10 Tbps is not a scary number? I am honestly still in awe of how such a small box can route an entire city’s worth of traffic. Different perspectives I suppose.
Regarding your points: I am not sure I completely follow.
Firstly, as far as I know, Google does not make its own switching or routing ASICs.
Secondly, virtually all switching and routing ASICs are highly programmable. So if you need a custom protocol, you can implement it using the vendor’s microcode (e.g., P4). In other words, you are not limited to the protocols that the vendor has implemented.
Given the above, I don’t see what kind of technical requirements Google has that would disqualify the use of routing ASICs.
We obviously have very different perspectives on this issue. I think given Google's architecture, where a host handles millions of flows and they are all individually keyed, just the key management nightmare alone would be enough to discredit the idea of offloading crypto to an ASIC in a separate box.
Regarding your points: I am not sure I completely follow.
Firstly, as far as I know, Google does not make its own switching or routing ASICs.
Secondly, virtually all switching and routing ASICs are highly programmable. So if you need a custom protocol, you can implement it using the vendor’s microcode (e.g., P4). In other words, you are not limited to the protocols that the vendor has implemented.
Given the above, I don’t see what kind of technical requirements Google has that would disqualify the use of routing ASICs.