Dell S5148

May 5, 2017

As noted in the announcement this is something new. We have not seen a data sheet. It might be a Tomahawk. Or it might be something else. A NetworkWorld article says that Dell expects these to ship before the end of October with a starting price of $22,000.

Re-introduced in October 2017, but still no data sheet. The programmability in the feature list below suggests this might be a Cavium ASIC. The S5148 and S5048 are speeds-and-feeds identical. The announced difference is that S5048 uses Dell's OS9 while the S5148 uses OS10.

Features specifically for the S5148

• 1RU high-density 25/10/1 GbE ToR switch with up to forty eight ports of native 25 GbE (SFP28) ports supporting 25 GbE without breakout cables
• Multi-rate 100GbE ports support 10/25/40/50 GbE
• 3.6 Tbps (full-duplex) non-blocking, cut-through switching fabric delivers line-rate performance under full load (packet sizes over 147 Bytes)
• Programmable packet modification and forwarding
• Programmable packet mirroring and multi-pathing
• Converged network support for DCB and ECN) capability
• IO panel to PSU airflow or PSU to IO panel airflow
• Redundant, hot-swappable power supplies and fans
• IEEE 1588v2 PTP hardware support
• Supports the open source Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) for zero touch installation of alternate network operating systems
• Running Dell EMC Networking OS10 Enterprise Edition

Serverthehome has done a teardown review of this switch on youtube. The switch chip is a Cavium Xpliant. The management prosessor is an intel C2000 Atom. The review notes that because of the Cavium prossesor Sonic and Cumulus have not been ported to this switch.