Podcast•Feb 20, 2026•50 min
174: GreyBeards Talk SDN Chips with Ted Weatherford, VP Bus. Dev. & John Carney. Dist. Eng. At Xsight Labs
In this episode, Ted Weatherford and John Carney of Xsight Labs discuss their SDN‑focused ASICs—the 12.8 Tbps X2 switch and the 800 Gbps E1 DPU—highlighting their low‑power, highly programmable designs built on TSMC N5. They explain how the X2’s 3072 MAP cores and flexible port configurations enable rapid development cycles, while the E1’s 64 ARM cores, DDR5 memory, and Linux support deliver massive throughput (14 M TCP connections/sec) with modest power consumption. Real‑world applications are showcased, including SpaceX Starlink V3 satellites using X2 chips and the Open Flash Platform’s flash‑based NFS server built on a single E1 DPU. The conversation also covers benchmark results from the SONiC DASH Hero800 test, demonstrating the combined X2/E1 solution’s ability to sustain 800 Gbps links with high connection density.
