: a chip for the top of the rack
Cisco says the G302 is “the first 51.2T switching silicon with 200G SerDes designed for top-of-rack (ToR) deployments” (COMPANY CLAIM). It “delivers 51.2T capacity and features Cisco 1.6T optics and direct-to-chip liquid cooling integration” [1].
Top of rack (ToR): a switch that sits in each rack of servers, collects their traffic and passes it on to the rest of the data centre network. Cisco describes ToR systems as ones “which sit at the rack level and gather traffic from servers and connect it efficiently to the larger data center network” [1].
SerDes (serialiser/deserialiser): the circuit on a chip that turns data into a fast stream of bits to send down a wire or optical link, and turns it back at the other end. “200G SerDes” means each of those lanes carries about 200 gigabits per second.
51.2T means 51.2 terabits per second of total switching capacity.
“The G302 is planned to begin shipping to customers before the end of 2026” [1]. That is a plan, not a delivery.
P200 in production at Microsoft and Alibaba
Cisco says it “is the first in the industry to announce its 51.2T systems, powered by the Silicon One P200, are deployed in a production environment by leading hyperscalers” (COMPANY CLAIM) [1].
Microsoft’s Anand Ramakrishna, Corporate Vice President, Engineering, is quoted in the release: “Microsoft has moved into production on systems powered by the Cisco Silicon One P200.” He said the chip’s architecture “provides the speed and enhanced buffering capabilities necessary to address the increasing scale of our cloud and high-performance services” [1].
Alibaba’s Dennis Cai, Vice President, Head of Network Infrastructure, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, said: “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.” The routers serve Alibaba’s next-generation backbone network, eCORE, and Cai said Alibaba “paired Cisco’s silicon with Alibaba’s custom systems and the SONiC operating system” [1].
Cisco pitches the P200 as the base of what it calls “scale-across”: linking AI clusters in different buildings or sites so they “act as a unified cluster” [1].
First G300 systems shipping
Cisco said the 102.4T Silicon One G300, “Announced earlier this year”, “is now available for customer sampling, and the first G300-powered systems are currently shipping to customers” [1]. Cisco did not name the customers.
Also announced
- Cisco 8001: “a new Silicon One A100-powered management system available as 10G or 1G”, for out-of-band management, the separate network operators use to reach equipment “even when the production network is down” [1].
- SONiC Live Protect: for customers on Cisco-validated SONiC (an open-source network operating system), “starting mid-year 2027”. Cisco says it “reduces the exposure customers would typically face between a vulnerability disclosure and a patch” [1]. This is a plan.
- USFP optics with NVIDIA: also part of the release; TSN covered it separately: NVIDIA and Cisco Plan USFP.
“AI is redefining what it means to scale infrastructure,” said Kevin Wollenweber, SVP and General Manager of Data Center and Internet Infrastructure at Cisco [1].
Sources
- Cisco Newsroom, “Cisco Advances Scalability and Openness at OCP 2026”, press release, 12 October 2026. https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2026/m10/cisco-advances-scalability-and-openness-at-ocp-2026.html
Related stories
- NVIDIA and Cisco Plan USFP, a New Pluggable Optics Form Factor for 400Gb/s Per Lane
- NVIDIA Opens Vera Rubin Rack Designs to OCP, Meta Adopts Spectrum-6 and Google’s Falcon Comes to ConnectX-10
- Celestica Introduces DS6005, a 102.4Tbps AI Switch With Co-Packaged Optics
- Credo Unveils a 1.6T Optical Cable for AI Data Centre Rows. It Ships in 2027
