An Application-Specific Integrated Circuit is a silicon chip that is designed for a specific purpose, rather than a generic purpose chip like a CPU. In networking, ASICs generally refer to ethernet or cell switching processing units. Popular ASIC manufacturers include Broadcom, Nvidia/Mellanox, Marvell, Intel, and Cisco.

Josh Saul has pioneered open source network solutions for more than 25 years. As an architect, he built core networks for GE, Pfizer and NBC Universal. As an engineer at Cisco, Josh advised customers in the Fortune 100 financial sector and evangelized new technologies to customers. More recently, Josh led marketing and product teams at VMware (acquired by Broadcom), Cumulus Networks (acquired by Nvidia), and Apstra (acquired by Juniper). Josh lives in New York City with his two children and is an avid SCUBA diver.