Cisco vs Nvidia
Cisco and Nvidia are both placed on 4 of the same AI data center parts in this catalog, spanning layers 3, 4. Cisco appears on 5 parts in total and Nvidia on 14.
At a glance
| Cisco | Nvidia | |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership | public | public |
| Headquarters | San Jose, United States | Santa Clara, United States |
| Primary listing | CSCO | NVDA |
| Market cap | 419.9B USD | 5.09T USD |
| Parts placed | 5 | 14 |
| Layers covered | 2 | 4 |
| Units / subsidiaries | 0 | 0 |
| Seen in machines | 1 | 13 |
Market caps are a nightly snapshot in each listing's own currency, never converted.
What the shared parts are
- Scale-out switch ASICs — The switch ASICs that route traffic between racks and pods, distinct from the scale-up fabric inside a single rack.
- Switch systems & white-box ODMs — The physical switches — built by branded vendors and white-box ODMs — that house scale-out switch ASICs and connect racks into a cluster fabric.
- Optical transceivers — Pluggable optical modules that convert electrical signals to light for transmission over fiber between switches and servers, sold at 400G, 800G, and 1.6T speeds.
- Rack-scale systems — A rack-scale system is the fully integrated cabinet of compute trays, switch trays, power shelves, cooling manifolds and busbar that ships as one wired unit rather than as discrete servers.
The 4 parts both make
| Part | Cisco | Nvidia |
|---|---|---|
| Scale-out switch ASICs Layer 3 — Networking & interconnect | manufacturer inferred Silicon One | manufacturer disclosed Spectrum (Ethernet) and Quantum (InfiniBand) |
| Switch systems & white-box ODMs Layer 3 — Networking & interconnect | manufacturer inferred | manufacturer inferred |
| Optical transceivers Layer 3 — Networking & interconnect | manufacturer inferred | manufacturer disclosed |
| Rack-scale systems Layer 4 — Servers, racks & integration | oem inferred | designer disclosed |
Only Cisco
- DCI / coherent optics layer 3
Only Nvidia
- Merchant GPUs / accelerators layer 1
- Server CPUs layer 1
- NICs / SuperNICs layer 1
- DPUs layer 1
- Scale-up fabric layer 3
- Silicon photonics & co-packaged optics layer 3
- GPU baseboards & compute trays layer 4
- BMC & platform firmware layer 4
- DCIM, digital twins, capacity planning layer 11
- Cluster management & GPU orchestration layer 11
Named in the same machines
- Nvidia GB300 NVL72 rack teardown
Questions
- Do Cisco and Nvidia compete?
- In this catalog they are both placed on 4 of the same parts, across 2 layers: Scale-out switch ASICs, Switch systems & white-box ODMs, Optical transceivers, Rack-scale systems. Sharing a part does not mean selling the same product to the same buyer, so read each row's product note.
- Which has more placements, Cisco or Nvidia?
- Cisco has 5 placements and Nvidia has 14. Placement counts reflect how thoroughly each company has been catalogued as well as its real breadth, so they are not a ranking.
Generated from the catalog's part-to-company table. Each placement is tagged disclosed, reported or inferred; see sources & method. Neither company is endorsed or ranked here.