Ethernet Holds Its Own In Demanding AI Compute Environments
NETWORKComputing, Saturday, January 6th, 2024
While InfiniBand is making gains, many enterprises are sticking with Ethernet for their data center switching and interconnectivity needs to run their AI workloads.
The wide-scale embracement of artificial intelligence (AI) in businesses of all types and sizes requires high-performance compute and infrastructure not normally found in enterprise data centers. On the compute side, many are turning to GPUs and other workload accelerators like Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs), Data Processing Units (DPUs), and Compute Express Link (CLX) technology. On the infrastructure side, while some are considering or using InfiniBand, many are sticking with Ethernet.
That point was borne out in the most recent IDC Worldwide Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker. IDC found that sales of data center Ethernet switches grew 7.2 percent (year-on-year) for Q3 of 2023, the latest quarter reported to date.