Cisco’s latest move in the connectivity industry sees the brand collabing with NVIDIA to introduce the new Cisco N9100 data center switch verified as Cisco’s first NVIDIA partner-developed solution powered by NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet.
The Cisco N9100 series, expected to be orderable before the end of 2025, supports both Cisco NX-OS and SONiC operating systems, providing adaptable options for cloud operators. The switches integrate within the Cisco Nexus Dashboard, allowing unified management across various silicon architectures, including Cisco’s Cloud-scale ASICs and Spectrum-X Ethernet.
Cisco also expanded its Secure AI Factory with NVIDIA, first unveiled at NVIDIA’s GTC in March 2025, to help enterprises strengthen performance, visibility, and security across their AI deployments. The updates include:
- Security and Observability: Integration of Cisco AI Defense with NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails to safeguard AI models, and Splunk Observability Cloud for monitoring performance and costs in real time.
- Core Infrastructure: New validations for Cisco Isovalent on AI PODs, support for Nexus Hyperfabric AI with 800G Ethernet switches, and availability of Cisco UCS 880A M8 and UCS X-Series servers featuring NVIDIA HGX B300 and RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs.
- Ecosystem Expansion: Inclusion of NVIDIA Run:ai, Nutanix Kubernetes Platform, and Nutanix Unified Storage, enhancing orchestration and storage flexibility.
- Government Readiness: Collaboration with NVIDIA AI Factory for Government to align with compliance standards for regulated sectors.
In the telecom domain, Cisco and NVIDIA, alongside multiple industry partners, introduced the first AI-native wireless stack for 6G. This AI-RAN solution integrates Cisco’s 5G core and user plane functions with the NVIDIA AI Aerial platform, bringing together sensing and communication to enable future 5G Advanced and 6G applications. The stack lays the foundation for what Cisco describes as “physical AI,” powering connected devices from smart cars to AR glasses with improved efficiency and security.
