Custom 5nm NIC Displays Impressive Performance
Marvell and Meta announced the co-development of the FBNIC. The FBNIC is a custom 5nm NIC ASIC built to optimize the performance of its infrastructure for general purpose servers. Marvell contributed the board design to the OCP community. The announcement was significant for the NIC ecosystem of suppliers, and it changed how Meta thinks about the server-to-switch boundary.
Speeds and Feeds
The FBNIC is a multi-host NIC that can support up to 4 independent ports. It can support 4×100, 2×100, 4×50, 2×50, 4×25, and 2×25. It is based on a 56G SERDES and is a 5nm design.
Deep Control
Both Meta and Marvell did a good job developing the FBNIC, as Meta has complete firmware control and access to the hardware. These deep tie-ins will allow for the NIC to be customized and optimized. It will also allow for significant and valuable telemetry data into Meta’s systems, which will help drive better TCO during production.
Hypsercaler Workloads Continue to Push NIC Capabilities
Hyperscalers continue to push what their NICs can do. This includes additional offload capabilities and custom approaches beyond what standard protocols can do. We view the FBNIC as optimizing the NIC beyond just performance, which will reduce the number of NIC errors and ultimately lead to higher uptime on the server. Unlike servers, which get powered up and down as workloads change, NICs are always on devices so increasing reliability is imperative. Given that server ASPs continue to expand because of increased core counts and AI accelerators, the value of custom NIC will continue to increase as next-generation servers begin to ramp up in 2025 with the Yosemite v4 platform.
NIC Market Set to Surge
As the industry deploys back-end AI networks and core counts on CPUs rapidly push above 100/chip, NICs revenue, and ports will grow significantly over the next several years. NIC innovation, like the FBNIC, will be critical for the market to grow. At a market level, it is essential to note that many NIC innovations from the Hyperscalers make their way into the broader T2 Cloud and Enterprise markets. The OCP nature of the FBNIC gives it a clear path for others to benefit from the innovation. We are excited to see the FBNIC ramp in production.