SONiC has become the de-facto standard for data centers, but its expansion into Campus and Edge networks faces a significant barrier: hardware resources. Standard SONiC distributions are resource-intensive, designed for x86 CPUs with abundant memory. When deployed on cost-effective enterprise platforms like the Marvell AC5X (Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A55, 4GB RAM), the out-of-box experience is often unacceptable. Initial benchmarks on a 30-port AC5X device showed boot times exceeding 4 minutes and simple CLI status commands lagging by 10–15 seconds.

Larch Networks presents a guide, explanation and live demonstration of a set of optimizations to allow SONiC run on the lower end devices.

Visit the booth to see that with right optimizations, SONiC delivers acceptable performance even on low-power, cost-efficient edge silicon, with a hands on experience.