New Arista Networks 10 Gigabit Ethernet modular switch

Startup Arista Networks, known mostly for its high-performance top-of-rack data center switches, unveiled its first modular switch in advance of Interop -- and it's a doozy! The Arista 7500 is remarkably small, very powerful and extremely efficient.

This 11 RU chassis offers 384 wirespeed 10 GbE switches with a total fabric capacity of 10 terabits per second. Despite all that switching power, Arista claims the 7500 consumes only 13.2 watts per port. The Arista 7500 is ideal for a high-performance computing environment but not for the data center core. It lacks many of the routing protocols typically found in core data center chassis switches like the Force10 E1200i and Cisco's Nexus 7010.