Well, the title says about all there is to my question;
After lots and lots of saving I was finally able to buy a few SX1036 switches, only to find out that mellanox actually sells these switches with a handicap; not having the X86 CPU board which is one of the key infrastructure parts that enable SDN.
So I did some research and found out I can extract the CPU boards from the switches relatively easy. The whole switch looks quite modular, and I guess OEM's swap out all kinds of parts from the switch all the time.
Now my million dollar question; Would it be possible for me to swap my handicapped cpu boards for real X86 cpu boards, to get the mellanox SDN switch I so much desire?
Would I need to reflash my switch firmware? Since the ASIC firmware and CPU firmware are 2 seperate parts?
I really hope someone can inform me with some type of solution for my problem, I am pretty devastated by not having the SDN features I so much desire.