This week the OIF is holding a 448 Gbps Workshop to talk about the next generation’s electrical speed. The event includes multiple hyperscaler keynote presentations. On Tuesday, it was Google and Meta.
We had the pleasure of moderating a panel on the electrical channel. 448 Gbps SERDES represents the first SERDES speed developed after the significant AI inflection and will help scale the agentic wave and transition us into the robotic age of AI.
650 Group has been tracking AI equipment for more than 3 years, and the inflection in spending towards AI and the impact on data center switching is significant. We are just getting started with a massive inflection in network markets as new scale-up and scale-out backend networks are taking center stage.
Scale-out showcases InfiniBand and Ethernet. Scale-up hits technologies including NVLink, UALink, PCIe, Ethernet, and other proprietary implementations.
For the rest of the decade, 200+ ports a minute will barely keep pace with AI demand within data centers. That equates to multiple switch ASICs and 100s of transceivers and cables every minute. The industry is truly moving faster than ever before as the data center switching market approaches $50B a year.
We can thank the OIF’s hard work in getting us there and note that organizations including the IEEE, Ethernet Alliance, UALink, SNIA, and Ultra Ethernet Consortium have all participated in the workshop, further highlighting the need for multiple standards bodies to come together to help achieve the record pace of innovation needed.