Source: Wall Street See
Citigroup pointed out that although Nvidia has just entered the Ethernet market, its technological development is almost synchronous with the switch leader Arista. Nvidia's 1.6T Ethernet product is expected to be deployed in early 2026, while Arista's 1.6T switch based on Broadcom may be released slightly earlier or simultaneously.
Benefiting from the hot construction of datacenters, Ethernet is rapidly penetrating into AI networking. Nvidia and Arista Networks are doing their best to promote the development of Ethernet technology.
Citigroup compares the product roadmaps of both companies in its latest report. It points out that the accelerated penetration of Ethernet provides opportunities for Nvidia and the "switch leader" Arista. The development of both parties in Ethernet technology is approaching synchronization, and they are expected to launch high-speed Ethernet solutions in the near future.
Citigroup emphasizes that for Arista, Nvidia is a more powerful Ethernet competitor than expected:
Although Nvidia has just entered the Ethernet market, it is deploying an ambitious and extremely fast Ethernet AI product, which may match Arista's AI roadmap.
Nvidia said they expect the Spectrum-X platform to become a billion-dollar product line within a year, highlighting that many customers are willing to adopt Nvidia's bundling method in the Ethernet field.
Citigroup's report pointed out that both Nvidia and Arista Networks will have end-to-end 800G solutions by the end of 2024 or early 2025:
Nvidia's Spectrum-X platform is a comprehensive solution that integrates software, Ethernet switches, network interface cards (NICs), and data processing units (DPUs). A previous article pointed out that Spectrum-X can improve the performance of generative AI networks by 1.6 times compared to traditional Ethernet. The platform integrates Nvidia Spectrum X Ethernet switches and Nvidia BlueField-3 super network cards to solve the bottleneck of traditional Ethernet in AI applications.
Arista's Etherlink technology combines Broadcom's Tomahawk 5 leaf switch (currently available) and Jericho 3 Spine products planned to be launched later in 2024, and adds software to it.
Citigroup further stated that Nvidia and Arista may also have a consensus on the roadmap of 1.6T products (based on 102.4T chips), and the launch time of Broadcom's next-generation Ethernet chip Tomahawk 6 will affect the listing time of related products of Nvidia and Arista.
Since Tomahawk 5 has started mass production since March 2023, it is expected that Tomahawk 6 (based on 102.4T chips) will start production in early or mid-2025. This speculation is based on the development roadmap of Ethernet chips, which is usually 2 years.
If the production time of Tomahawk 6 meets expectations, switches based on Tomahawk 6 may be mass-produced at the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026. This shows that compared with Nvidia's 1.6T Ethernet product (Spectrum-X1600), Arista's 1.6T switch based on Broadcom may be launched slightly earlier or at the same time, and Nvidia's product is expected to be deployed in early 2026.
In addition, the Ethernet Alliance's technology roadmap and speed development trend from now until 2040 show that the latest 400GbE and 800GbE standards have been formulated, and 3.2Tb/s is a possible limit speed in the future.
Editor / jayden