The Cisco Nexus?3000 Series Switches are a comprehensive portfolio of 1, 10, and 40 Gigabit Ethernet switches built from a Switch-on-a-Chip (SoC) architecture. Introduced in April 2011, this series of switches provides line-rate Layer 2 and 3 performance and is suitable for Top-of-the-Rack (ToR) architecture. This series of switches has established itself as a leader in High-Frequency Trading (HFT), High-Performance Computing (HPC), and big data environments by pairing high performance and low latency with innovations in performance visibility, automation, and time synchronization. The Cisco Nexus 3548-X and 3524-X Switches are the next generation of the Cisco Nexus 3500 platform. Like the previous generation, these switches are compact 1RU form-factor 10 Gigabit Ethernet switches and provide line-rate Layer 2 and 3 switching with ultra-low latency. In addition, they consume 25 percent less power. This new generation introduces powerful hardware-based multicast NAT and latency monitoring capabilities and a second USB port for easier manageability.