Autonomous Switching vs Silicon Switching

• Autonomous switching

With this type of switching, an incoming packet matches an entry in the
autonomous-switching cache located on the interface processor. Autonomous switching provides
faster packet switching by allowing the ciscoBus controller to switch packets independently
without having to interrupt the system processor. It is available only on Cisco 7000 series routers
and in AGS+ systems with high-speed network controller cards.

• SSE switching. 

With this type of switching, an incoming packet matches an entry in the
silicon-switching cache located in the silicon switching engine (SSE) of the Silicon Switch
Processor (SSP) module. This module is available only on Cisco 7000 series routers. Silicon
switching provides very fast, dedicated packet switching by allowing the SSE to switch packets
independently without having to interrupt the system processor.