Broadcom launches 400G Ethernet adapters

Broadcom has introduced a new series of 400G Ethernet adapters specifically tuned for resolving network bottlenecks when moving massive amounts of data around for AI processing. The new processors are equipped with a third-generation RoCE pipeline, low-latency congestion control technology, and telemetry functions. They are meant for a high-bandwidth, high-stress network environment associated with AI infrastructure.

But don’t call it a smartNIC. Jas Tremblay, vice president and general manager of the Data Center Solutions Group at Broadcom, said there is a difference between their product and what is generally accepted as a smartNIC.

“These are traditional performance NICs optimized for AI,” he said. “They don’t have a large, multi-core CPU running on them. They’re fully hardware offload, high performance, optimized for low power AI. This processor will not do application offload on it. It’s really [about] connectivity, high performance, low latency, congestion control.”