Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor 2T Architecture - Ipland

White PaperIntroductionThe Cisco Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 2T is the latest addition to the Catalyst 6500 family of Multi-LayerSwitching Supervisor Engines. It offers much higher levels of forwarding performance, increases the scalability ofmany previously supported features, and introduces a host of new hardware-enabled functions beyond all previousCatalyst 6500 Supervisor models.This white paper will provide an architectural overview of the new Supervisor 2T. It will explore the physical layout ofthe Supervisor 2T, provide details about its updated hardware components, and give an overview of its newlyintroduced features.High-Level Description of Supervisor 2TThe Supervisor 2T is made up of four main physical components:● The baseboard● The 5th generation Multi-Layer Switching Feature Card (MSFC5)● The 4th generation Policy Feature Card (PFC4)● The 2 Tbps Switch FabricThe Supervisor baseboard forms the foundation upon which many of the purpose-built daughter cards and othercomponents are placed. It houses a multitude of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), including the ASICcomplex that makes up the primary two Terabit (2080 Gbps) crossbar switch fabric, as well as the port ASICs thatcontrol the front-panel 10 GE and GE ports.The MSFC5 is a daughter card that holds the CPU complex, which serves as the control plane for the switch. Thecontrol plane handles the processing of all software-related features. One major difference from earlier versions ofthe MSFC is that this version combines what were previously two separate CPU complexes into one. More details onthis new CPU complex will be explored later in this paper.The PFC4 is another daughter card that incorporates a special set of ASICs and memory blocks, which providehardware-accelerated data-plane services for packets traversing the switch. It introduces a number of scalabilityenhancements, by increasing the size of many of the memory tables used by many of the hardware-acceleratedfeatures. The PFC4 also introduces a number of new hardware-accelerated features, such as Cisco TrustSec (CTS)and Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS).The 2 Tbps Switch Fabric provides 26 dedicated 20 Gbps or 40 Gbps channels to support the new 6513-E chassis(in addition to all existing E series chassis models). On the Supervisor 720, the switch fabric supported 18 fabricchannels, which were used to provide two fabric channels per slot on all slots (with the exception of the 6513chassis). With the new 6513-E chassis, the 2T Switch Fabric is capable of supporting dual fabric channels for alllinecard slots (Slots 7 and 8 are reserved for the Active and Standby Supervisors).© 2011-2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Partner Confidential Information. Page 3 of 46