NVIDIA is bringing Ethernet networking with co-packaged optics to artificial intelligence (AI) factories, enabling scale-out and scale-across on the NVIDIA Rubin platform with the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet Photonics.
In this blog post, Ashkan Seyedi, Director of Product Marketing at NVIDIA, explores key optimizations and innovations in the protocol and hardware of Spectrum-X Ethernet Photonics that could enable power-efficient co-packaged optical networks for next generation AI factories.
How Ethernet for AI Enables Scalable Training and Inference
Ultra-low-jitter Ethernet networking plays a vital role in scaling AI factories, as it ensures consistent and reliable data transmission across the entire infrastructure. By minimizing jitter, AI systems can achieve efficient token throughput regardless of batch size, which is crucial for handling diverse and demanding workloads. This ability supports seamless multi-tenancy within a single AI factory, for multiple users and applications to operate concurrently without performance degradation.
It also improves the dispatch efficiency of models based on the Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture, enabling faster expert selection and improved overall model performance, as shown in Figure 1. As a result, AI factories can operate at greater speed, reliability, and scalability.
The Spectrum-X Ethernet Photonics switch delivers performance improvements for AI factories through its co-packaged silicon photonic engines.
- New packaging and low-loss electro-optical channels offer 5x power reduction per 1.6 Tb/s port compared to pluggable interconnects.
- The co-packaged optical links sustain 5x longer link flap-free AI uptime compared to off-the-shelf Ethernet solutions, ensuring AI workloads run without interruption.
- 10x greater network resiliency provides unmatched robustness for mission-critical applications.
With these innovations, organizations can scale their AI infrastructure and increase performance per watt, supporting larger workloads while maintaining optimal energy efficiency, reliability, and network stability.
Spectrum-X Ethernet Photonics is the world’s first fully integrated 512 lane 200G-capable co-packaged switch system. The introduction of the detachable fiber connector for surface-normal input/output (I/O) is an advancement in the assembly and scalability of high-performance Ethernet switches for AI factories. By enabling a fully automated process where optical fibers are attached at the final stage using precision machinery, manufacturers can maximize production yield and throughput, streamlining large-scale deployment.
The surface-normal optical I/O architecture enables optical ports to scale without increasing the physical size of the switch package. This is especially advantageous for high radix switches, which require numerous connections within a compact footprint to support expansive AI workloads.
The solder-reflow compatible optical engine is also a breakthrough that integrates seamlessly with modern test and assembly tools. This compatibility enables full screening of optical components before attachment to the switch silicon, ensuring that only known-good engines are used, achieving a guaranteed 100 percent yield. The process benefits from pick-and-place automation and comprehensive pre-assembly testing, which together provide an efficient manufacturing pathway for these advanced switch systems.
The integrated shuffle mechanism within the quad-ASIC switch architectures is another key innovation, enabling flat and efficient scaling of GPUs within a single cluster. This topology eliminates the latency typically introduced by additional switching layers, maintaining optimal performance as clusters grow. The SN6800 switch delivers 409.6 Tb/s of total bandwidth across 512 ports of 800 Gb/s, or 2,048 ports of 200 Gb/s, using its integrated fiber shuffle and co-packaged silicon photonics to establish a space- and power-efficient Ethernet solution. These combined innovations equip AI factories with robust, scalable network infrastructure capable of supporting next-generation artificial intelligence applications.
What’s Next for AI Factory Networking Innovation
This holistic codesign approach — with chips, systems, software, and AI models — enables the development of scalable, high-performance AI factories. Spectrum-X Ethernet Photonics switches deliver ultra-low jitter networking for AI factories to grow in speed, reliability, and scalability, and establish robust infrastructure for next-generation applications. For more information, see the NVIDIA Silicon Photonics page.
