Arista switches are switches with the actual data path in silicon but with the CNC running on an onboard processor running linux.
It's cool, it's both stupidly fast (wormhole switched, etc) and very configurable. Just costs an arm and a leg.
It's cool, it's both stupidly fast (wormhole switched, etc) and very configurable. Just costs an arm and a leg.
High-performance devices will probably require custom silicon for a while yet, but they can charge a premium.
Lower end devices will probably have less custom silicon, more software and be cheaper.
All lower end devices end up with basically same batch of ASIC, anyway just due to cost.
Most switch stuff, however basically comes down to needing more hardware. Cam costs a certain amount, packet buffers cost a certain amount (Or wormhole switching silicon costs a certain amount), etc. None of that you can ever really move into software. At least not decently.
For pure switches, you might be right (for a while at least). But there is plenty of higher level stuff that is at least partially implemented in silicon (and/or inaccessible software) that is about to be eaten by software.
Things like load-balancing, for example: http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2011/05/20/SoftwareLoadBala...
What is interesting is the move off cisco's proprietary routing algorithms and into more standard quogga/etc.