F5 VELOS CX1610 & BX520: Modular ADC for AI and 5G
F5 is proud to announce the general availability of the VELOS CX1610 chassis and BX520 blade, two powerful additions to our modular systems portfolio, purpose-built to deliver unmatched performance, agility, and scale for today’s most demanding workloads. From AI factories to 5G networks to high-throughput enterprise environments, VELOS is engineered to help customers meet tomorrow’s challenges with confidence.
Powering the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform
The F5 VELOS CX1610 and BX520 are foundational to the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP), F5’s next-generation approach to application delivery and security. F5 ADSP converges app and API security with high-performance load balancing and traffic management.
F5 ADSP reimagines the role of the application delivery controller as a modular, programmable platform that spans hybrid and multicloud environments. It brings together high-performance hardware, purpose-built software, and deep security into a unified platform, enabling organizations to deliver applications faster, more securely, and with greater agility than ever before. F5 ADSP streamlines operations across hybrid and multicloud environments, enabling consistent policy enforcement, real-time visibility, and cloud-native agility from the data center to the edge.
VELOS delivers the promise of F5 ADSP, supporting unified security across all environments, with F5 BIG-IP and F5 BIG-IP Next modules providing the application delivery, advanced security, and automation services modern IT teams depend on to scale. With VELOS, organizations can modernize their on-prem infrastructure while aligning with the same architectural principles driving their cloud strategies.
Inside the VELOS CX1610 chassis
A fully populated VELOS CX1610 chassis delivers multi-terabit throughput with modular scalability, engineered for the most demanding AI, 5G, and enterprise workloads.
The CX1610 is a high-density, 16-RU chassis supporting up to 32 quarter-width blades or 16 half-width blades. Its non-blocking fabric ensures lightning-fast connectivity in the VELOS chassis, while offering separation of control plane traffic from the data plane via redundant system controllers running F5OS platform software that provides resilient, centralized control. Built for scale, the chassis supports up to 6 Tbps of aggregate throughput to power AI model training, scale 5G, or modernize the enterprise core.
Designed for consolidation, the CX1610 reduces the rack footprint, lowers power consumption, and streamlines infrastructure, helping organizations meet sustainability goals while modernizing their data centers, all without compromising performance or scalability.
Meet the BX520 blade
The BX520 is a half-width blade delivering up to 375/300 Gbps of L4/L7 throughput, with hardware acceleration for SSL/TLS, IPsec, DDoS, CGNAT, and cryptographic workloads. Equipped with 96 vCPUs, 512 GB of RAM, and a 4TB SSD, it’s designed for high tenant density and peak performance, but it’s equally capable of supporting a single, ultra-performant SuperVIP tenant when maximum throughput and resource isolation are required.
Compatible with both the CX1610 and CX410 chassis, the BX520 enables multi-terabit throughput in a fully populated system, ideal for environments with demanding traffic, such as AI data delivery pipelines or 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) subscriber services.
The BX520 blade combines high-performance compute, cryptographic acceleration, and tenant isolation to power secure application delivery at scale
AI workloads
AI pipelines require fast, secure movement of massive data sets. The BX520’s hardware crypto offload and high-speed fabric optimize SSL/TLS performance and reduce latency, accelerating training cycles and improving GPU utilization.
5G deployments
For service providers, VELOS offers a consolidated N6 / S/Gi-LAN solution which brings together multiple subscriber services including DNS, firewall, DDoS and CGNAT, along with video and TCP optimization. With NEBS compliance and integration-ready APIs, VELOS supports large-scale, real-time data environments and automates deployment through CI/CD pipelines.
Enterprise consolidation
Organizations can eliminate infrastructure sprawl by consolidating onto VELOS CX1610. With chassis partitioning, multi-tenant isolation, and hardware-level separation, teams can run development, staging, and production environments securely and independently on a single platform. VELOS enables organizations to logically partition hardware resources, allocating compute, memory, and bandwidth to isolate tenants or services, creating the operational effect of a virtual chassis.
A seamless path to converged application delivery and security
VELOS is built to support F5 ADSP through BIG-IP 17.5+ tenants, which include support for post-quantum cryptography (PQC), JSON Web Tokens (JWT) protection, and modern app services automation and declarative management via the BIG-IP Automation Toolchain Application Services 3 Extension (AS3) and Declarative Onboarding.
Availability and next steps
The VELOS CX1610 chassis and BX520 blade provide the performance, scalability, and flexibility needed to power the future of application delivery and security. Whether you’re advancing AI initiatives, deploying next gen 5G infrastructure, or modernizing enterprise apps, VELOS gives you the foundation to drive change, not just react to it.
The VELOS CX1610 and BX520 blades are now available for order through F5 and our network of authorized partners. To explore detailed specifications and capabilities, you can download the F5 VELOS Data Sheet. The Planning for VELOS Guide provides detailed guidance on system architecture, chassis configuration, networking design, and operational best practices. Contact your F5 representative to learn how VELOS can accelerate your journey or visit F5.com/velos to learn more.