Barefoot Networks Shares Tofino(TM)-based Wedge 100B Switch Designs with the Open Compute Project (OCP)

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 23, 2017) - Barefoot Networks, the creator of Tofino™, the world's fastest 6.5 Tb/s Ethernet switch chip, will present at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Disaggregate: Networking event on January 24. Nick McKeown, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist at Barefoot Networks, will speak on why forwarding planes will be programmable and the new paradigms and use cases they will enable for networking. In addition, Barefoot Networks will present its Wedge 100B series of switches -- Wedge100BF-32X, a 3.2Tb/s 1RU 32x100GE switch and Wedge100BF-65X, a 6.5Tb/s 2RU 65x100GE switch. These switches have Barefoot Networks' Tofino inside and so give the OCP ecosystem users access to an Ethernet switch that not only has the highest performance, but also has a fully programmable pipeline.

The Wedge 100B switches support FBOSS, SONiC and several other switch operating systems, and can be controlled by the OCP's Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) API, switchAPI (an extensible, open API) or APIs designed by the user. The default "switch.p4" program running on Tofino turns the Wedge 100B switches into a top-of-rack switch, with all the standard features expected in a data center. Users may add or remove features as they choose, add new protocols, change table sizes, give greater visibility and fold in middlebox functions, such as Layer-4 load-balancing. The Wedge 100B platforms also introduce several enhancements, including an optimized power supply unit, lower cost PCB design, improved Design For Manufacturability, beefier CPU module, etc. The switches run an updated version of OpenBMC.

OCP's Disaggregate: Networking will be hosted at Facebook in Menlo Park, CA, an invitation-only technical conference for engineers with an interest in open and disaggregated networking solutions. Its aim is to highlight the opportunities created when hardware and software are disaggregated: namely more efficient, flexible and scalable hardware.

"The Open Compute Networking Project is excited to see Barefoot Networks share two Wedge 100B hardware designs with the community," said Omar Baldonado, OCP Networking Project Co-Lead. "We look forward to seeing the new innovations enabled by these Wedge 100B designs and the flexibility that their programmable switching silicon brings to the industry."

"Barefoot Networks is delighted to share its Tofino based Wedge 100B switch designs with the Open Compute Project community," said Martin Izzard, Co-Founder & CEO, Barefoot Networks. "With Wedge 100B platforms, the OCP ecosystem, network owners and architects have unprecedented access to a fully disaggregated networking stack down to the forwarding plane, enabling them to build networks that best suit their needs."

Announced in June 2016, Barefoot Networks' Tofino Ethernet switch ASICs and Capilano Software Development Environment (SDE) remove the last barrier to full network programmability by opening the forwarding plane, enabling granular control down to the packets flowing on the wire. Its first Tofino chips were delivered to customers in Q4 2016 and the company continues to add industry leaders to its growing network of partners.

Availability
Barefoot's Tofino chip has been sampling since Q4, 2016. Wedge100BF-32X and Wedge100BF-65X systems are available for order now from Edgecore Networks.

About Barefoot Networks
Barefoot Networks launched in 2016 after two years of developing the most programmable and -- at 6.5Terabits/second -- the fastest switches ever built; twice as fast as the previous on record. By enabling organizations to define the network data plane in software, Barefoot empowers network owners and their infrastructure partners to design, optimize, and innovate to meet their specific requirements and gain competitive advantage. In combining the P4 open-source programming language with fast programmable switches, Barefoot has also created an ecosystem of compilers, tools, and P4 code to make P4 accessible to anybody. Barefoot's founders -- Pat Bosshart, Martin Izzard, Dan Lenoski, Nick McKeown -- bring the company more than 100 years of experience in building the fastest and biggest networking systems in the world. Backed by Google Inc., Goldman Sachs Principal Strategic Investments, Alibaba, Tencent and by premier venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz, Barefoot Networks is headquartered in Silicon Valley. For more information, visit http://www.barefootnetworks.com. Follow us on Twitter: @barefootnetwork

Barefoot Networks, the Foot Logo and Tofino are trademarks of Barefoot Networks.