Ethernet Headed for 40/100GbE Standard

By Michael Feldman

August 10, 2007

As Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” That’s exactly what the IEEE 802.3 Higher Speed Study Group (HSSG) decided to do last month when it was confronted with two different paths to the future of Ethernet. In a nutshell, the study group recommended that the Ethernet standard move forward on two parallel tracks — a 40 Gigabit Ethernet (40GbE) data rate for server and storage applications and a 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE) data rate for long-haul networking and network aggregation.

Once those recommendations are formally approved by the IEEE 802.3 executive committee and the IEEE standards board, the HSSG will morph into the task force, which will then develop the new standard under a unified effort. Approval is anticipated around November or December, with the task force beginning its work in January 2008. The new 40GbE and 100 GbE specification should be completed by mid-2010, which is expected to be followed very quickly by the first round of 40GbE and 100GbE products.

If the task force is able to keep to that schedule, it will have to overcome a sluggish start by the study group. The HSSG was originally formed in July 2006 and up until July 2007 had been mired in debate over about how Ethernet technology should evolve. There was even some media speculation that discussions were at an impasse and the whole process might need to be rebooted.

The Ethernet rate step has been the central issue to the ongoing debate in HSSG for the discussions started in earnest six months ago. The result is essentially a compromise, recognizing that the communication needs of the computing sector are different than that of the networking sector. The 40GbE rate is intended for shorter range interconnects involved in server and storage communications; the 100GbE for long-haul networking and aggregation. The implication is that a single implementation can support either speed, but not both.

The underlying protocol for both speeds is, of course, Ethernet. So for those interested in datacenter consolidation around a single communication protocol, the two speeds offer a relatively painless way to get that done.

According to HSSG chair John D’Ambrosia, the discussions over the past six months have been contentious. Apparently, it took some time for vendors in the two application areas to come to terms with each other. In the end, though, many of the decisions were reached unanimously.

“Was I surprised that the consensus was this high?” asks D’Ambrosia. “Given all the work that was done — no. But looking at where we were in May, it certainly represents a turnaround. I have the highest respect for the study group and those individuals who participated in this process. I knew that group would come to a decision so we could move forward.”

The proposed objectives for 40GbE applications will support:

  1. At least one meter over a backplane,
  2. At least 10m over a copper cable assembly, and
  3. At least 100m over OM3 (optical multimode 3) fiber.

The proposed objectives for 100GbE applications will support:

  1. At least 10m over copper cable assembly,
  2. At at least 100m over OM3 fiber, and
  3. Up to 40km over single-mode optical fiber.

One of the factors that influenced the dual approach was the realization that computing and networking bandwidth demand are growing at different rates. Server-based bandwidth demand is doubling roughly every 24 months, while networking bandwidth demand is doubling approximately every 18 months. Because of the different trajectories, the Ethernet study group concluded that the server space won’t be ready for 100GbE for another several years. They believe that the 40GbE rate will match up with the next generation of multicore processors, memory technologies, and host bus interfaces. In the same timeframe, 100GbE networking will be required by the evolution of the Internet and the associated datacenter buildout.

But 40GbE may be behind the curve in the HPC sector, where performance is often limited by the relatively slow node-to-node interconnects. InfiniBand usage is growing in HPC systems and shows no signs of reversing. It remains to be seen how 40GbE will play against the more aggressive roadmap of the InfiniBand vendors, who are already laying the groundwork for products that will support 120 Gbps.

What Ethernet has on its side is ubiquity. But at these higher data rates, the speed of individual communication lanes and power consumption will present technical challenges for vendors. Fortunately, the implementation of 100GbE offers some options. One can vary the number of lanes depending on the speed rate for the individual lanes (e.g., 10*10GbE 4*25GbE, etc.). Cost will be the other big technical challenge at these higher speeds. As D’Ambrosia observes: “Ethernet likes to be cheap.”

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire