All Cisco Nexus 7000 Series chassis use a passive mid-plane architecture, providing physical connectors and copper traces for interconnecting the fabric modules and I/O modules for direct data transfer. All inter-module switching is performed via crossbar fabric ASICs on the individual I/O modules and fabric modules.
A scalable, fully distributed fabric architecture uses up to six fabric modules to deliver up to 1.32 Tbps per slot of bandwidth in the Cisco Nexus 7700 6-, 10-, and 18-slot switches on day one. In case of the Cisco Nexus 7700 2‑slot chassis, the fabric modules are not required since it uses a single module. The midplane design on the 2‑slot, 6-slot, 10-slot, and 18-slot chassis supports flexible technology upgrades as your needs change, providing ongoing investment protection. Future fabric modules will allow higher bandwidth capabilities on the platform.