4 switch ASIC interfaces to drive SDN and machine learning growth

We know history repeats itself, and remembering that can prove useful in determining how interfaces that are used to control application-specific integration circuits in switches can spur SDN development. The four interfaces -- Switch Abstraction Interface, the Fast Data Plane Project, Broadcom's Software Development Kit Logical Table and the P4 programming language -- work with data plane chipsets and switch ASICs. But they also have the potential to drive SDN and machine learning growth by advancing open interfaces and programmability capabilities. To fully grasp how, however, let's first look at the history of compute systems and hard drive interfaces. Going back in time, one of the seminal moments in compute history was the standardization and adoption of the International Standard Architecture (ISA) in the 1980s.