Upgrading your data center network to 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100G) is no longer a luxury but a necessity for many modern enterprises. As discussed in our previous post “When to Upgrade to 100G“, the relentless growth of data traffic, fueled by cloud computing, video streaming, real-time applications, and particularly the surge in AI/ML workloads, is rapidly outstripping the capabilities of traditional 10G and 40G networks.

An orthogonal architecture is a hardware structure that orients LPUs or interface boards orthogonally to SFUs. This eliminates the need for a backplane and its associated traces, thereby achieving high transmission rates and overcoming the line rate bottleneck in the traditional backplane architecture. In addition to featuring high scalability and a large switching capacity, an orthogonal architecture also ensures low signal attenuation. It is employed on core routers and core DC switches.