Provides analysis of Ethernet network interface cards (NICs) used to connect data center and edge servers and storage to Ethernet networks. Includes vendor market share and forecasts of disruptive trends such as SmartNICs.

DC Ethernet adapter port shipments declined 15% QoQ and were down 31% YoY in 1Q22

Significant announcements:

  • NVIDIA announced that Oracle would use BlueField-3 DPUs in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) servers to offload the infrastructure tasks from the CPUs. BlueField-3 supports Ethernet and InfiniBand connectivity up to 400GE and is more likely to be deployed on servers with co-processors like GPU. This is a big win for NVIDIA, as Oracle is currently one of the fastest-growing cloud service providers.
  • AWS Nitro cards can now have a four-port configuration. This feature allows an increase in overall bandwidth and redundancy in the event of a port failure.
  • Intel plans the shipments of the 400GE DPU named Mount Morgan for late 2023/early 2024, pushing forward its schedule slightly. Intel also announced a roadmap for 800GE Ethernet adapters, coming in 2025.
  • Broadcom is rapidly increasing shipment of the Tomahawk 5 family of Ethernet switches. These switches can provide up to 64 800GE ports speed. A high radix configuration of 200GE ports is also possible with Tomahawk 5.
  • NVIDIA announced Spectrum-X, a RoCE-based Ethernet networking platform designed to improve the performance and efficiency of Ethernet-based AI clusters. It provides a networking platform combining NVIDIA Spectrum-4, BlueField-3 DPUs, and custom software, for low latency congestion-controlled Ethernet networks targeting AI workloads.

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