Co-Packaged Optics switch
In order to expand AI factories to millions of GPUs, NVIDIA has announced Spectrum-X Photonics and co-packaged optics(CPO) Networking Switches. In AI factories, switches with 1.6 terabits per second per port will provide 10x resilience and 3.5x energy savings. Joint Innovations and Partnerships to Develop an Integrated Silicon, Optics Process, and Supply Chain With TSMC, Coherent, Corning Incorporated, Foxconn, Lumentum, and SENKO.
GTC: AI factories can connect millions of GPUs across locations using NVIDIA Spectrum-X and NVIDIA Quantum-X silicon photonics networking switches, which significantly lower energy usage and operating expenses. NVIDIA made these announcements today. Large-scale integration of optical communications with electronic circuits has been accomplished by NVIDIA.
Networks must change to keep up with the tremendous scale of AI factories. The most cutting-edge networking solution in the world is NVIDIA photonics switches. In comparison to old approaches, they provide 3.5x more power economy, 63x more signal integrity, 10x better network robustness at scale, and 1.3x faster deployment by integrating optics advancements with 4x fewer lasers.
In order to stay up with NVIDIA, networking infrastructure needs to be redesigned for AI factories, a new kind of data centres with enormous size. “NVIDIA is breaking down the old constraints of hyperscale and enterprise networks and opening the gate to million-GPU AI factories by integrating silicon photonics directly into switches.”
The NVIDIA Spectrum-X Photonics Ethernet and NVIDIA Quantum-X Photonics InfiniBand platforms include NVIDIA silicon photonics networking switches.
Spectrum-X Ethernet networking architecture provides 1.6x bandwidth density and higher performance for multi-tenant, hyperscale AI factories, including the world’s largest supercomputer.
NVIDIA Spectrum-X Photonics switches have 128 800Gb/s or 512 200Gb/s ports for 100Tb/s bandwidth or 512 or 2,048 for 400Tb/s throughput.
NVIDIA Quantum-X Photonics switches include 144 800Gb/s InfiniBand ports on 200Gb/s SerDes. The liquid-cooled design effectively cools the onboard silicon photonics. Compared to the previous generation, NVIDIA Quantum-X Photonics switches provide 5x greater scalability and 2x quicker speeds for AI compute fabrics.
A Networked Ecosystem
TSMC, Browave, Coherent, Corning Incorporated, Fabrinet, Foxconn, Lumentum, SENKO, SPIL, Sumitomo Electric Industries, and TFC Communication are all part of NVIDIA’s silicon photonics ecosystem.
For a new generation of AI factories to reach the size needed for workloads of the future, they must be efficient and require little upkeep. “TSMC’s silicon photonics solution helps NVIDIA unlock an AI factory’s ability to scale to a million GPUs and beyond, pushing the boundaries of AI by combining our strengths in advanced chip fabrication and TSMC-SoIC 3D chip stacking.”
Along with pluggable optical transceiver technologies backed by industry giants like Coherent, Eoptolink, Fabrinet, and Innolight, NVIDIA photonics will propel a new wave of cutting-edge AI factories to enormous growth.
NVIDIA Silicon Photonics
Co-packaged optics networking switches with unparalleled resilience, efficiency, and power that are based.
Revolutionizing Networking for the Era of Agentic AI
In the age of agentic AI, NVIDIA co-packaged optics (CPO) switches with integrated silicon photonics are the most cutting-edge networking technology available. In comparison to conventional networks, NVIDIA CPO innovations offer 3.5x better power efficiency, 10x higher network robustness, and 1.3x faster time to install by substituting silicon photonics on the same package as the ASIC for pluggable transceivers.
Networks built on NVIDIA co-packaged optics make design and management easier and give compute infrastructure additional power. Delivering the scale required to enter the future of million-GPU AI factories depends on these advantages.
NVIDIA CO-packaged optics Architectures
- Co-packaged optics for the NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand platform based on 200G is known as NVIDIA Quantum-X Photonics.
- 200G co-packaged optics for the NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet platform is known as NVIDIA Spectrum-X Photonics.
CO packaged optics benefits
- Massive-grow Infrastructure Networking: NVIDIA co-packaged optics(CPO) offers numerous advantages that are required to grow to millions of GPU AI factories.
- Decreased Power Consumption: Compared to pluggable transceivers, NVIDIA CPO technology offers 3.5 times more power efficiency by drastically lowering network power.
- Greater Resilience: Compared to pluggable transceivers, NVIDIA CPO offers 10x greater resilience at the enormous scale needed for agentic AI.
- Faster Deployment: NVIDIA co-packaged optics(CPO) speeds up time to insight by streamlining data centre networking installation and serviceability.
- Extremely Low Latency Sleep States: NVIDIA CPO lowers network latency by eliminating the need for digital signal processing (DSP) retimers.
- Reduced TCO: By doing away with pluggable transceivers, NVIDIA CPO streamlines the bill of materials and lowers costs.
- Easier Serviceability: Compared to pluggable transceivers, NVIDIA co-packaged optics(CPO) requires fewer parts and is considerably simpler to install and repair.
NVIDIA Silicon Photonics Switches
NVIDIA Quantum-X Photonics Switch
The Q3450-LD, which has 144 gigabits-per-second (Gb/s) InfiniBand ports, is the first of the new CPO-based switches that will be added to the NVIDIA Quantum-X800 platform. This innovative switch effectively cools the onboard silicon photonics by utilising a liquid-cooled architecture. The NVIDIA Quantum-X Photonics InfiniBand switch connects more than 10,000 GPUs in a non-blocking two-level fat-tree topology at 800Gb/s, enabling new network innovations to enable unparalleled scale.
NVIDIA Spectrum-X Photonics Switches
Additionally, NVIDIA is using Spectrum-X to enable co-packaged optics(CPO) for Ethernet switches. This comprises two models: one with 512 800 Gb/s Ethernet ports and another with 128 800 Gb/s Ethernet connections.
