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Disaggregated Leaf-Spine Architecture for Next-gen Azure T2 Network#

OCP Global Summit 2025 digest Program Core pick 13–16 October 2025

Abstract Recording

Speakers: Kamini Santhanagopalan (Broadcom), Rita Hui (Microsoft)

Play the recording: Disaggregated Leaf-Spine Architecture for Next-gen Azure T2 Network

  • Why: SONiC Disaggregated Chassis is the most consequential open-networking architecture idea of the last few years — replacing chassis boxes with pizza-box fabrics — and this is a concrete Microsoft/Broadcom spine-layer deployment with named silicon.
  • What: A fully disaggregated spine-layer solution built from pizza boxes on xgs and dnx chipsets: TH5-512 silicon in the lower-disagg-T2 and Q3D (Jericho-based) in the upper-disagg-T2, replacing monolithic chassis for the Azure T2 spine. (from abstract only)
  • How: SONiC Disaggregated Chassis separates hardware and software components with clean hardware abstractions so the spine scales past a single chassis's physical limits; the talk covers the design and the advantages of the model.
  • Where applicable: Azure-specific and explicitly Broadcom-silicon-specific (TH5-512 and Q3D) — the architecture pattern (pizza-box disagg spine under SONiC) is general, but the implementation details are tied to this chipset pairing.