In its most recent Data Center Switch Long-Range Forecast Report, Crehan Research predicts that 800 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switches will see rapid customer adoption and will surpass 20 million ports in annual shipments within four years – equating to the fastest ever data center Ethernet switch speed ramp. An expected key driver of the fast adoption is generative AI, which requires much higher networking bandwidth than other workloads.
"Generative AI is potentially the biggest killer application to emerge in decades," said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. "As the de facto data center networking technology, with an installed base of over 400 million switch ports as well as the proven ability to incorporate additional features to handle the requirements of new applications, we expect Ethernet to be the main enabler of these workloads," he said. "Already, Ethernet networking is seeing generative AI enabling deployments in five of the top seven hyperscale cloud service providers, as well as the world's fastest supercomputers including the Frontier exascale system and the Aurora system."
Alongside the increased adoption of high-speed Ethernet switches tailored for generative AI applications, Crehan's report forecasts a surge in shipments of 100- Gbps Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) technology. The company predicts that within three years, 100-Gbps SerDes shipments will outpace those of 50-Gbps SerDes, becoming the most widely deployed data center Ethernet switch SerDes speed.
These 100-Gbps SerDes are positioned as foundational components for the next generation of ultra-high-bandwidth data center Ethernet switch silicon products. Notable examples include Broadcom's Tomahawk 5 and Jericho3-AI, along with Cisco's Silicon One G200, serving as integral elements in the data center networking infrastructure for the forthcoming phase of generative AI adoption.