There is not one Ethernet business, but several, and now, with the evolution of Ethernet switches for back-end AI cluster networks, there is a new one that has the possibility to dominate revenues and profits. …
Two decades ago, the hyperscalers and cloud builders started remaking the Ethernet switch market in the datacenter in their own image, and now it looks like AI training and inference is going to morph Ethernet switching in the datacenter once again. …
The original design manufacturers, or ODMs, as well as the portions of the original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, that act like ODMs in that they create custom machines for hyperscalers and cloud builders and sell that at high volume and low margin, have long since taken over the server market. …
No one like the R word, but we don’t shy away from data and calling it like we see it. …
Just about everybody, including Nvidia, thinks that in the long run, most people running most AI training and inference workloads at any appreciable scale – hundreds to millions of datacenter devices – will want a cheaper alternative for networking AI accelerators than InfiniBand. …
We have been tracking the financial results for the big players in the datacenter that are public companies for three and a half decades, but starting last year we started dicing and slicing the numbers for the largest IT suppliers for stuff that goes into datacenters so we can give you a better sense what is and what is not happening out there. …
As a founding member of the Ultra Ethernet Consortium, which has the express purpose of making Ethernet as good for AI and HPC clusters as InfiniBand but with the scalability and familiarity of Ethernet, Arista Networks wants to benefit mightily from the AI wave that is coming to enterprise datacenters the world over. …
You might be thinking that with all of the investment in AI systems these days that the boom in InfiniBand interconnect sales would be eating into sales of high-end Ethernet interconnects in the datacenter. …
It is hard to keep a model of datacenter infrastructure spending in your head at the same time you want to look at trends in cloud and on-premises spending as well as keep score among the key IT suppliers to figure out who is winning and who is losing. …
The switching market has its ups and downs depending on the upgrade cycle for server processors and the nature of the economy at any given time. …
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