Ethernet advances will end Nvidia's InfiniBand lead in AI networks

Three imminent improvements to the Ethernet standard will make it a better alternative to host AI workloads, and that will see vendors back the tech as an alternative to Nvidia's InfiniBand kit, which is set to dominate for the next two years. That's the opinion of analyst firm Gartner in a piece published this week titled " …

[Pascal Monett]

Pseudo-AI and the datacenter really are moving tech along

I just checked the specs on my motherboard : I still have PCIe 3 and DDR4. PCIe 6 is starting to get out. My home router is GB-capable, but not 100GB capable.

Not that it would matter, the Ethernet ports on my equipment are only GB-capable anyway.

I wonder if I will see all this bandwidth goodness on my home PC one day . . .

[HuBo]

Cool prospect

It'll be great to see "Ultra Ethernet" compete with Infiniband on bandwidth and latency, with the advantage of multiple-vendors (less lock-in). For the goal of using this interconnect to lash together nodes, racks, cabinets, and whole datacenters together, resulting effectively in "megascopic" AI computers (heterogeneous and composable), it should be important that the networking protocol support "memory coherence" in the way that CXL 3.0 does (for PCIe 6.0). A 128-bit network (global) address space should also help break through the low ExaByte barrier, as needed for Zettascale computing (eg. scaling the 1.2 Exaflop/s Frontier's 9 petabytes of memory by 1,000 comes quite close to the 64-bit addressing limit).

This competition, between ethernet and Infiniband, will remain quite exciting and fun to watch IMHO.

[luis river]

To consider by industry

Please, UE consortium - Nvidia, about interface terabit / s efforts. Please, joint R-D development. Please, dont one more wheel invent in tech initiatives, accelerate innovation process!!

[cweinhold]

Doesn't add up

"by 2028, 45 percent of Gen AI workloads will run on Ethernet – up from less than 20 percent now."

"She nonetheless predicted 30 percent of generative AI workloads will run on InfiniBand – up from fewer than 20 percent today."

So if Ethernet and Infiniband today both have less than 20% of the generative AI workloads today, what network technology IS being used? WIFI? That could explain all the hallucinations.

[Kapsalon]

Re: Doesn't add up

Upvoted because the question is valid.

It would be nice if the downvoter explained his reasons.

[Androgynous Cow Herd]

Alternate headline.

"Shill for Companies that don't sell Infiniband says Infiniband is doomed"

There are liars, damned liars, and analysts.

[icesenshi]

Re: Alternate headline.

Sounds like an nvidia investor. The point of the article is that an open standard, ethernet, is predicted to become good enough that companies may be able to ditch proprietary Infiniband. Which is a win for anyone that isn't nvidia.