Surpassing scale-out bandwidth
A key trend driving the scale-out growth is bandwidth requirements.
Crehan forecasts that the ramp in scale-up will have an even more profound impact on total market bandwidth, driving a 15-fold increase in the next five years.
“The bandwidth required for scale-up Ethernet in AI racks is about an order of magnitude greater than that required for scale-out, and this difference is likely to increase," said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. "We are projecting a 200-fold increase in scale-up Ethernet switching bandwidth alone.”
1.6T Ethernet ramping
As scale-up Ethernet switching bandwidth continues to grow, it will create an opportunity for 1.6 Tbps.
The advent of 1.6 Tbps technology will address both scale-up and scale-out opportunities, with a significant push to optimize scale-up connectivity to maximize accelerator performance.
Coinciding with the expected exponential growth in scale-up Ethernet switching and the rapid expansion of scale-out and scale across deployments, Crehan’s report projects a fast ramp in 1.6T Ethernet switch ports, starting later this year.
“Fueled by generative AI network buildouts, data center 800GbE switch ports have seen the fastest ramp in history, and our latest forecast projects an even faster ramp for the upcoming 1.6T generation," Crehan said.
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