ASIC

networkingprogramming

Application-Specific Integrated Circuit: a chip built to do one job, fast, and incapable of being repurposed.

In networking it is the reason a switch forwards at line rate while a general-purpose processor cannot. The trade is stark and worth stating: an ASIC is dramatically faster and cheaper per port than software forwarding, and it is fixed at manufacture - a feature the silicon does not implement is a feature the box will never have, whatever the release notes say. That is why “supported in software but not in hardware” has real operational consequences: the same feature can mean line rate on one platform and a punt to the control-plane processor on another.

Also known as: application-specific integrated circuit, forwarding asic, switching asic

← All glossary entries