SYSTEM Cited by 1 source

OCP-SAI (Switch Abstraction Interface)

OCP-SAI (Switch Abstraction Interface) is an open vendor-agnostic API for programming network switch ASICs, co-developed by Meta and Microsoft for the Open Compute Project (OCP) beginning in 2018. The source: SAI specification v0.2 on opencompute.org. The GitHub project is the living reference.

Seen in

• sources/2024-10-15-meta-metas-open-ai-hardware-vision — "DSF is powered by the open OCP-SAI standard and FBOSS, Meta's own network operating system for controlling network switches." + "Meta and Microsoft have a long-standing partnership within OCP, beginning with the development of the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) for data centers in 2018."

Why it matters

• Foundational abstraction for disaggregated networking. Without SAI, a switch NOS (like FBOSS) would need vendor-specific firmware integrations per ASIC; with SAI, the NOS talks to any SAI-compliant ASIC.
• Precondition for DSF. Meta's 2024-10 Disaggregated Scheduled Fabric explicitly names SAI as its ASIC-control substrate.
• Multi-vendor ASIC sourcing. The 2024-10 post pairs SAI with new Meta 51T switches on both Broadcom and Cisco ASICs — evidence that the abstraction holds across ASIC families.
• Canonical Meta × Microsoft OCP collaboration. SAI (2018) begins the lineage that extends to the OAM accelerator-module standard, SSD standardization, and the Mount Diablo power rack.

Related

• systems/fboss-meta-network-os — the NOS on top of SAI.
• systems/meta-dsf-disaggregated-scheduled-fabric — the AI fabric built on SAI + FBOSS.
• patterns/co-design-with-ocp-partners — SAI is the foundational instance of the pattern.
• companies/meta.