Nokia Pioneers Ultra Ethernet Integration to Solve AI/HPC Data Center Networking Challenges
With Ethernet widely adopted across most data networks worldwide, it is a compelling protocol for modernizing AI data center networks with new standards, best practices, and architectures to support AI and HPC workloads.
Nokia , in collaboration with Keysight Technologies , announced the successful end-to-end testing of UET traffic across its family of high-performance data center switching platforms, including the Nokia 7220 Interconnect Router (IXR) and 7250 IXR. The test demonstrates Nokia’s compatibility with and commitment to integrating Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) Specification 1.0 capabilities into its HPC/AI-ready networking portfolio and reinforces its leadership in building extreme-scale, lossless, low-latency networks for modern data centers built for the AI era.
AI is driving a fundamental rethink of data center operations. Real-time training and inference demand ultra-low latency, while even minor packet loss can derail training jobs and delay completion. Combined with massive bandwidth requirements, these pressures are pushing existing data center networks to their limits.
Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) Specification 1.0 defines this new UET layer to solve the complex problem set that HPC/AI creates. With Ethernet widely adopted across most data networks worldwide, it is a compelling protocol for modernizing AI data center networks with new standards, best practices, and architectures to support AI and HPC workloads. As an active member of the UEC, Nokia is committed to leveraging UET as a highly compatible, cost-effective, and interoperable part of AI and HPC application stacks.
“Networking technologies are evolving rapidly to meet the demands of large-scale AI clusters. Ultra Ethernet is one of the approaches under active development and is enabling the next generation scale-out fabrics that will power 100K+ AI clusters with innovation from PHY/Link layer to Transport and Application layer. Keysight is contributing by co-leading UEC working groups to help ensure that specifications are practical, verifiable, and interoperable. With our early interoperability efforts, we’re accelerating adoption and unlocking the next wave of innovation. This test with Nokia is one such significant milestone in the evolution of networking for AI.”
– Ram Periakaruppan, Vice President and GM, Network Applications & Security business, Keysight
“AI is changing the game when it comes to expected performance in AI data center networks. This successful demonstration with Keysight of UET traffic over Nokia’s 7220 IXR and 7250 IXR product families demonstrates our commitment to the UEC and provides clear evidence that Nokia is a leader in this evolution, with one of the industry’s most robust portfolios for HPC/AI-ready data center networking.”
– Rudy Hoebeke, Vice President, Software Product Management, Nokia
The procedure tested 800 GE interfaces with flows of UET traffic generated by Keysight’s AresONE 800GE-8P-QDD-M testing platform over a network that spanned all variants of the Nokia 7220 IXR-H5 and the Nokia 7250 IXR-10e platforms. These Nokia switches were running the SR Linux Network Operating System (NOS).
As Nokia integrates UEC Specification 1.0 capabilities into the Nokia data center fabric solution for HPC/AI networks, global customers already have immediate commercial access to an AI-ready and UEC-compatible portfolio with support for Remote Direct Memory Access over Converged Ethernet (RoCEv2) and Data Center Quantized Congestion Notification (DCQCN). The current support for RoCEv2 was also tested at 800 GE flows in parallel on the same testbed, showcasing coexistence, openness, and flexibility.
