Archive for the ‘Data Center’ Category

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Introducing Nova, a 1.6T PAM4 DSP Optimized for High-Performance Fabrics in Next-Generation AI/ML Systems

By Kevin Koski, Product Marketing Director, Marvell

Last week, Marvell introduced Nova™, its latest, fourth generation PAM4 DSP for optical modules. It features breakthrough 200G per lambda optical bandwidth, which enables the module ecosystem to bring to market 1.6 Tbps pluggable modules. You can read more about it in the press release and the product brief.

In this post, I’ll explain why the optical modules enabled by Nova are the optimal solution to high-bandwidth connectivity in artificial intelligence and machine learning systems.

Let’s begin with a look into the architecture of supercomputers, also known as high-performance computing (HPC).

Historically, HPC has been realized using large-scale computer clusters interconnected by high-speed, low-latency communications networks to act as a single computer. Such systems are found in national or university laboratories and are used to simulate complex physics and chemistry to aid groundbreaking research in areas such as nuclear fusion, climate modeling and drug discovery. They consume megawatts of power.

The introduction of graphics processing units (GPUs) has provided a more efficient way to complete specific types of computationally intensive workloads. GPUs allow for the use of massive, multi-core parallel processing, while central processing units (CPUs) execute serial processes within each core. GPUs have both improved HPC performance for scientific research purposes and enabled a machine learning (ML) renaissance of sorts. With these advances, artificial intelligence (AI) is being pursued in earnest.

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Introducing the 51.2T Teralynx 10, the Industry’s Lowest Latency Programmable Switch

By Amit Sanyal, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Marvell

If you’re one of the 100+ million monthly users of ChatGPT—or have dabbled with Google’s Bard or Microsoft’s Bing AI—you’re proof that AI has entered the mainstream consumer market.

And what’s entered the consumer mass-market will inevitably make its way to the enterprise, an even larger market for AI. There are hundreds of generative AI startups racing to make it so. And those responsible for making these AI tools accessible—cloud data center operators—are investing heavily to keep up with current and anticipated demand.

Of course, it’s not just the latest AI language models driving the coming infrastructure upgrade cycle. Operators will pay equal attention to improving general purpose cloud infrastructure too, as well as take steps to further automate and simplify operations.

Teralynx 10

To help operators meet their scaling and efficiency objectives, today Marvell introduces Teralynx® 10, a 51.2 Tbps programmable 5nm monolithic switch chip designed to address the operator bandwidth explosion while meeting stringent power- and cost-per-bit requirements. It’s intended for leaf and spine applications in next-generation data center networks, as well as AI/ML and high-performance computing (HPC) fabrics.

A single Teralynx 10 replaces twelve of the 12.8 Tbps generation, the last to see widespread deployment. The resulting savings are impressive: 80% power reduction for equivalent capacity.

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Marvell and Aviz Networks Collaborate to Drive SONiC Deployment in Cloud and Enterprise Data Centers

By Kant Deshpande, Director, Product Management, Marvell

Disaggregation is the future
Disaggregation—the decoupling of hardware and software—is arguably the future of networking. Disaggregation lets customers select best-of-breed hardware and software, enabling rapid innovation by separating the hardware and software development paths.

Disaggregation started with server virtualization and is being adapted to storage and networking technology. In networking, disaggregation promises that any networking operating system (NOS) can be integrated with any switch silicon. Open source-standards like ONIE allow a networking switch to load and install any NOS during the boot process.

SONiC: the Linux of networking OS
Software for Open Networking in Cloud (SONiC) has been gaining momentum as the preferred open-source cloud-scale network operating system (NOS).

In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2025, 40% of organizations that operate large data center networks (greater than 200 switches) will run SONiC in a production environment.[i] According to Gartner, due to readily expanding customer interest and a commercial ecosystem, there is a strong possibility SONiC will become analogous to Linux for networking operating systems in next three to six years.

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The Three Things Next-Generation Data Centers Need from Networking

By Amit Sanyal, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Marvell

Data centers are arguably the most important buildings in the world. Virtually everything we do—from ordinary business transactions to keeping in touch with relatives and friends—is accomplished, or at least assisted, by racks of equipment in large, low-slung facilities.

And whether they know it or not, your family and friends are causing data center operators to spend more money. But it’s for a good cause: it allows your family and friends (and you) to continue their voracious consumption, purchasing and sharing of every kind of content—via the cloud.

Of course, it’s not only the personal habits of your family and friends that are causing operators to spend. The enterprise is equally responsible. They’re collecting data like never before, storing it in data lakes and applying analytics and machine learning tools—both to improve user experience, via recommendations, for example, and to process and analyze that data for economic gain. This is on top of the relentless, expanding adoption of cloud services.

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A Marvell-ous Hack Indeed – Winning the Hearts of SONiC Users

By Kishore Atreya, Director of Product Management, Marvell

Recently the Linux Foundation hosted its annual ONE Summit for open networking, edge projects and solutions. For the first time, this year’s event included a “mini-summit” for SONiC, an open source networking operating system targeted for data center applications that’s been widely adopted by cloud customers. A variety of industry members gave presentations, including Marvell’s very own Vijay Vyas Mohan, who presented on the topic of Extensible Platform Serdes Libraries. In addition, the SONiC mini-summit included a hackathon to motivate users and developers to innovate new ways to solve customer problems. 

So, what could we hack?

At Marvell, we believe that SONiC has utility not only for the data center, but to enable solutions that span from edge to cloud. Because it’s a data center NOS, SONiC is not optimized for edge use cases. It requires an expensive bill of materials to run, including a powerful CPU, a minimum of 8 to 16GB DDR, and an SSD. In the data center environment, these HW resources contribute less to the BOM cost than do the optics and switch ASIC. However, for edge use cases with 1G to 10G interfaces, the cost of the processor complex, primarily driven by the NOS, can be a much more significant contributor to overall system cost. For edge disaggregation with SONiC to be viable, the hardware cost needs to be comparable to that of a typical OEM-based solution. Today, that’s not possible.

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